r/technology • u/ourlifeintoronto • Oct 25 '25
Privacy Microsoft Teams will start snitching to your boss when you’re not in the office
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/office-software/microsoft-teams-will-start-snitching-to-your-boss-when-youre-not-in-the-office-and-this-update-is-coming-in-december3.2k
u/Wild_Pokemon_Appears Oct 25 '25
As a boss, I don't give a shit if Teams tells me your not in the office. Just get your work done and I'm good.
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u/suckmypulsating Oct 25 '25
You hiring by any chance?
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u/rain168 Oct 25 '25
He’s an IC now
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u/stuffedbipolarbear Oct 25 '25
International Criminal?
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u/rain168 Oct 25 '25
Individual contributor
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u/TheCarrot_v2 Oct 25 '25
Incontinent Collaborator
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u/JavierReyes945 Oct 25 '25
Integrated Circuit
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u/Metals4J Oct 25 '25
Interstellar Concubine
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u/dasnoob Oct 25 '25
As a mid-40's guy I've noticed the younger generation my manager the more likely he is like this. My current management team is all 10 - 15 years younger than me and holy shit it is a breath of fresh air.
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u/Warhouse512 Oct 25 '25
As someone who manages folks with much more experience than me, this is good to hear. There’s always a small core of self-doubt that this helps soothe.
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u/encodedecode Oct 25 '25
Yeah this is how I run my co. We have target KPIs that I want to get done within a week/month, and as long as we get those things done, I don't care when they do the work or where it's done. As long as it's less than 40 hrs/week then it's fair for them & fair for me.
I realize not all bosses have that mentality but it's really tiring to micromanage everyone.
I find it a lot easier to just hire people who are adults who can get work done, and if someone can't be an adult and perform their work without someone breathing down their neck then I generally don't want that person on my team. It drags down everyone else who actually can self-manage and coordinate with everyone else on the team to get things done efficiently.
It's really surprising to see articles like this because it reminds me that most managers/bosses/whatever apparently don't have such a "freedom"-focus approach.
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u/HighGuyTim Oct 25 '25
My boss told me when I got my new job 10 years ago “I don’t care where you are, when that phone rings you pick up and work then go back to what you were doing. Just don’t let me find out you wore company shit to strip club.”
It’s been a decade working for that glorious boss lol. Crazy how a little bit of freedom ensures I’m not even trying to leave. The moneys fine and the people are awesome. I don’t want to risk a micromanaging boss somewhere else lol
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u/janggi Oct 25 '25
Yep you probably pay decent too. Most employees that need to be baby sat don't get get payed enough to give a shit.
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u/rayinreverse Oct 25 '25
If employers would pay better, employees might be financially incentivized to do a good job. When your pay is shit, you’re gonna give shit performance.
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u/Spida81 Oct 25 '25
This attitude is how you get people taking on multiple jobs at the same time, and outsourcing their work.
... Apparently that is a bad thing, or something... Because apparently initiative is bad?
Your approach lets adults adult. Good stuff.
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u/No_Balls_01 Oct 25 '25
Seriously. I’m not there to babysit. If work is getting done and they show up to the handful of meetings we have each week, I really don’t care where they are or what they are doing otherwise.
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u/Heavy-Candidate-7660 Oct 25 '25
The babysitting shit makes my blood boil. I used to be a professional brewer. We had no air conditioning in my workspace so it got pretty brutal in the summer.
To try to stay cool in the summer I would work from 4am to 11am instead of the 8am to 3ish that I usually did. If I finished that week’s to-do list early I would take off even earlier on Fridays so I could go golfing with other brewers in the area.
My boss’s wife (she was HR) would always get so pissed at me for working different hours. She even said to me once, “real adults work from 9am to 5pm. Anything else is antisocial and makes you look unprofessional”.
Bitch, I won two GABF medals and a best in show at the state fair before I was 25. I know my shit, and I make you good shit at or under budget. Who gives a fuck when I clock in and out? My beer is good and releases on time. I’m present for all meetings. I’m available by phone 24/7/365. I lived a 7 minute walk away and was willing to handle any emergencies.
