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A December update to Microsoft Teams that will be disabled by default will reportedly track user location and report it if the feature is enabled. This will allow bosses to tell if an employee is in the office or working from home and set their status accordingly. It will also be able to tell if the user is not at their normal home logon location and provide evidence to employers showing the user's location. Workers who have been taking mini holidays while claiming to be working from home may be affected by this new feature.
The idea of the new feature is to eliminate confusion for bosses about where a worker is within the building and to see if they are working remotely.
But those who work from home argue it is an invasion of privacy.
"Micro management at peak? All online work doesn't need you to be in the office, we can do it from home," one X user said.
"Why is this needed?" another added.
Almost half of Gen Z workers surveyed (44 per cent) revealed last year that they took a secret trip, with most giving their workplace the impression they were working normal hours and using a virtual background in meetings to trick their employer.
Ella Maree, 26, started hush-tripping after Covid when her corporate workplace adopted a 3:2 work week, which meant she could work from home on Mondays and Fridays.
"Since travel options were limited, hush trips became my go-to choice," she said.
"I flew out Thursday evening and worked by the hotel pool, restaurant and room on Friday. I maintained the same level of productivity as if I were physically in the office or working from home, so really, a win-win situation.
"Most of my office work from home Friday, so really, I'm just making the most of our remote work flexibility."
Ms Maree insisted her boss "wouldn't mind" given workplaces are mostly connected online and that she was always getting her work done.
How many Soylentils still have the ability to WFH, either full-time or part-time? I thought one of the attractions of WFH is the ability to work when the hours suit you and not the standard 9-5 (for non-Usians). Would you consider working from a different location a breach of your contract?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Monday October 27, @12:15PM (3 children)
Wouldn't care where the employee is located as long as the work is getting completed.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 27, @02:54PM (1 child)
I think it also depends on which states the company/employee has a physical presence [taxfoundation.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Monday October 27, @04:49PM
There can be issues related to things like licensing for things like medical training or mental health practices, but I think in those cases, it's more where the patient is rather than the professional.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 27, @06:49PM
Unfortunately, by definition most managers are mediocre, and about as many are bad as are good. And if a good manager reports to a bad manager, the good manager can only do so much to run interference to protect their own team from the bad manager. Indeed, the Peter Principle means that once you get into the VPs and above especially in larger org structures, the odds that somebody is in over their head and thus a poor manager in any given management chain approaches 100%.
And to make matters worse, a bad boss is usually extremely distrustful of everybody below them, because they know they're incompetent and thus any subordinate who appears to be too competent looks like a threat to be destroyed. One of the other impacts of that distrust is that the bad boss won't trust their subordinate managers' assessment of their own reports, and instead will want to substitute in "objective" metrics over the evaluation of skilled people. This becomes especially true once you get into levels of management that have subordinates whose job the boss does not know how to do, e.g. someone who was a fantastic head of marketing for a division gets promoted to run that division and all of a sudden has to manage the finance, tech, sales, operations, etc for that division. And while the new division head doesn't understand how any of those things work, they know that at least some of the people that do understand how those things work also wanted that same promotion and might stab them in the back.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday October 27, @01:10PM (4 children)
I have not been in a company office or visited a customer site since fall of 2019.
My job used to be 70+% travel, visiting customer offices. If I'm honest, I miss it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 27, @02:27PM
> How many Soylentils still have the ability to WFH, either full-time or part-time?
I've always worked from home (very small family company that I inherited), starting in the late 1970s. Yes, I set my own hours--but the reality is that I'm working, or on-call, most of the time. Luckily, I like running my tiny company and I like my customers, so things like checking email at all hours isn't usually a burden.
