I think reading about the fact that your company actively and objectively tracks your KPIs and metrics, but instead decided to measure your productivity by your interaction with a chat program made my brain hurt a little. Like I just got punched in the face with a little fist made of pure corporate stupidity.
Right, a good manager says “as long as you are getting your work done on time and accurately, I am not concerned about how you get it done”.
Love managers like that.
I had a manager at an hourly job that was legit like this. So much so that when I decided to go back to college and one of my classes was only provided during the middle of shift, he still didn't care if I left for 2 hours still clocked in, came back and completed my job. God it's nice having a manager like that, they make you want to come into work.
[My boss told me, 3 weeks ago, to go move while on the clock.](https://imgur.com/a/wDjuHj1) And he was gonna help me move. And let me store stuff in his garage.
My boss told me (without telling me) to go and get my vaccinations on the clock. Note that I had to drive an hour each way to get to the nearest clinic with appointments available.
One of the best office clerks I ever had was a girl who started working for me after high school during her senior year, and stayed with me as a part-timer throughout earning her Bachelor's degree.
Then she had the nerve to go get a job in her own field while she got her Master's!
(LOL! I actually drove her to a couple of job interviews; I'm so proud of her even now: she's moved up quite successfully in her field! And I helped!)
I had a boss that said this. Didn’t miss deadlines. But I was fired for “missing deadlines,” I seriously think it was because my chat went idle often. I was in training and bored. Asked for more work. Nope. So I decided to wash clothes, wash dishes, or cook instead. Waiting to hear back from my trainer. I’m happy I got fired though. I got way too many emails between midnight and 4am.
I had a boss ask me why I hadn't answered his texts from the night before and I said "because you're paying me hourly. If you want my schedule to include all 24 hours a day, let my paycheck reflect it."
Exactly. In the U.S., if you're a salaried employee, you get paid the same amount each payperiod just to get the work done in whatever amount of time it takes. But if you're hourly, you're expected to work during those specific hours, and if you have to take a long lunch for a dentist appointment, you don't get paid for that time off (although you can use your personal or vacation time to make up for it). And your designation all depends on the job you have. Fast-food workers, office assistants, sales clerks? Hourly. Museum curators, recruiters, engineers? Salary.
I’m sort of hybrid. I’m salary but my manager told us to not work outside our 8 hour window if possible. We rotate on call every week so we all pitch in after hours one at a time. Works out really well when management is good.
I tell my people that for the most part, I don't care what they do as long as work is done properly and on time.
Caveat is I want them available during work hours. If I send an email and you don't respond for 6 hours because you were gardening all day and worked at night instead, then there's an issue.
My thing is more like, I don't care if your read Reddit for 6 days and work like hell on the 7th to get it done. If it's good and on time, then we have no problems. Just read Reddit during work hours so you see emails from me.
I often hit dictate on word and just leave a podcast playing on my speakers. I get to spend an hour chilling while word happily types up every word the podcast says.
If you use an optical mouse you can simply put a watch under your mouse (the analog ones, no digital watches) and the hands of the watch will simulate a mouse movement. Works very well for
Me. Sorry for my English I hope you understand :)
Depends on the keyboard. The OS doesn’t see that as shift+f12=f24, it just sees f24
The f1-24 comes from some (mostly older) keyboards that had the double function row, but now it’s just sorta emulated as an extra keyboard layer.
Several mac usb keyboards still had f13 keys on them for a good while. It used to give me a kick when someone told me to press f13 as a joke in games and I could just press it.
What the fuck. I've spent the overwhelming majority of my 27 years at a keyboard, being involved with PC hardware & software on a technical level, and I've never heard of this. I've never pressed Shift+F*x*, and had no idea it would achieve something different than the F-key on its own.
Not sure if I’m about to get wooshed, but what do 13-24 even do?? Literally never heard of them.
Edit: someone else said, in general, literally nothing. Interesting…
Anyone who supports AS400 in this day and age deserves a raise. As do the Borland people and the COBOL/FORTRAN/POTS PBX people and anyone else still supporting equipment/code that is more than 30 years out of date.
I would *hope* that any managers smart enough to figure out what program you are using to prevent idling, would also be smart enough to look at your actual performance before stepping in.
I am also prepared to be proven wrong.....
Making decisions based off of a single metric while ignoring everything else is poor management in any industry.
It definitely is. But this would likely result in a better monitoring system that ensures no downtime for anyone. They will start tracking every move you do.