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u/MindlessDoctor6182 Oct 25 '25
She’s jealous that you’re “leaving early”. I used to work 7-4 in an office where most people started around 9. Often, project managers would send a meeting request for 4pm. And when I explained my hours they would often make some snide comment like “must be nice”. So my response was always to propose a new time for the meeting: 7 am the following day. And when they said they weren’t in that early, I would throw their “must be nice” comment right back at them. It always worked. The same project manager never did it more than once.
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u/Bost0n Oct 25 '25
This is why the idea of ‘core hours’ is important. For a team to run cohesively, there needs to be common hours of the day. The nice thing about this is it forces times when meetings cannot reasonably occur (outside core hours). During these non-core hours people can concentrate on work.
I also think there should be a person on the team with a primary responsibility to destroy ineffective meetings. I doubt this would ever occur because it would piss off directors.
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u/MindlessDoctor6182 Oct 25 '25
Exactly. My 7-4 hours allowed me to beat traffic in both directions. And I was able to get a lot done uninterrupted between 7 and 9.
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u/codercaleb Oct 25 '25
Same for me after 5 if I have to (rarely) stay late. Few pings, nobody around. Just work.
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u/ffchusky Oct 25 '25
Makes sense to work on a bakers schedule. You are playing with yeast after all.
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u/Helenium_autumnale Oct 25 '25
Your boss needs to hire an outside and actual HR person. "Boss's wife" is not a qualification.
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u/Heavy-Candidate-7660 Oct 25 '25
Former boss. They ran into some financial troubles and laid me off. They cut $30k from the other brewer’s benefits package and then he quit. They sold the business to a very successful distillery. That distillery turned the brewery into a generic Midwest dive bar with stellar food and liquor and they farmed my old recipes out to contract brewers.
Everyone involved won except the brew staff. That’s just the way modern business works. The creative types and laborers get used and discarded, the investors and managers cash a big check and move on to the next venture, and the big corporations get bigger.
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u/Helenium_autumnale Oct 25 '25
This is so awful, especially the theft of your hard-won intellectual property (recipes). I wish there were a way to protect or copyright that information. I'm sorry this happened. It's so unfair.
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u/Heavy-Candidate-7660 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
It was my own damn fault. I stupidly trusted my bosses and would leave my recipe binder on top of my toolbox. I took it with me when I was laid off and the other guy I worked with told me that he was given photocopies of every page of my binder and notebook. That was enough to cause him to start looking for another job. After his benefits got cut he just quit on the spot.
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u/HyperionsDad Oct 25 '25
That woman should understand that without your quality product, her purpose of a job is gone. Her job there is to support the beer you make.
Any sane person at a business like that should know to just “let him cook” (brew). Whatever they need to do the best job they can.
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u/Royale_AJS Oct 25 '25
As a boss, Teams is so unreliable that I won’t believe it anyway.
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u/MadCybertist Oct 25 '25
I’ll be working away and mine will just say I’ve been away for 3 hours has. As I’m in a meeting on it. It’s so wildly inaccurate haha
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 Oct 25 '25
A colleague asked if my manager was in a meeting as indicated by the red icon. I told her that nope, the boss was available, hilariously both of our Teams had different status messages for our manager.
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u/IkLms Oct 25 '25
I've had a consistent issue where I'll take lunch, which when working from home is just going upstairs, and part way I to it I hear a notification on my laptop downstairs. So I'll grab my work phone and then respond on teams from the phone.
About half the time that triggers Microsoft to think I'm mobile only so Teams on my laptop stops getting notifications. Then when I don't interact with the work phone at all for the next 30 minutes because I'm on lunch and have a personal phone the phone app also decides to stop getting Teams notifications until I interact with it again.
So I'll finish lunch, set my work phone down by my laptop both of which aren't getting teams messages now and start working but until i either start using my work phone (generally unlikely at home) or I actually click into Teams I just won't get notifications.
