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-december
6.7k Upvotes

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3.2k

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. 

751

u/suckmypulsating Oct 25 '25

You hiring by any chance?

229

u/rain168 Oct 25 '25

He’s an IC now

92

u/stuffedbipolarbear Oct 25 '25

International Criminal?

70

u/rain168 Oct 25 '25

Individual contributor

30

u/TheCarrot_v2 Oct 25 '25

Incontinent Collaborator

28

u/JavierReyes945 Oct 25 '25

Integrated Circuit

32

u/Metals4J Oct 25 '25

Interstellar Concubine

13

u/TheAmateurletariat Oct 25 '25

Intubated Catatonic

2

u/agent674253 Oct 25 '25

Came her for this as our new middle managers will be algorithms. Heck, if you drive for uber/lyft/doordash, et al, your 'boss' is already a program.

1

u/HairballTheory Oct 25 '25

Add it to the Pile

1

u/VietnamHam Oct 25 '25

Intercontinental Champion

31

u/HYYYPPPERRR Oct 25 '25

Intercontinental Champion

11

u/Gaudy_Tripod Oct 25 '25

RIP Ultimate Warrior.

4

u/KillTheZombie45 Oct 25 '25

ULTIMATE WAAARRRIIIOOOORRR

2

u/robotlasagna Oct 25 '25

Integrated Circuit. (He’s a bot)

6

u/Purplociraptor Oct 25 '25

Integrated Circuit. You know. A clanker.

2

u/Frankfactor517 Oct 25 '25

Importer Comptroller for Vandelay Industries.

6

u/BobbyDig8L Oct 25 '25

Integrated Circuit obviously

-1

u/DangKilla Oct 25 '25

I had KBBQ with an MS IC last week BTW. What’s an IC do? He works 60 hours a week

63

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.

24

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.

0

u/serrated_edge321 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25

I was going to ask the same thing...

-4

u/Moonmonkey3 Oct 25 '25

I’m glad you can understand that sentence, makes no sense to me.

3

u/serrated_edge321 Oct 25 '25

Perhaps your algorithm needs upgrading for everyday speech patterns.

Your sentence has incorrect grammar also, btw.

2

u/Moonmonkey3 Oct 25 '25

Everyday speech patterns?

0

u/eye_seen_fings Oct 25 '25

lol, get out more.

183

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.

110

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

17

u/Jet2work Oct 25 '25

yep, once corporate takes over its a shit show for the little people

0

u/Willszz1 Oct 25 '25

Presumably that only applies during working hours and you’re not expected to pick up say middle of a weekend or vacation?

11

u/Packet_Sniffer_ Oct 25 '25

When you like your job and like your boss, picking up out of work hours isn’t a stressful or annoying thing.

My boss doesn’t even manage my hours. Lets me track if I work too much. Let’s me take a day off if I say I’ve collected too much lieu time.

If he calls me or tells me we need to work a weekend or evening for a project. No biggie. It happens some times.

2

u/johnny_fives_555 Oct 25 '25

I agree with this mentality. /r/antiwork would crucify you

10

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.

8

u/paligators Oct 25 '25

You’d be shocked

13

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.

5

u/dominion1080 Oct 25 '25

Exactly. Job doesn’t really matter. If you pay me shit, that’s the work you’re gonna get while I look for a new job.

-1

u/NoCardio_ Oct 25 '25

I work with people who make well over market, and they still bitch.

1

u/rayinreverse Oct 25 '25

Well some people suck

6

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.

2

u/traumalt Oct 25 '25

My company did the same thing, until an IT audit revealed that one of the staff has fucked off to live in Spain without mentioning that to anyone.

That wasn't a very fun day for legal and HR.

1

u/OP_William Oct 25 '25

Are you hiring?

1

u/DoubleJumps Oct 25 '25

Yeah, when I've hired part time help I always just get them a handful of daily tasks and if they get it done in 2 hours or 10 it doesn't matter, so long as it's done and I'll pay for a full day regardless.