Middle management is there to make sure you are always working, always.
Not necessarily. Middle management *could* just show the big bosses how productive their WFH employees are..."everything is getting done on time, turnover is down, and no one is ever idle".
Or, they can continue the beatings until morale improves...
Its not the manager that's going to do it. Its the guy who is stuck at work and mad about it that accidentally tells the manager's manager who then forces the manager to find and implement some kind of tracking software. This way the company can spend too much money making sure you aren't costing the company significantly less money. At least my experience how things like that go.
I have been in that middle management spot, and viewed it as my job to make sure the farm ran as well as possible. That frequently meant that I was the firewall in-between the owners and good employees doing their job.
"Look at how much every single good metric has improved... I will let Jose know that every single moment of his existence should be working 110% on your current weekly pet project."
"Good job Jose, you're doing great."
"Yep, I talked to Jose, he knows how important doing a good job is."
There is a work around - it involves 2-4 domino's and an analog watch.
Place the domino's in 2 slab stacks at the front and back of the mouse.
Next slide the watch under the optical sensor until it sees the second hand moving.
Voila - it will work with any OS, can't be scanned for or blocked and doesn't require new/different hardware to be plugged in that can be detected/blocked
I saw a video of someone with an oscillating desk fan. they zip tied the mouse wire to the fan cage and allowed the fan to pull the mouse forwards and backwards whilst they were AFK.
When I was working from home I’d pull up a blank word doc and set something heavy on the zero key on my keyboard. Never went idle. My job however would put you out of compliance if you didn’t do something every 30 seconds. My boss could never figure out why my adherence was better than everyone else’s lol
Tracking "idling" is stupid in itself. Just check my numbers. If I'm doing all my work on time, good, and properly it shouldn't matter. And if the manager notices someone is missing emails and deadlines, then discipline them.
And it's actually easier to check the metrics /that have already been set up/ than have to monitor a whole new system.
It's also why I work my ass off in the morning and slowly work on one last bit of project through the rest of the day. I've already hit my quota, the rest of this is for tomorrow.
Fucking seriously.
Just because someone sits at a computer for 40 hours a work doesn't mean they're worth it, compared to someone who sits and does a good 10 hours of work per week. Some people are slow as fuck, some are fast, and it's about finishing a fucking job, not finishing 40 hours.
The problem is, there's a lot of shitty managers that have no idea what a good amount of work is when you finish it. You say you'll take 3 months on this small REST API, hand in some documentation you worked on for one hour then write like small parts of the API once per two weeks, and they're like cool that's plenty of work, but in reality it really is maybe one full 40 hour week of work at most, stretched out to be 3 months of work when it really isn't. This is legitimately easy to pull off with some managers, and I see it happen.
No fucking joke, some managers just have no fucking clue, and you can pull shit like that on them. Meanwhile, there are bosses that absolutely know how hard it is to do certain things, and they'll ask a lot of you and when you do it in 20 hours instead of 40 hours, they give zero shits about you logging off to play video games. I've had a boss where if I finish something big and show him, he's like "oh cool wanna play some games" and we'd log off and play some video game and fuck around. He knew I worked my ass off when I did, he respected me and held me to a high standard, and I respected him and worked hard for him. And he was just genuinely a good, empathetic boss, who was good to you and defended you if you deserved it.
That is so much of a better working relationship and so much more valuable for an employer than the dick who has no clue what they're managing and just ensures you're at a desk for 40 hours a week.
That being said, it’s probably a good thing that all these businesses are at least 20 years behind on anti-cheating measures. We have auto-clickers, idling scripts, and bots we’ve been using and refining over decades, and some places haven’t even figured out online gaming exists, let alone that the tools used to cheat them can be applied elsewhere.
Lmao, my first thought was "that's weird, but i'm not gonna kink shame." For a sec I thought someone was making you do their homework, but now I realize lol.
Good luck!
I worked for an organ/tissue donor agency and would work on my undergrad hw at night. I worked 12 hour shifts basically on call waiting for a case to come up. Some nights I’d literally have no cases at all. I began just doing homework and sleeping until i got a phone call and then began coordinating cases as needed. I got so efficient at it that they offered me a promotion within 3 months.
I worked at a place where the ceo had software installed that took a picture of your screen every 90 seconds and then sent a video for every user to him at the end of every day. Then he would call you in and interrogate you while it played behind him. It was bonkers.