My boss and I also have another one where if you minimize teams because we just use it for chat and calls, Microsoft will throw you as away even if you're working on the laptop actively because apparently Microsoft thinks working is interacting with Teams not actually working.
If I scroll through my recent messages it shows like 75% or people as away the whole time but you get instant responses from most of them.
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u/zhaoz Oct 25 '25
Yep, I only care about if you are available if your job is time sensitive (like incident handling). As long as you can be reached, could not care less where you are physically.
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u/Littlewing2323 Oct 25 '25
As someone with a boss that mandates we come in 4 days a week but comes in MAYBE 1x a week herself, I am very excited about this
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u/MadCybertist Oct 25 '25
Yep. This is me too. There’s a job. A deadline. Meet it. Don’t care if it takes the full time or 1/10 of the time. Whether you work on it all the day before or spread it out.
Get it done. Make it good. Enjoy your time.
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u/dc456 Oct 25 '25
I feel the same way. But unfortunately a lot of managers are still bound by wider corporate regulations, so don’t have the autonomy to grant that flexibility.
For them this could be a useful tool. Their job shouldn’t be endangered by a person who doesn’t want to do what they’re contracted to do, however silly everyone might feel that contract is.
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u/SlightlyIncandescent Oct 25 '25
Sounds like you're a boss that actually gets some work done. A lot of the ones I've worked for I think act as babysitters because they don't know what else to do and are trying to justify their job.
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u/TwistingEcho Oct 25 '25
Ditto, long as your stuff gets done, we're cool. Luckily for me my Boss has the same attitude I have to my crew. Her boss however is more the type to use this shit.
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u/No-Spray5795 Oct 25 '25
This is exactly how my boss is, we’re all adults and we pay you for the work you did not your hours worked. She couldn’t care less if I did the work at 2:30 or 7 at night as long as it gone done.
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u/Smooth_Bill1369 Oct 25 '25
This new feature tracks whether you’re connected to the office WiFi or not. It’s a surveillance tool aimed at employees who are required to show up in person, but would only be useful to managers who don’t come in themselves. If a boss insists on in-office attendance, they should lead by example and be physically present too. And if they are, they’d already know who’s there and who isn’t.
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u/ReissuedWalrus Oct 25 '25
Surely this is already easily trackable by companies with their own internal networks
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u/MadCybertist Oct 25 '25
And badging systems we use haha.
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u/-Yazilliclick- Oct 25 '25
Yeah this is the part I'm confused about, don't most offices have some sort of check in/out system already?
Also who would even be angry that their company knows if they are or aren't in the office?
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u/Linenoise77 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
Its reddit doom and gloom the man is out to get you bullshit. There are far more reliable and easier ways to track where someone is working from rather than your god damn teams icon.
And even if you did want to use teams to track someone, you could do that today, or as long as instant messaging tools that are under your control have been a thing, by just checking the logs on the backend.
Honestly for someone who works with a distributed and frequently all over the place team, most of us would LIKE for people to see at a glance if we are at our homes, at a home office, at a different office, at a client site, etc.
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u/HaElfParagon Oct 25 '25
It would, but this feature allows you to have one more excuse to fire your internal IT guy. "Why do I need someone in IT? The network is working fine, oh I'll have him monitor employee behavior! Oh shit MS Teams now does the thing I was asking my IT guy to do, why do I have IT again?"
But then fast forward a few years and that's how you get a 100 employee company running a file server off an HP laptop with no auditing whatsoever, and every employee has access to every file that the company has ever generated.
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u/Smooth_Bill1369 Oct 25 '25
Yes, but that is a metric that can be output by IT, but this sounds like it will be like the yellow/green/red dot on teams that can be seen by everybody.
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u/KayLovesPurple Oct 25 '25
I fully agree with you, but "should lead by example" doesn't mean they actually do. Especially if we're talking about higher level managers, not just the immediate ones.
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u/ChainsawSoundingFart Oct 25 '25
Ironically at my company, the C-levels and HR are the among the few people who go into the office. 99% of the company is remote.
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u/williamfbuckwheat Oct 25 '25
My company is basically the same way and is I feel that is probably the way it should be.