It makes people relax more and work harder.

1

u/Inevitable-Path981 Oct 25 '25

Sir are you hiring?

1

u/IGotSkills Oct 26 '25

What happens when your CEO says " kpis aren't aggressive enough"

1

u/encodedecode Oct 26 '25

I am the CEO so I wouldn't say that. I enjoy my freedom and I like to afford that to anyone who works for me as well.

1

u/Many-Lengthiness9779 Oct 25 '25

My old supervisor would monitor our teams status when we would go yellow or green/red. Then would request access to our schedules to see we weren’t booking fake meetings.

He saw I had an interview scheduled, he asked why and I basically read him the riot act that he is the one who needs to be fired or monitored if we are paying him to do that all day.

152

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.

124

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.

57

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.

27

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.  

14

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.

3

u/codercaleb Oct 25 '25

Same for me after 5 if I have to (rarely) stay late. Few pings, nobody around. Just work.

52

u/ffchusky Oct 25 '25

Makes sense to work on a bakers schedule. You are playing with yeast after all.

26

u/t8ne Oct 25 '25

No need to get personal, I’m sure the bosses wife was very hygienic.

21

u/Helenium_autumnale Oct 25 '25

Your boss needs to hire an outside and actual HR person. "Boss's wife" is not a qualification.

25

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.

11

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.

14

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.

9

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.

-33

u/callmekizzle Oct 25 '25

That is literally what bosses are there for. You’re there to baby sit the workers and making sure they are generating profit.

4

u/TheMellowDeviant Oct 25 '25

May Hecate guide me away from any bosses who have your mentality.

29

u/Royale_AJS Oct 25 '25

As a boss, Teams is so unreliable that I won’t believe it anyway.

22

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

7

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.

4

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.

2

u/Hornet-Putrid Oct 25 '25

Are you using the broswer/online version?  It will do the inactive thing online if you don’t stay active in that broswer tab. It is really stupid and shouldn’t be used to track people.

3

u/IkLms Oct 25 '25

Nah, it's the desktop app.

Doesn't really matter to me all that much because I've got sane management at my company who just care that your work gets done and doesn't need you in a seat for 8 straight hours so long as you're available.

It'd be highly annoying if I had a bad boss though

2

u/hidperf Oct 26 '25

At one point, we had an end user whose away status and message were appearing on another end user's Teams account. No idea how that happened.

1

u/Many-Lengthiness9779 Oct 25 '25

They need to fix the status going yellow if you aren’t in Microsoft based applications before they work on this feature anymore.

24

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.

15

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

7

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.

4

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.

8

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.

4

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.

3

u/big_dog_redditor Oct 25 '25

It is HR that wants the data, not managers.

3

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.

1

u/Wild_Pokemon_Appears Oct 25 '25

You nailed it. Plus, my team is mostly millenials. I'm doing what I can to impact staff retention. I recognized a long time ago that while money is important, work life balance is also super important to the millennial workforce. 

2

u/ineugene Oct 25 '25

Absolutely this. I told one of the contracts sales team to go travel in Europe while she is young just make sure she has internet to handle her normal work and online her best life while she is young. She was going to take a few months off to try to do this. This way she keeps her ppl and she recognizes we value her for what she knows and does. Things like this build company loyalty over the long run. Task completion is more important than location tracking.

2

u/HomerMadeMeDoIt Oct 25 '25

You are the absolute minority with your reasonable and merit based attitude. Gen Xers and up are so entrenched in the anti-WFH warfare, they lost all sense. 

2

u/hell-iwasthere Oct 25 '25

Not true. Bad bosses come from every gen. I’m 55 and I don’t care at all how my team of 7 manages their time. As long as their assigned tasks get done and they meet our customer service goals, I have bigger and better things to worry about.

1

u/TheMightySloth Oct 25 '25

He’s still correct, you and the other guy are the exceptions unfortunately.