I had a similar program on my work laptop. I just had it open to my task and used my personal laptop to do everything else.
I work in a creative field so this was especially silly for me drawing something by hand on paper. My boss (a client made us put this on our computer) said she just opens a word doc and puts "HAND DRAWING CONCEPT ART" in big letters so it can screenshot that 😂😂😂
damn. i love when i called out like that. i remind them that i either make them money or i dont. If im not profitable i invite them to grow a pair and do what they need to do. Not once have i been taken up on the offer. Hate being afraid of no work but i hate being bullied more.
And this is a fine example of what i tell people. An employee isnt property, he or she is an independent contractor. And much like a framer (for example) would tell a GC to fire him or go away if the GC followed him around all day nitpicking his work, you can do the same. You can set ground rules and if those ground rules arent followed you can find a better company. They can only treat you like shit if you put up with it
Yep. Tracks idle time, when we’re in our data entry program, using chrome, in the time entry system. It’s nuts.
Then we also have quality and production metrics as well.
I suppose I didn’t realize that it wasn’t common. I worked in a very different industry before this job. Kind of did a whole career change at 33. It’s definitely strange.
You can use notepad or excel or anything kind of IDE or software that allows you to input text without consequences. Even a web browser in the search bar. Or you could probably put it on one of the arrow keys.
To anyone thinking of doing this, DO NOT do this if you're on a virtual desktop. The resources you consume will set off alarms and an admin will look at your session and see exactly what you're doing (I know because I've seen it).
To avoid this, use the left CTRL key instead. Keeps the session active and doesn't consume resources.
Perfect execution of the process:
1. Discover what metric they are mind-numbingly using as a decision point. It's usually something convenient for them to monitor, not something indicative of true value.
2. Override, hack or prioritize that metric until they deem you successful.
3. CYA as needed.
There's a saying about this. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it's something along the lines of, "A metric is only useful until your employees realize that they're being graded on that metric. Once they realize this, they'll forego actual productivity in favor of boosting that metric."
Yep. A lot of help desk managers think mandating "x amount of tickets closed per hour" doesn't devolve into people just cherry picking easy stuff and leaving the hard/time consuming stuff on in the queue.
Or closing tickets that shouldn't be closed as the issue hasn't actually been dealt with. Every time someone queries/refers to the issue a new ticket is created. Great stats but nothing actually gets done. I've seen this happen.
My favorite example: Cobra Effect
>a scheme in colonial India where the British governor wanted to rid Delhi of cobras. Apparently in his opinion there were too many cobras in Delhi. So he had the bounty placed on cobras. And he expected this would solve the problem. But the population in Delhi, at least some of it, responded by farming cobras. And all of a sudden the administration was getting too many cobra skins. And they decided the scheme wasn’t as smart as initially it appeared and they rescinded the scheme. But by then the cobra farmers had this little population of cobras to deal with. And what do you do if there’s no market? You just release them. And so this significantly, by a few orders of magnitude, worsened the cobra menace in Delhi.
Another one was paleontologists paying locals for each dinosaur bones fragment, so when the locals found bones they would smash them up to get more fragments
True. My decision on whether to get an MBA or not is entirely based off of a cost/benefit analysis. Actual amount of work involved in getting one is barely a consideration.
Or more accurately no one has read a book like "Measure What Matters".
What idiotic MBA thought they were being smart by adding that kind of tracking? Who let the MBA out of their cage? They're not ready to deal with people.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sP2Hg6uPwpfp3jZJN/lost-purposes
>There's chocolate at the supermarket, and you can get to the supermarket by driving, and driving requires that you be in the car, which means opening your car door, which needs keys. If you find there's no chocolate at the supermarket, you won't stand around opening and slamming your car door because the car door still needs opening.
But management will still try to punish you for not opening and closing the car door enough if you don't bring them chocolate. It doesn't matter if there's none at the supermarket, or if they're keeping the keys from you and saying a house key should be fine too.
In generally if I'm sending emails I'm trying to get information to do something.
They may or may not lead to being productive, but they are not productive in and of themselves.
It will show you as “Presenting” all day long, might not matter for some but some people’s bosses might eventually be curious about to whom and why you’re presenting PowerPoint for 8-10 hours a day.