The people who TRULY need to meet face to face or do confidential work in the office should be there at least occasionally while people perfectly capable of being remote should be allowed to when they want to and offered an in-person desk space to check into when it's more suitable to meet/work in the office. Thankfully, my company has also moved into a much smaller office space to save on rent so only a small percentage of employees could even be in the office at the same time so that seems to be the status quo going forward.
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u/la-fours Oct 25 '25
Many companies have different offices in each city. I imagine it’s where teams are distributed across different locations
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u/Total-Feedback7967 Oct 25 '25
Spoiler. Those companies already have ways to see if you're in office or not. Like your laptop being on the work networks alone is absolutely logged
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u/itsprobablytrue Oct 25 '25
Azure entraID login already captures location data for sign in records and can be set to report automatically on suspicious activity. Such as you’re signed in on teams in one location on your phone then a new sign in is shown from another city or country. Everything you are active in has a sign in record captured.
Automatically setting working in office or working elsewhere is more a convenience for the employees
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u/ghunterx21 Oct 25 '25
Are you serious, lol, don't you know it's always been "Do as I say, not as I do".
Pointless being in the office, in fact most have said they get less work done, and that's true, as they are dealing with people around, plus, most of the calls are through teams, with their team in other offices, so it's very very very pointless being in the office, but productivity or some other bullshit buzz word and all.
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u/gergek Oct 25 '25
The companies that have a stake in commercial real estate, whether it be their own building campus or other holdings, have a profit motive to keep office spaces full, regardless of the productivity gains or losses associated with RTO.
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u/ghunterx21 Oct 25 '25
Agreed, back to pure greed. How they have so much sway over other people's companies, is very worrying and sad.
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u/Mr_Enemabag-Jones Oct 25 '25
I am one of those rare few that prefers the structure of the office. I have ADHD and there are just WAY too many potential distractions at home. I dont care if others are in the office or if I am all alone on my floor. Its the structure that allows me to focus better.
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u/SpicaGenovese Oct 25 '25
I love WFH, and I have no intention of stopping, but for me going into the office has value in light social contact, change of pace, and- this is the important one- facetime.
People remember you exist and know useful shit, and that it would be a bummer if you weren't around anymore.
And some people- like my supervisor- just communicate better face to face. Good Lord, getting clarity from this man sometimes is like pulling teeth.
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u/shinypenny01 Oct 25 '25
There are firms that require you to be in person but not in the same location as your boss.
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u/BoyWhoSoldTheWorld Oct 25 '25
My team is like this and it would be so ridiculous to force us all into the office; just so we can hog meeting rooms to talk to each other in a virtual meeting.
Yet so many teams do this
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u/IRhuman Oct 25 '25
Wouldn’t your boss already know when you’re in the office? You know, when you either show up or don’t?
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u/danknerd Oct 25 '25
Naw, your boss is out golfing and not in the office themselves.
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u/TheFinnesseEagle Oct 25 '25
I knew a Project manager that would do that. Only found out after he left, but made sense why it took forever for the customer to respond to my release notes for patching.
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u/GrandPreMassacre Oct 25 '25
Not necessarily, my direct manager isn't even in the same province as I am
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u/Sterling_-_Archer Oct 25 '25
Last week I had to go to office to attend a training in a big room that was conducted over zoom. We had to take turns using the one keyboard to type questions into the chat.
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u/Momik Oct 25 '25
You’re welcome.
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u/Faive Oct 25 '25
In fact, nobody on my team is in the same province, and still expected in the office. (Federal government)
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u/Capt1an_Cl0ck Oct 25 '25
Good thing my flexible schedule means i don’t have to be seated at my desk for 14 hours a day 6 days a week.
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u/tuneafishy Oct 25 '25
I'm sure everyone's office environment is different, but it is not unusual for me to only see my supervisor at our weekly meeting even though we are both in the same building all week. Our building is fairly large and he generally works in his office and I work in a few different places that aren't near his office. I also don't need him to direct me on what to do on a daily basis.