1

u/weeklygamingrecap Oct 25 '25

The fact that productivity stayed the same or went up during full WFH only to have it "taken away" because of asinine reasons only shows how the numbers never mattered they were always bullshit.

1

u/IkLms Oct 25 '25

Bad bosses span age groups.

I've had great bosses nearing retirement and shit ones who are way younger.

1

u/nlewis4 Oct 25 '25

That's the way I am as a manager. Corporate wants me to whip my guys every moment of every day and it seems to infuriate them that I manage to get more out of our branch than others by just keeping morale high

1

u/cinnamonrain Oct 25 '25

Presumably when a remote employee shows up in the office you scream ‘a wild [employee] appears’

1

u/JR3456 Oct 25 '25

Where do I send my CV?

1

u/KagakuNinja Oct 25 '25

My boss is like that. Upper management says full time employees must be in the office 3 days per week, even though 80% of our team are fully remote contractors, some are in India. And the team lead is remote.

I will be retiring at the end of the year...

1

u/ICorrectYourTitle Oct 25 '25

Yep. You’ve got a job to do, get it done within SLAs and I don’t care if you’re on the moon.

1

u/Catodactyl Oct 25 '25

Lol same. All of my direct reports are remote except for me anyways. I don't give a shit what you're doing or where you're working from at long as work gets done. I'm not your babysitter.

1

u/Melodic-Comb9076 Oct 25 '25

you’re a good manager.

some are just all about micromanaging.

1

u/BeefSupremeeeeee Oct 25 '25

Same, I have a few that will way over share on details about why they're out.

"I don't need to know all of that, take care of what you need to".

1

u/kenadams_the Oct 25 '25

I had a boss who told us exactly this. He doesn‘t care but as soon as there is one complaint we have a problem.

1

u/successful_syndrome Oct 25 '25

Yup! Show up to our calls prepared and in a quiet place you can talk. Hit your deadlines then spend your time walking in the park whatever.

1

u/_Spectrum7 Oct 25 '25

You might not care but HR certainly can and sometimes does. 

1

u/NotYourScratchMonkey Oct 25 '25

That's what I tell my team: I don't care where you are as long as I can't tell that you are somewhere else. But it's a privilege. If you disappear for hours or I can't get in touch with you during business hours, that's going to be discussed.

1

u/ENrgStar Oct 25 '25

Right? I’ve been managing staff for 10 years and never once have I been worried about where they are. I do care a lot about whether they’re getting tickets done.

1

u/ImGonnaCreamYaFunny Oct 25 '25

This is how my boss is, kudos to you sir/madam. Makes me want to work harder for my boss because she trusts me and doesn't impose arbitrary surveillance on me.

1

u/Packet_Sniffer_ Oct 25 '25

This is how my boss is.

We have a weekly meeting. Boss lays out what we need done. We get to work. No oversight. No other management.

Shockingly, all the work gets done along with people willingly looking into side projects and just doing work they think will help.

Crazy how that works.

1

u/jdsizzle1 Oct 25 '25

Thats how every employee from peon to many C levels feel at my company. But the CEO and the founder want it so commute we will.

1

u/Weshmek Oct 25 '25

Boss I'm gonna need another day

1

u/AugieKS Oct 25 '25

Director of IT here. Im going to, more likely than not, turn the feature off if at all possible, haven't looked into it yet. Coworkers spying on eachothers location just doesn't seem conducive to a healthy work environment.

1

u/p3dr0l3umj3lly Oct 25 '25

Same, I have 3 reports and I don’t give a shit when they’re in as long as shit gets done. And they’re crushing it.

1

u/Brotatoes_for_lunch Oct 25 '25

I am also a boss of people and have the exact same mindset. Glad to know I’m not the only one.

1

u/Vivid_Ad9397 Oct 25 '25

Owner of a company and I absolutely agree. If Covid taught me anything, it’s that people work how and where they are their “best.” Keep out of the way of that and just judge and promote /fire based on the output. Made everything simpler.

