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Wow we are all slaves. :( I type this between my Teams meetings.
I’m going to give you a mega useful tip.
You need to create a group. You can kick the user later and say it was an accident. Then you start a meet inside of that group. You can be the only one in the call. Change your status from Busy to available again on top. Just leave yourself muted inside of that Teams call. Your Teams will never go inactive and neither will your laptop.
This is a good tip. I haven’t used it in a while but you can also log into it from web interfaces so i think it was possible to shutdown the desktop app and log into it from other places where it didn’t have the same kind of access.
Hmm, I just open notepad and use a stack of coins or something similar to hold down a key to stay active if I need to.
It’s stupid we even have to care about our status on teams. Why should anyone give a fuck about your teams status as long as you’re getting to your work done properly and on time?
Although to be fair right now I’m using a client laptop so my employer basically sees me as offline all the time but I’m reachable by teams or email on my phone.
Anyways it’s just dumb. Fun trick though, I didn’t know you could do that.
There’s a tool for Windows called Caffeine that simulates pressing the F15 key, which is almost never used by any software being that most keyboards don’t have function keys that go that high.
From the webpage:
If you have problems with your PC locking or going to sleep, caffeine will keep it awake. It works by simulating a keypress once every 59 seconds, so your machine thinks you’re still working at the keyboard, so won’t lock the screen or activate the screensaver.
I can’t install unapproved software on my work laptop, probably like most others hence I ain’t messing with that.
The best is to get a physical mouse jiggler
- physical mouse “jiggler” (mine is a turntable) that isn’t connected to the work device
- physical key presser on a switch to press ESC every few seconds for when I’m pooping (this way the software shows both m n k activity)
I’ve even so far as to write a bash script that monitors the userdata folder that stores the JSON to activity and overwrite it with plausible but fake random activity data and screenshots, then name the process the same as the software so it’s virtually undetectable- logs will show “Productivity Software Name” writing to its userdata directory at the same time the actual software is writing to it.
My boss loves sending me messages saying “Are you working today?” within 3 minutes of being idle on teams at any point in the day.
Other times if i’m idle he’ll call me just to give me some busy work or try and “catch me” not paying attention or something.
In the office I can be idle on teams for hours at a time and there’s never, ever random spot checks for productivity… and we have no objectives, goals or project management (because he doesn’t think any PM principles are effective.)
A bad boss can really make a job suck. If it was me I’d get a mouse wiggler, apparently there’s a surprisingly many physical ‘mouse movers’ out there nowadays.
The saying is true for 95% of jobs. People don’t quit bad jobs, they quit bad bosses.
People don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.
Back when my company was using teams I had a script that would press a button that’s not actually on my keyboard (something like F25) every minute, so my teams was always green and it was not noticeable from my point of view
My boss bills customers for his on-site visits (technical) wherein he goes on site, plugs in his laptop, and makes me remotely do all his work remotely. I can’t wait to burn this bridge when the time is right.
There’s a natural divot on my desk that does it for me.
But I also have my outlook calendar filled with my scheduled hours so my status shows I am always busy (working my schedules hours).
So hasn’t been a problem and it’s been years.
Mine tells me to take all appointments and do all errands i’d need to take off on my wfh days.
If i’m idle during those I still get the nasty grams, and 50/50 on any of them he asks if I took the day off because he doesn’t see it in the team calendar or HR’s PTO official system, even though there’s zero expectation for us to take PTO for a doctor’s appointment or other errand that takes a couple of hours at any point.
Guy has taken a day and a half this week to work on his own personal stuff without requesting PTO. I took 1.5 hours on one day and got nastygrams (the “I don’t see your pto in the pto calendar” (again, tells me in person not to put it in… but every time i’m remote and idle for an appointment there’s now a record in writing asking me where I am and why I didn’t take pto.)
Later, when I see the guy in person he totally understands and it’s not a problem… so what the fuck are you messaging me for like this asshole? Why? The fuck is your problem? It’s in my fucking calendar, and i’m not taking actual time off or a half day or something - so why would I put in the team wide calendar that i’m going to a doctor? They don’t need to know!
Sounds like your boss has a boss and those checkin/nasty grams are how they measure their tasks.
That implies he is also sitting around watching Teams instead…being productive.