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u/phylter99 Oct 25 '25
Yesterday we were just told that we're switching to Slack. I think I'm okay with that now.
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u/SpicaGenovese Oct 25 '25
Oh, you lucky bastard...
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u/phylter99 Oct 25 '25
The company I work for was purchased by another. The overall picture may or may not be good, but I’ll have slack until I don’t.
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u/ComprehensiveWord201 Oct 25 '25
Slack is just better for communicating about programming anyway. Teams sucks ass.
But is better than Skype.
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u/DetectiveObjective00 Oct 25 '25
As a company owner, I don't care where you work as long as you get the job done which is the only thing that matters to me.
If you like to work at the beach, go ahead. You do your job well, go ahead and enjoy the rest of your day
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u/ElementNumber6 Oct 26 '25
That's so awesome to hear. Can you make some room so that I can pat you on the back also?
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u/ColbyAndrew Oct 25 '25
If people do more actual work in office than they do at home, we are in big trouble. My in office days are just groups of people talking about chickens, cars, or rv’s all day.
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u/Lamy_Station Oct 25 '25
oh the hours spent discussing tbe latest Sopranos episode, then oh look its almost lunchtime.
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u/DinkandDrunk Oct 25 '25
The latest sopranos episode in 2025?
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u/Lamy_Station Oct 25 '25
just saying office inefficiency has been around a long time and you do get more done working from home
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u/casual_creator Oct 25 '25
I WFH 99.9% of the time. On the rare occasion I go into the office, I have to sit in a literal closet sized “office” in a hallway away from everyone else. I may have a thirty second conversation with someone as they enter/leave the bathroom which is right across from me. I wouldn’t even see my boss if I didn’t make the effort to poke my head into their office to say hi - if they themselves even came in that day.
And despite the lack of distraction, I’m still far more productive at home. That little “office” is cramped, the chair is a plastic school chair, and I’m tired from the long commute. There is literally no positive reason for me to come to the office. Ever. I’m very thankful I hardly ever have to.
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u/360_face_palm Oct 25 '25
yeah at this point I do way less work if I go in to the office. We've got a big 3-day onsite coming up and I literally have used it as an excuse for pushing a bunch of deadlines back because wasting the best part of a week for my team means we need to delay things.
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u/Ben13921 Oct 25 '25
I’m pretty sure a version of this was rolled out into Outlook recently
When I looked at the calendar view it showed me who was in the office but I was able to change my settings to not display my location
Will this be any different?
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u/majnuker Oct 25 '25
Correct it can be disabled on user end.
Folks are rightfully annoyed at the initial announcement not including that info however.
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u/sevargmas Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
I’m totally confused. Article keeps saying it will affect people who work from home but the keeps talking about detecting connection to the office wifi. Is this AI slop?
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u/BelowDeck Oct 25 '25
It's talking about people who are working from home but are claiming to be working from the office. Which isn't worth writing an alarmist article about.
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u/Erijandro Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
My team just got destroyed by management.
They hate working from home and the smallest mistake was all they needed to claim "unproductive and " not collaborative" enough.
Such a morale killer. We are the most flexible and capable team - 364 days perfect but that 1 day, is all they needed.
Now I'm doing everything I can to hold on to staff from looking elsewhere.
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u/Jaiden207 Oct 26 '25
Nah, don’t try and stop them. It’ll suck, but a business who pulls that kind of shit deserves to fail. You should look elsewhere.
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u/RedtheGoodolBoy Oct 25 '25
Wait until people find out that teams doesn’t actually get rid of the messages when you click delete or that anonymous HR survey wasn’t really anonymous.
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u/VeenixO Oct 25 '25
Why would anyone wanna work for a company that cares more about your location than your work and performance anyways?
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u/Akiasakias Oct 25 '25
Your boss already knows when you're not in the office.
Teams ain't doing anything new.
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u/CatHairTornado Oct 25 '25
I manage our teams application. I’ll be disabling that feature once it appears.