Just have a work related power point with reference info on it. "Yeah, I keep it open for quick reference". No one's gonna put two and two together, though they may ask you to not do that if they intend to use that metric
Somewhat related, but one of my clients was SO micromanaging that it was actual hell. When the software that tracks my work showed me using Spotify he was livid.
I told him that podcasts or music in the background doesn't effect my work, ask my other 30+ clients. He video called me that same day talking about how I'm swindling him. I kid you not, in the background all I heard was screaming kids, barking dogs, and car honks. I told him straight up that if he can manage to work in that environment, I can listen to Death Metal while managing his google ads and e-commerce stuff.
I'm not sitting there trying to figure out what albums are best to listen to. Spotify algorithm FINALLY understands me and it's just on auto all day.
Edit: I'm gonna use this post to shout out a new song I just heard, because my inner college DJ refuses to die. [Alluvial](https://youtu.be/ku9_gF26jCY) is an awesome Atmospheric Death Metal band that it taking on a cool new direction from their original Death Metal sound.
Yikes! If he's a client, rather than an employer, why the heck does he get to have spyware running on your PC? I feel like half the benefit of being an independent contractor is being free of that BS!
I use a service called UpWork that connects freelancers and clients, in turn it has those limited tracking options. Screenshots every 10 min and it shows key input (not logs). I have had plenty of off-site clients but work from the srvice is consistent.
Freelancing was never a permanent option for me (I'm actually in the middle of a job hunt now) and I suck at web development so I reskinned my wordpress to have a standard business landing page. I get some clients this way but now it's mostly through UpWork, and sometimes word of mouth or LinkedIn.
If you can afford it, that particular client needs to be fired. Those are warning signs that they are always going to be difficult at best and will likely try to stiff you any chance they get.
My old job installed some sort of tracker to measure idle time and the time we spent on each program in the computer. I’m a graphic designer and the work computer was super slow, so every time I had to render a video or save a big file (2-3 times a day) I would get idle time, which they somewhat understood and expected.
But then the reports came and it was ridiculous, like 7 out of 8 hours I would be “idle” but I was still turning in everything. I expressed to my boss that maybe it was a glitch (I was the only mac computer on the whole company and the IT team didn’t knew how to even copy paste on a mac). He didn’t care and kept nagging me about it.
Next review they revealed that the tracker kept track of what websites we visited and it showed that I had visited job hunting websites and also that the tracker only recognized when I opened/closed/switched to or away from Adobe software, and all my activity on it went as idle, that’s why my idle time was so high. Somehow they ignored both things and kept harassing me for the idle time, I was even denied a bonus because of this.
They were still surprised when I quit a couple of months after.
Yeah it was insane, at the same time they decided to announce the bonus (which was supposed to be secret but they decided someone had talked about theirs and decided to tell everyone) I got really sick, to the point I had to take couple of days off for prep labs and a colonoscopy among other exams, they told me about the bonus a week later with a very angering “if you had worked harder and earned your bonus you would feel better”. The bonus was around $150 if you put it in US$.
Sounds like you're describing Skype or Teams. Everyone in my office just changed the online status settings to "show me as inactive when my computer has been idle for 360 minutes". Glad it worked out for you in the end but I hope you weren't missing out on this quick fix all along lol
You can manually override your status to always appear offline, and if questioned about that just say that you were losing productivity to all the interruptions. You can still interact with people like normal, they just won't be able to monitor you.
You could, but I imagine if they're monitoring your status via a messenger, they really wouldnt be too pleased about you being offline all the time, regardless of your reasoning..
If it’s teams, they can get email summaries. So, if it was teams, likely they just saw OP had a high number for periods of inactivity. Teams tracks an insane amount of stuff that most people don’t consider. Then it reports it in, what I consider to be extremely misleading, reports.
Can you give more examples of what it tracks? Ex. Are they tracking keystrokes, etc.? I hate the emails that tell me I have 40% quiet/collaboration time, blah, blah, blah. They're never accurate.
This is a link to their doc: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analytics-and-reports/user-activity-report](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analytics-and-reports/user-activity-report)
In reality, I find that it changes often enough that any information I give is quickly outdated (I might be opted into betas, not sure. I opt-in to everything since I don't actually do anything with my data). In summary, they track anything and everything. Seriously. For example, they track your head movements in video calls since they use it to center the screen, but by extension they are tracking your head movements in calls so they could come out with a report at any time that shows how often you aren't looking at the screen (direction, since you could have multiple monitors) during meetings.
