It is. In Germany at least all communications must be encrypted. And often multiple meters will communicate via one gateway.
Though, if someone has the time and technical ability to implement this kind of surveillance then there are probably easier ways to get better info than inferring activity from energy readings.
Thanks for the real numbers. When I was looking the sort of salaries I was being quoted were in the 10000 per month range which is a lot more than what I'm currently on but would actually work out worse once costs are taken into account.
True, they're not that crazy, but when I looked at the higher salary Vs the higher costs it was financially better to stay put. Of course money isn't the only deciding factor but it's not the land of massive opportunity it's sometimes presented as.
That said, if you've got no dependents and you want to stay in mainland Europe, then it's probably a very good choice.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but while salaries are high and taxes are relatively low, general living costs are quite high. Particularly if you have kids and so want a bigger house and good schools.
I've looked at this and the benefits we get from staying in Germany outweigh the extra income earned.
I don't think you're going to get a great response as that's a lot of identifying information you're asking for. Country, Area (optional), years of experience, gross salary and extras is what you really want.
I always took this as a criticism of companies where you've got developers who earn multiple thousands per month pecking away at old PC's and squinting at 15" CRT screens. Waiting for 5-10 mins for the OS to startup and > 5 mins to build a project.
This is probably more possible now given the ease with which a fraud can get someone else to do their work for them (I remember a news story doing the rounds of an experienced developer doing all of this and outsourcing all their work to India).
But of course, this isn't new behavior and because we work in a job which is seen as well paid, so fraudsters will try to get something for nothing.
Even worse, working on technical debt may be viewed as a negative thing ("if it's working why did you change it?" said the phb).
I've yet to find a code review process beyond a trivial implementation that scaled. The best results I've had were with a rotating buddy system. (Every week/month) you review someone else's code and they yours.
Though, if someone has the time and technical ability to implement this kind of surveillance then there are probably easier ways to get better info than inferring activity from energy readings.