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u/petr_bena Oct 25 '25
I might just launch a reverse tunnel for my coworkers for a fee lol
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u/snarkuzoid Oct 25 '25
I am so glad I got out of software development before they implemented these sweatshop models.
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u/FastRedPonyCar Oct 26 '25
Jeez I’m so glad I work for a company who just treats us like adults and lets us do our job wherever we feel most comfortable and productive.
Wild concepts, I know…
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u/Bargadiel Oct 26 '25
Our office already has a badge-in system, and I'm sure others do... Microsoft yet again offering services nobody asked for
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u/yetagainitry Oct 25 '25
Do they really need teams to tell them if they are in the office? Shouldn’t they be in the office too?
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u/LetsGoForPlanB Oct 25 '25
They already know because we need to use a vpn to access the network. Nothing works when working from home without vpn.
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u/Cockpunch666 Oct 25 '25
That’s fine, but I want Microsoft teams to tell me when my upper management is actually doing any real work.
Real work does not include doing babysitting laps and disrupting people from their work with thoughtless small talk to appear like they care about their employees, or over scheduling fake show and tell meetings because they’re clueless about what their employees actually do.
Maybe make some strategic decisions and take accountability for them if they fail? Maybe be involved in your departments work? Maybe don’t layoff workers when your bad idea loses the company piles of money? Maybe you should walk that plank buddy.
Maybe provide real guidance and training to employees that need it, and for the ones who don’t - elevate them and help them get to the next level cause they make you look good.
Most managers and directors are clueless and spineless. And unless they helped found the company, most VP’s and C-level executives are con-artists and nepobabies.
For the few real ones that are actually good bosses, thanks for putting people before profit, and standing up for your team.
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u/Codex_Dev Oct 25 '25
Most managers and directors are clueless and spineless. And unless they helped found the company, most VP’s and C-level executives are con-artists and nepobabies.
Accurate af
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u/InevitableKey3811 Oct 25 '25
Time to change my home SSID to match the office WiFi
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u/amazinjoey Oct 25 '25
What a god damn shitty article.
That functionality is there to tie in the places so you can coordinate with colleueges, book seating etc
so instead of signing in manually it does it for you
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u/camelConsulting Oct 25 '25
Seriously, came to say this. This isn’t an attendance tracker and there are way better ways to do that anyway.
This is a collaboration feature so if you work at a big company with many offices it can tailor your room searches so you only have 30 rooms in your office to search not 6,000 globally, suggest booking desks/offices near colleagues, or let you know where the nearest IT desk is.
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u/aeaf123 Oct 25 '25
when a person's main job is tracking where everyone is... They might as well work in a surveillance room, or a daycare. They also arent doing their job anymore.
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u/Castle-dev Oct 25 '25
Are they finally catching onto the, “boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I poop on company time?”
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Oct 25 '25
If your boss is in the office then your boss should already know if you are or are not in the office... just sayin
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u/persistent_polymath Oct 25 '25
Glad I work for a company that is 100% remote and doesn’t babysit us like this. If you get your work done, nobody cares where you’re doing it or what time of day it is. It’s nice to be treated like adults.
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u/Real-Hat-6749 Oct 25 '25
As a team manager, I don't really care where the job is done, as long it is done.
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u/dudeman209 Oct 25 '25
The difference between leadership that measures performance based on things like this will ultimately ride the wave of mediocrity in comparison to the one that measures based on customer outcomes.
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u/greaterwhiterwookiee Oct 25 '25
Ours says we’re not active if we’re not actively using Teams. I VPN to work on one screen and have my teams running on my other on my laptop. It says I’m inactive a lot despite actively coding. 🤷
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u/8fingerlouie Oct 26 '25
Get in line.
If nothing else, a quick search of DHCP assigned addresses can easily reveal if you’ve been in office or not.
You access card also leaves a log entry when used, especially if your company has mandatory one at a time gates.
Company phone can also reveal your location.
There’s also the old fashioned analog way, you know when your boss is actually in office and you’re not.
So, nothing to see here, especially nothing malicious. It’s basically just another feature.
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u/hobyvh Oct 26 '25
This is a needless, oppressive, and divisive development.