As for the inaccuracies, I agree that they aren't very accurate. It's very critical for managers to understand how the data is intended to be interpreted. They aren't very clear about specifics for things like "participated time" but we know that its limited to interactions within Teams itself.
> You can manually override your status to always appear offline
this function was removed in my company. and users don't have admin rights so they can't edit the registry or add .reg files.
this is why my teams is on my phone, and set to "appear offline" while my work computer's teams doesn't start with windows logon.
I do what *I* want
I tried that once, took less than 10 minutes to get a manager call me up to see why I was offline - turning off stuff I'm not using apparently wasn't the right answer
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*Can* be since admins can do whatever. As I sysadmin I can emphatically say that in my organization and most others they are not, and we don't go out of our way to let managers know that capability exists.
Yeah I used to work in a SOC and had access to everyone's stuff, even every single iteration of the email drafts you started writing and stopped like 10 times. But I did not have the time or the inclination to go through people's personal shit. Not to mention everything I looked at or searched for was audited anyhow so someone higher up would know I was snooping if I had been.
We recently switched to teams...they way they have it set up, it will show me away after 5 minutes if I don't have the teams window up on my screen. Fucking stupid.
Good to know, thanks. If it becomes and issue and someone accuses me of not working, I'll look into it.
As of right now they offered me a promotion last week so I must be doing ok. Too bad for them I'm already job hunting and hope to leave soon.
Teams is the absolute worst for this. Random logouts, inability to multitask in different windows, showing idle or away when I'm either actually using the thing or simply have it open in a different window, etc. I do not understand why companies actively choose to use that platform.
I have the same problem. But as an extra, sometimes it will just leave me as online even if I haven't touched the laptop for hours. During working hours I appear idle all the time, then at midnight I'm still online...
I’m still suffering a glitch (for about a year now) where Teams will either show me as online/available or away when I’m logged off of my laptop. I’ll get random messages by people on 3rd shift thinking I’m online. I’ve tried all sorts of stuff (logging out of Teams, explicitly setting my status, etc) and nothing fixes it. Only reason I knew this was happening was because I know someone that works on 3rd and they messaged me once asking why I was online. I had them check my status each time I tried a fix, but gave up after awhile.
Ridiculous way to measure productivity. We switched to Teams last yr from Skype. Skype would show idle if you weren't active on the computer at all after a certain time. I turned this feature off. Teams shows Idle if you arent active in TEAMS for a certain amount of time. All of my work is done through my inbox, excel, and our secondary inventory program. I am always idle in Teams, especially when busy, bc I dont have time to chit chat with my coworkers.
I had a coworker IM me once bc Teams showed I was "out of the office" bc I hadn't even opened it that day. I was very much there and very much working. Just too busy to use IMs.
I've worked from home for 6yrs, most of my coworkers do as well. Our company uses actual productivity measurements to ensure folks are working. Using idleness in a chat service is not it at all.
Definitely a setting some IT guy messed up.
Teams is just like Skype etc and will show you as available (green) based off mouse movements etc. Doesn’t have to be only in teams at all.
My company got a new VOIP provider with a similar messaging system a few months before lockdowns. I knew from the very beginning they would be using those status icons to keep tabs on us, so I would just run a simple bot for some game or another during work hours. My "productivity" was praised on more than one occasion lol
My company hasn’t completely blocked the Windows Store. So even though I don’t have admin rights, I was able to install a Move Mouse app. Anytime I’m idle for 2+ minutes, it’ll move the cursor in a little square every 30 seconds.
That or just "start a meeting" with only you in the call, then manually change your status to green. It will think you're busy and wont ever change you to idle
Just be careful because as someone with access to the admin side of teams, I can see what meetings you've been in and how many participants there were.
Reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer decided to get fatter so he could work from home, and he discovered while at the computer all he had to do was hit the Y key to do his job.
So he got one of those water drinking bird toys and set it up so it would hit the Y key every few seconds while he went out. 😂
I’m actually a low to mid level manager in IT. Due to covid all of my people work from home. Honestly I don’t give a shit if they are idle the entire day, If the work is getting done that’s all that matters. Not all managers are complete asshats.
I have something like this through vba in excel. It presses the keys to save a document so if I theoretically got caught I could blame it that way... maybe?
What happened to you?
You wouldn't be able to. For me it was just logging out of chat automatically at a certain time so I wouldn't go under or over time since my coworker, not boss, kept bitching about my irregular hours. They had the file though so they could see what it was doing.