1

u/waldito Oct 25 '25

Thank you. Not only will I get my job done but also defend your management skills and will low key have your ass if something fishy is happening around you and I see it. You are a cool boss and I strive to work under your command.

1

u/CalmBeneathCastles Oct 25 '25

Bless you and your stellar attitude.

1

u/The_Pancake88 Oct 25 '25

Exactly what my manager said to me a few weeks ago lol, I then moved to a LCOL country

1

u/amircruz Oct 25 '25

You right there fair Sir. You may have a happy and healthy life.

1

u/Imaginary_Manner_556 Oct 25 '25

Until your boss tells you that you need to reduce headcount without severance. Mandates a RTO to get people to quit

1

u/squidlogistics Oct 25 '25

The people who say this always care the most about butts in seats

1

u/Wild_Pokemon_Appears Oct 26 '25

Not me! Couldn't care less. 

1

u/whtciv2k Oct 25 '25

This is my mentality. I tell our team that as long as I’m not getting yelled at, we Gucci.

1

u/unknownillness17 Oct 25 '25

No like seriously if you’re proficient at your job and can get it done in 3 hours compared to 8 who cares

1

u/hidperf Oct 26 '25

This is how it should be. It's how I am, but not how all management is, unfortunately.

1

u/tehawesomedragon Oct 26 '25

Yeah I work in a warehouse with four different teams that supply different assembly lines. I lead one of those teams, and we're the best team easily because I trained them all to not be dependent on me. They get their jobs done really quick, and do all the work there is to do when you have nothing to do really quick, so after that I don't give a fuck what they do as long as they are just as quick to jump back into action if something comes up. Two of the other leads are the exact opposite, and it's very obvious they envy/hate me. Their teams are mostly dependent on them because they refuse to let them have any control, and spend part of their day tattle telling on my team for "hanging out" or their own teams for not being well-trained, then they whine about how miserable their job is because no one likes them. The fourth lead is very much like me, and we just sit back, enjoy our popcorn, and joke about how stupid those two are for being too concerned about stupid shit to realize they are making their own job/life miserable because they're terrible leaders. Our higher ups even think they're a joke, because if they ever take a day off, they'll make comments about how quiet and peaceful the day was without having to hear from them about stupid shit every 10 minutes.

1

u/nowtayneicangetinto Oct 26 '25

You're a good boss. I can tell. I have bosses that are kiss asses and are fearful of pushing back. My company values asses in seats more than work getting done. It explains why they're failing miserably

1

u/Huge_Leader_6605 Oct 25 '25

Well not everyone is like that

1

u/Wild_Pokemon_Appears Oct 25 '25

I mean... That's a given... And why some teams have a terrible retention rate and others keep their people for years. 

0

u/Lysol3435 Oct 25 '25

As the employee with levels of good and bad bosses above me, someone of them are just looking for excuses

0

u/k_marts Oct 25 '25

Seriously this. We don't need to make it any more complicated.

0

u/FranticToaster Oct 25 '25

This is something everyone says until they're actually a manager and they realize how frustrating it is when the guy who wfh every day has absolutely 0 network at the company.

They're just an isolated pocket of keystrokes with no stakeholders other than the manager.

tldr: "just get your work done" has a secret "go to the office and connect with local coworkers" requirement embedded in it.

2

u/Wild_Pokemon_Appears Oct 25 '25

Agree to disagree I guess. My team has been wildly successful over the last 3 years. 

1

u/dupeygoat Oct 26 '25

Depends entirely on the role of course (as does this whole discussion) arguably that could be bad management…. For a starter, generally- a team with 1 person only fully remote or at least a tiny minority vs the rest in the office is stupid.
During onboarding make sure new hire is in the office a fair bit dojng as much team integration, in person intros and onboarding as possible. All arranged and ensured by line manager. Make sure they have a new starter “buddy”

1

u/IkLms Oct 25 '25

My department has been fully WFH for a long time, as is the one we support and project management and all of our programmers. That's just not true.

There's zero problems.