And at the end of the day, unless you’re working at a start-up, your business won’t fail because someone wasn’t nickle-and-dime-ing individual workers on their productivity time.
I love how inaccurate that status is. No one can depend on it.
I was getting marked as “away” in Microsoft Teams every day, even though I was working. I just wasn’t using Microsoft Teams, so it marked me as idle.
I wrote this Autohotkey script after my boss started complaining. It clicks on Teams every 2 minutes:
global running := 0 ^+1:: { global running := 1 while running == 1 { CoordMode("Mouse", "Screen") oldx := 0 oldy := 0 MouseGetPos(&oldx, &oldy) prev_active := WinActive("A") Try { WinActivate("ahk_class TeamsWebView") } Catch TargetError as e { } CoordMode("Mouse", "Window") Send("{Click 80 40 Left}") Try { WinActivate("ahk_id " prev_active) } Catch TargetError as e { } CoordMode("Mouse", "Screen") MouseMove(oldx, oldy, 0) sleep(115000) } } ^+2:: { global running := 0 }It has the side effect of preventing my computer from entering screensaver/lock screen when I really am away.
FTTYI opened my email and it fucking defaulted to Copilot. Like, bitch I clicked my email. Not your half baked AI bullshit.
perfection
If you leave the teams app open on an ios device, it will remain green no matter what you do. When I’m wfh, I just leave teams open in my iPad. I’m green all day long and it still adjusts the color to red for meetings. The main thing here is to remember to turn it off after hours. If you are still green at 10pm every day, it might look suspicious.
I learned from my wife that you can start a meeting by yourself using the Meet Now button on the Teams calendar, and that will keep you flagged as Busy.
Get a USB mouse jiggler. There are hundreds of them.
https://www.amazon.com/meatanty-Jiggler-Undetectable-Separate-Computer/dp/B09NVH8HVN
They are undetectable because they are just another USB Mouse.
These other solutions are so annoying. Yes let me spend the mental energy to wedge keys downs or setup fake meetings every single time I have to take a shit.
It’s important not to plug in a USB device like that into your work PC. IT can likely see what devices are used on any system.
Instead use a physical mouse mover device that only requires power, like a USB cord plugged into a wall charger instead of the PC.
I just put a weight on the ctrl key when I’m away or fucking around on my phone.
It’s always interesting hearing from people that this works, because I could be working solid for 2 hours straight but not actually put my cursor in the Teams application and so it thinks I’m away
I have had that happen in the past but not recently. I would think having teams be the active window while holding the key down would have the same effect though.
??
Stack of coins on the arrow key, works wonders.
- Open notepad
- Place calculator on spacebar all it’s activated
- …?
- Profit
One of the beautiful things about being able to run Linux at work and use Teams in a browser is that my status is decoupled from what I’m doing on my machine. Obviously if I’m in a meeting or chatting with somebody through Teams my status will reflect that.
I bet my most productive days have me away/idle for hours on end, lol.
Yes. I wrote a script to make me green even though my employer doesn’t give a shit because I want the peace of mind even though I’m in your situation.
This micromanagement via surveillance is counterproductive any way you slice it. The peace of mind script makes me more valuable to my employer even though it might be inconsequential.
Bentham’s panopticon.
Every single production monitoring software I’ve seen on any machine I’ve ever run had some way to make it look like 100% uptime to whoever looks, and that hack was found within a single shift.
Turns out the most effective system for monitoring production is to actually see if someone is producing what they’re supposed to in a reasonable amount of time
Well the consultant I’m paying half a million dollars says otherwise.
As someone working for a consulting firm … Yeah … Checks out.
I mean I’m not seeing that money but also it’s wild to me what companies are willing to spend money on that’s basically toss it into a fire.
Really goes to show how this shit is all made up.
Ok, but management is lazy, incompetent and/or suffering from imposter syndrome (rightful for some). So they don’t know what reasonable is, or what they need to produce, only need to make a number match a projection.
Set up a solo meeting with yourself. During meeting it doesn’t change the status at all, so after you join that solo meeting in the morning set yourself to available and you will be available whole day.
That is a very Microsoft kind of behavior
This is also the way to put a real meeting your in on hold.
It makes it look like you got interrupted and had to step away.
why? I’d rather everyone knows it’s bullshit than they think it’s accurate