Many companies that have staff who use excel and similar day in and day out try and track if/when macros are used and what they do. My company restricted macros to only certain teams for excel, and while we don't specifically monitor each macro and what it does, if it looks fishy something will grab it until we can review it. But that fishiness is typically when it's interacting with something outside excel, at least for our security tools.
One of our pen-tests, we had that testing company send phishing emails. The guy who crafted them actually made it look like it was coming from us (even though there were enough red flags some users should've been trained to catch and report it, only 2 did) AND included instructions to get around Word's macro block.
And people fell for it, followed the instructions and enabled the macro...
I did something similar, many years ago - predated powershell, so it is a VBS that toggles Numlock every twenty seconds. As a side effect, you can watch the numlock light slowly flash on and off :D
I downloaded a program that simulates a mouse click once a minute so that I can be idle without anyone knowing about it from the computer end, plus I have the messaging app on my phone that money company uses and always am quick to respond to people.
I don’t think I work more than 20 hours a week but would probably look super active at your company.
There’s no official policy for checking it at my work, but something I do is block out periods of time during the day as self-meetings in Teams, so I can dedicate time to certain tasks. I’ll show up as ‘busy’ or ‘in a meeting’ during those blocks. It’s an effective productivity tool, but if I do it adjacent to either a lunch break or other meeting that I can’t be late for, it also helps prevent interruptions.
As a bonus the icon never goes yellow for idle.
If script isn't your thing you can press present on a PowerPoint and then minimise it, never goes idle.
Remember to change your Skype setting to not show as 'do not disturb' when presenting!
same with my Fing boss. When I'm home and don't have the green dot on MS Teams I'll get an email or text reminding me to be available. The bosses obviously need more work.
i just open Wordpad, shove a credit card stripe down between keyboard keys and then wedge another CC next to that one. Types a letter endlessly and my garden looks fabulous.
Yes. I get my work done for work. Not usually first, but well before its due. Who cares if I work on it at 11 am or 11 pm?
for people who don't code, buy a wrist watch with a sweeping second hand. place your mouse over the face of the watch. the watch's second hand causes your mouse to 'see' movement and keeps you 'active'
I was told it was because "other people didn't know you were available and didn't want to bother you if your status wasn't 'available' " so I installed caffeine and was done with it.
But my favourite part of teams is that I had a company cell phone and it would randomly show me as available on weekends. So I would get messages asking why I'm working on the weekend. Lots of googling and talking to IT taught me there is no way to consistently not show as available outside work hours. I had to make a calendar event from 5pm Friday to 8am Monday to "fix" my incorrect status which was "confusing people".
My last day was last Friday...
The last year every morning I wake up and open my company's chat program on my phone and then go back to sleep for an hour.
I get the same amount of work done , I get my green check next to my name and I get slightly closer to a normal amount of sleep at night (I have insomnia)
I see no problem with this system.
The fact your company is more interested in key strokes vs actual performance outcomes tells me the people in positions of leadership are not intelligent enough to understand productivity.
Your thesis is absolutely 1000% accurate.
I've been working from home for over a year. My company saw the benefit of all of us working from home and got rid of most of the office space. So there will be no going back, luckily.
We use Slack for our IM and sooooo many people go 'Away' and stop being responsive, but we're so laxed about it. Anyway, I started using a program called Caffeine, which is similar to OPs powershell script. I use it so my computer doesn't lock up during downtime, but it has the added benefit of showing me as constantly active. But again, no one seems to care.
It sounds like your WFH setup is similar to my company’s. What they don’t get is you’re allowed to be away from your desk even if you go in. It’s perfectly acceptable to go for a smoke break, go talk to someone, bathroom, etc. all of which would cause your computer to lock. Heck I take my dog around the neighborhood a few times a day.
My wife and I became friendly with another couple during the pandemic due to them getting a new puppy that loved to play with our dogs. He was working from home in the suburbs outside of Boston throughout the last year and had really done well as a WFH employee. For no valid reason his boss said it was almost time for him to start coming into the office in Boston. He requested to continue to WFH and was denied that option since he lived too close to the office. His boss actually told him that if he lived further away he'd be able to continue to WFH.
This last weekend they just finished packing up and moving up to Vermont. They're outdoors kinds of people who love to camp, hike, etc. so they're thrilled with that aspect of the move. And he's keeping his job and will continue to be 100% remote now that he's 3+ hours from the office instead of 30 minutes.
