A simple Microsoft 365 Roadmap update will now generate a raft of unhappy headlines. The idea is simple. “When users connect to their organization’s Wi-Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working in.”
Forget the locational anonymity of a Teams virtual background. Teams will update your location when connected to your company’s WiFi. On video, you may have your usual background complete with company logo. But your boss will know you’re not in work.
Glad I work at a place that wouldn’t give a fuck as long as I’m getting shit done. This sort of bullshit undermines how people feel about work and likely harms productivity more than it helps (as is tradition with micromanaging people instead of setting them up for success and giving them the space they need to do their job).
Also, people who actually are slacking will find so many ways around this anyhow that it won’t actually matter to them because they already don’t care and are probably smart enough to get around it.
Fancy that? Don’t you love it when your work treat you like…wait for it… an Adult. Rewarded accordingly, help accountable accordingly. Who’d 've thought! 🤔
In a lot of ways, I have the opposite of micromanagement, they really don’t care what the hell I am doing as long as I’m delivering my projects effectively.
Sounds like you work at a place that trusts you to do the job you were hired to do.
My take is: If they don’t trust me, wtf am I even doing at a such a fucked up place? Then find a better place to work.
The sad thing is that some orgs that start off with healthy environments can slowly erode into really toxic environments and it’s like a frog boiling in water.
Sometimes it can happen very quickly - all it takes is one person of enough prominence being replaced with another, and something that took years to cultivate is shredded in weeks/months.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen both of these happen up close and personal. Sometimes it’s not always a viable option to try to pick up and move to another job…
Companies also get bought out by other companies and then change drastically overnight.
Yes, without question. That’s usually a fast-track to a highly toxic place, because often the people that they have acquired are viewed as just somehow being there accidentally, or worse, illegitimately, because the new management had no role in finding them, hiring them, and working to create/preserve a culture with them.
Also, many weak managers just want loyalists and that kind of personality just worries that they didn’t get to vet people so the people they have bought won’t be sufficiently loyal…
In my current job, I don’t mind doing a little overtime or working a weekend every now and than. They don’t care what I do, as long as it gets done. They don’t care that I go to the gym during office hours. I’m happy and I’m passionate about my work.
But if they started doing shit like this. I’d be working 9 to 5 and not giving a shit if work gets done or not. I’d become a drone and I’d be looking for other employment.
No kidding. What dystopian hell do people work in??
And somehow their implementation of e911 will still not work.
Then I guess I’ll always be not at work
The company your work for is Microsoft’s biggest client - not you… Not even you if you use Windows on your own home computer. Use Linux at home, use Linux at work if you can.
Another feature no one asked for.
Oh, this was asked for, I assure you.
Not by workers, but it was asked for.
No. I’m sure managers asked for this…
Eh, most companies that allow Work From Home are already tracking your login location and use their own robust VPN anyway that sends your login location to validate who you are. Teams is just trying to sell what most companies already do as a “new feature.”
I can’t really think of a way this is going to harm most users unless you’re already trying to scam your employer by vacationing without using your PTO and trying to show up to meetings from the hotel WiFi, or working two jobs. (Both of which I’ve had to deal with managing WFH teams.)
You, the worker, are not Microsoft’s customer. You and your data are the product.
If you are not the customer, you are the product!
Lmao any corporate IT department can do this at any time anyways
Well, the IT stuff made a log of it, but I think teams is promising to actually rat on you. Like, if it detects it, it’ll send a notice to the boss that you’re being remote
It updates your location status to “in the office”
It also changes to “away” if you don’t move the mouse for long enough.
Anyone looking to these as workers not doing their job, is looking in the wrong place.
To be fair, Microsoft never had “Don’t be evil” as their motto.
Bill Gates was an asshole from the start. Happy to use freely available stuff from the early computing community as well as using his school’s resources to build either DOS or BASIC and then acting like he had built it all with his own resources when ranting about free software. To be clear, I don’t gaf about using free resources to build something and make money from it, but his hypocrisy and anti-competitive BS makes that aspect worse with him.
So it was always shit, it was just that once upon a time, they actually had to make good software that ran on very limited hardware in addition to their anti-competitive BS, and then had a period where they kept trying to make good software but didn’t realize yet that they didn’t need to (like windows ME was pretty much universally panned, but it didn’t drive people away from windows in general).
I think it was win 10 that I first felt like I was in conflict with my OS. Like in win 7, I’d spend time looking at each update’s kdb entry to decide if I wanted it (and skipped the nagware ones about win 10 entirely, for example). In win 10, I had to jump through hoops just to be able to control when it applied updates on my own timeline, not MS’. Win 10 was the worst for resetting settings, like I get it set up like I prefer it to be, then a few updates later I’d have to do some of them again. Though tbf, I don’t recall that happening in the last few years, but other worse enshitification has settled in since then and now windows never even touched my current main machine.
Meanwhile, they cannot or will not add useful features like…being able to have more than one fucking person share a screen. This is after YEARS of lockdown.
And don’t get me started on how basic their chat “feature” is. I mean…have they even bothered to look at Slack at all? And it’s not like Slack is the only one they might look at…how about Matrix/Riot?
Nope, it’s almost like they just know millions of users are stuck with their craptastic solution because it’s bundled into the rest of their stack and enterprises are going with it no matter how much it sucks balls.
Microsoft’s products are no longer usable.
Not safe, not sensible, not smart.
I don’t get it. Why would it matter that Teams knows where you are working? If you need to hide from your coworkers or your boss then maybe it’s time to change company?
On the other hand: if Teams is using Wifi to correlate your position you could mess with it by exchanging the access point positions, ie exchange your bosses AP with the one in the cellar.
I can see one legitimate application for this, specifically for accountability during an emergency. It’s one more thing to tell whomever is checking where to look for people and only if it’s actually reliable. I doubt that it would be reliable enough.
Yes, I wouldn’t go so far and trust MS applications in emergency cases :D
Sounds useful? Weird to imply the purpose of this is to expose people not in the office. The people who care about that already know.
I think you nearly overestimate the skills and infrastructure at a company. Sure someone already knows, but a built in teams feature that dumbs it down enough for Carol to trivially see something new to bitch about is never a good thing.
Why is carol bitching about what she can see on teams that she can’t see looking around the office already?
From your question can i assume you’ve only been part of a group that works within a single room/building/city/country?
Seems like a lot of the incredulous ‘why would anyone care about x’ type responses to these kinds of things are from people who just don’t happen to personally be in the situation that they apply to, or even realize people could possibly experience something different than they do themselves.
I’m part of a distributed team which already makes this information available to everyone. It means when you go to message someone and it says they’re in the same office as you that you can just go and talk to them.
Then why was your question suggesting Carol isn’t getting any information she can’t get by looking around the office? You literally work in a group that your rhetorical question doesn’t even work in? It’s almost like you were being intentionally obtuse?
If that’s your remaining objection then sure.
When I make that comment I was thinking of a single office.
Maybe that’s office wouldn’t even use teams, or maybe Carol in that office wouldn’t be helped.
As always it’s the worst product that got the most marketing that gets used by everyone.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
I think it’s more the case it gets bundled in for free (or near enough) with other MS crap like Office.
Apparently it’s dirt cheap as compared to alternatives
I hope Teams announces when my CEO and other executives are not in the office. Just to level the field.
Hah, it will almost certainly have admin options that allow high level people to turn off that feature.
You not working?
AWS down
Oh ok, don’t worry
Well. I’m remote. So they know I’m not at work.
Don’t be surprised when IT tries to move into your house thinking it is an office building