As noted by parent, I do a lot less customer site visits than before covid, but there are some. Meeting face-to-face is still the best way to maintain customer/client relationships and retain their business (or get new business).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday October 27, @03:01PM (1 child)
I'm slacking and zooming since Apr 2020. Occaaasionally may be going to the office for HW repair/upgrade/replacement, say twice every 3 years
Not missing the office even a bit, the guys there are too young and healthy for me.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Monday October 27, @08:53PM
I've been working remotely since about the same time. I got sent home early when COVID hit since I'm asthmatic. I hated the office. It was full of distractions. It was too hot, too cold. too noisy, too stuffy, too bright, the floor shook, the ceiling was falling in, the fire alarms kept going off and people kept talking rubbish.
Mrs Turgid was hit hard by COVID and had to give up work. Some of her colleagues lots family members to it. We needed a lifestyle change and that's what we did. We have less money but a far better quality of life, better public services, and fresh air.
I've also had to be brave looking for new jobs which has sometimes been very stressful (the Angry Boss episode, turning around other failing projects) but also very rewarding and sometimes lucrative. I've been leading cross-site, international teams, writing C (getting away from Java and C++) and doing start-up work. Being based in an office would be counter-productive.
There is one thing missing, though, and that's some kinds of team work. Having said that, no one wants to work in that way anymore. Companies are either too small or too crazy to want to do it properly, so who cares? The AI bandwagon is making it worse.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Monday October 27, @04:50PM
I have not worked in-office since 2005. Subsequent to an acquisition we were moved out of our beautiful little office into a shitty space then a year later they told us we had to work from home. That worked well for most of us as coders but I never forgave them. I take liberties that violate work-at-home policies and justify it to myself by getting the work done. My house, my rules. I've taken plenty of trips where I worked maybe 50% of the workday and booked the rest as PTO.
I like to think the company got what it deserved while still getting what it paid for.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Monday October 27, @01:54PM
While not as reviled as M$ SharePoint, the reputation of M$ Teams is that it is not among their best products. And that's setting a low bar.
Thus, any self-respecting article about remote work which even hints at M$ Teams needs to mention at least the following options:
Those are not only standards based and cross-platform, unlike M$ Teams, they also perform more reliably. In the above, there is a range of options from self-hosting to renting service from a provider.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 27, @03:33PM
Most of the office is now 50 percent work from home, except those who prefer the office and a minority who can't due to the type of work or have issues.
This won't affect me, at least not at first. Right now the VPN stores my IP so work already knows where I am. It is the extra layer of data being available that makes it different. Work will now be able to see my geo location, not jut an IP address. They could do this now, but this makes it available across the board and easily accessible.
The next step is to report on keystrokes, activity, slack times, action counts, menu hits, files opened and saved. It is all there in Windows 11 waiting to be collected. No doubt this will be next and will be used against WFH staff.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 27, @03:34PM (2 children)
Laundry, finishing off leftovers, tiny bits of tidying. Laundry, mostly.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 27, @06:55PM (1 child)
Or: Start a dinner with a short prep step and then "let simmer for 2 hours" or "let the dough rise" kind of steps.
Or: Take delivery of something bigger than a standard "drop package on the porch" sort.
Or: Supervise work being done on your house by contractors.
Or: Be at home while the kids are there in case of emergency. Or in the case of very young kids, alternating stuff like breastfeeding with work.
Or: If you have live-in aging relatives, be available to do CPR or 911 if needed.
Or at the very least: There's 1-3 more hours in my day not spent sitting in rush hour traffic.
And of course the bigger deal is that if you're working from home, you don't necessarily have to live in an expensive location to work somewhere in an expensive location. As in, somebody with decently good Internet in rural West Virginia could work for a firm in New York City that pays a lot better than what they can find in rural West Virginia. Or somebody with a good job in New York City might move out to rural West Virginia for whatever personal reason they like.
The freedoms are significant and important.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 27, @09:59PM
> .. somebody with a good job in New York City might move out to rural West Virginia for whatever personal reason they like.
If they have kids in grade school, they may not be very impressed by the West Virginia schools. Or the southern Virginia schools either. An engineering test lab I know was located there by the state to bring some jobs to a depressed area. The lab sucks--they can't keep a stable staff--only one of the engineering positions has been filled by the same person for more than a year or two.