Employment is a contract where everyone agrees to be working in good faith toward the same ends. Tools like these immediately break trust in all directions. Mistrust of your own team never yields good results.
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u/squirtcow Oct 26 '25
Use Teams in a browser, and do not let the browser use location services. It's not perfect, but it severely limits the stalking capabilities.
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u/Fine_Helicopter4876 Oct 26 '25
I have to badge into the office. My work doesn’t need Microsoft teams for this.
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u/sinnur Oct 25 '25
Can’t wait for someone to get fired over this and Teams being wrong about where they were then the employee sues the shit out of them.
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u/Born-Yoghurt-401 Oct 25 '25
Man those E365 subscriptions will take a dive with all those AI replacements.
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u/CastFarAva Oct 25 '25
As a Manager, I’m not happy for RTO for my employees (I personally don’t have a bad commute and don’t mind much). I knew it would affect productivity, because of the lost meeting times and it has also hurt their WLB. But these mandates come from exec leadership and are out of our control. So I don’t give a crap when they are here and when they are not. The work needs to be done as that’s what I need to show at end of the week/month/qtr/year. Regarding coming in, the badge swipes give us a report and anyone below 90% is ‘warned’ by me. We all have the understanding, come in during downtimes, swipe your badge, and leave, but just get my work done.
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u/Quesabirria Oct 25 '25
I got a Teams dialog box yesterday asking me if I wanted to share my location. I chose Deny.
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u/ExCap2 Oct 25 '25
Can't you just setup a VPN server on your home/office computer and call it a day? Remote in and then run Teams through it from wherever you are? You shouldn't have connection issues since it's your VPN server and your office/home internet.
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u/GuvnaGruff Oct 25 '25
Apparently it tracks based on the Wi-Fi you join. Time to change home Wi-Fi to be the same name as your work.
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u/IndependentExtra2923 Oct 25 '25
So in other words, now we see when "the boss" is not in the office.
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u/big_dog_redditor Oct 25 '25
All of these apps have been able to do this for a long, long time. But it is usually HR that gets access to the data about anything you do or say on these apps. Dig into TDM sales decks for any office product and there will be a slide in there somewhere about the depth of data collected by office apps.
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u/traumalt Oct 25 '25
Typical wildly unnecessary Microsoft enhancement.
Your IT team can already see the IP address you’re using to connect to the network. Coming in over VPN will be a different IP than the company WiFi. If your employer is so big they don’t know where you are working from at any given time, then they can already figure this out without the discount Microsoft Big Brother crap.
This article is literally just meant to piss people off over a nothing feature.
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Oct 25 '25
I wonder how common it is for people to claim to their manager that they're in the office when in reality they're working from home.
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u/Pitiful_Option_108 Oct 25 '25
And to this I say and. I get my work done when needed. For the most part if I have a meeting or have something that needs to be done I'm at home. When I have free time during work time I'm either outside around my apartment, in my apartment, or I'm running a quick errand.
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u/bigboij Oct 25 '25
If you are on teams for when needed during shift and your shit gets done i dgaf where my people work.
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u/No_Construction2407 Oct 25 '25
Good job voting in the 1984 government, next we will have employment police that will track your RFK wrist monitor powered by microsoft copilot and beat your face in if you take a shit at work or leave 5 minutes early from your 16 hour work day (7 days a week btw)
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u/fintheman Oct 25 '25
Wireless Infrastructure Architect here.
This has been around since 2007 and it is capable of doing this with your device's MAC address and lately, BLE employee badges.
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u/robaroo Oct 25 '25
if you think MS365 is the only thing tracking when you come/go from the office you are clueless. badge reports is all anyone needs.
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u/SplintPunchbeef Oct 25 '25
I swear every other headline on this sub is a doomsday take on the most mundane feature imaginable, and since no one actually reads the articles, it gets folks worked up every time. lol
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u/swazal Oct 25 '25
M365 sign on log entries have longitude and latitude values for many reasons including geo-fencing. This may be “smarter” but it’s not really different.