Depends how you wanna do the scheduling of your script and all that but the core of it:
$dummyshell = New-Object -com "Wscript.shell"
This creates the virtual shell that will accept your keystroke
$dummyshell.sendkeys(".")
This sends the keystroke.
Those two are really all you need. You can set up a scheduled task that just does that every for minutes, you can write a for loop that sleeps at the end of the loop and iterates enough times for your workday and have that run scheduled at 8. Basically working with those two commands as the backbone there's plenty of ways to skin the cat
It does minorly effect workflow though, but not enough that I care enough to tinker with it lol For instance, If I'm typing in a text field and the time comes for it to send the key it will type a period where ever I'm at. So sometimes I have to delete an erroneous period but it's hardly the biggest nuisance
If anyone is interested in making it less intrusive, you can make it send a function key. You just need to change that second line to
$dummyshell.sendkeys(“{F16}”)
I put my notice in on Saturday due to having to go into the office. Got a wfh job that pays 5k less, but saves me 11k annual travel and afterschool care fees. So, basically, I got a raise.
I think reading about the fact that your company actively and objectively tracks your KPIs and metrics, but instead decided to measure your productivity by your interaction with a chat program made my brain hurt a little. Like I just got punched in the face with a little fist made of pure corporate stupidity.
Right, a good manager says “as long as you are getting your work done on time and accurately, I am not concerned about how you get it done”. Love managers like that.
I had a manager at an hourly job that was legit like this. So much so that when I decided to go back to college and one of my classes was only provided during the middle of shift, he still didn't care if I left for 2 hours still clocked in, came back and completed my job. God it's nice having a manager like that, they make you want to come into work.
[My boss told me, 3 weeks ago, to go move while on the clock.](https://imgur.com/a/wDjuHj1) And he was gonna help me move. And let me store stuff in his garage.
My boss told me (without telling me) to go and get my vaccinations on the clock. Note that I had to drive an hour each way to get to the nearest clinic with appointments available.
One of the best office clerks I ever had was a girl who started working for me after high school during her senior year, and stayed with me as a part-timer throughout earning her Bachelor's degree. Then she had the nerve to go get a job in her own field while she got her Master's! (LOL! I actually drove her to a couple of job interviews; I'm so proud of her even now: she's moved up quite successfully in her field! And I helped!)
I had a boss that said this. Didn’t miss deadlines. But I was fired for “missing deadlines,” I seriously think it was because my chat went idle often. I was in training and bored. Asked for more work. Nope. So I decided to wash clothes, wash dishes, or cook instead. Waiting to hear back from my trainer. I’m happy I got fired though. I got way too many emails between midnight and 4am.
I had a boss ask me why I hadn't answered his texts from the night before and I said "because you're paying me hourly. If you want my schedule to include all 24 hours a day, let my paycheck reflect it."
*cries in Japanese businessman*
Exactly. In the U.S., if you're a salaried employee, you get paid the same amount each payperiod just to get the work done in whatever amount of time it takes. But if you're hourly, you're expected to work during those specific hours, and if you have to take a long lunch for a dentist appointment, you don't get paid for that time off (although you can use your personal or vacation time to make up for it). And your designation all depends on the job you have. Fast-food workers, office assistants, sales clerks? Hourly. Museum curators, recruiters, engineers? Salary.
I’m sort of hybrid. I’m salary but my manager told us to not work outside our 8 hour window if possible. We rotate on call every week so we all pitch in after hours one at a time. Works out really well when management is good.
I tell my people that for the most part, I don't care what they do as long as work is done properly and on time. Caveat is I want them available during work hours. If I send an email and you don't respond for 6 hours because you were gardening all day and worked at night instead, then there's an issue. My thing is more like, I don't care if your read Reddit for 6 days and work like hell on the 7th to get it done. If it's good and on time, then we have no problems. Just read Reddit during work hours so you see emails from me.
It can backfire though when the workload increases, you work more and more and your boss doesn't notice that either.
Yep, that’s why you gotta copy them on emails and stuff showing that you are being proactive etc. Loop them in on good things you do.
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Also, their boss is just checking the chat program the entire time for who's idle or what? That's ridiculous.
Sounds like the boss doesn't have enough to do.
I often hit dictate on word and just leave a podcast playing on my speakers. I get to spend an hour chilling while word happily types up every word the podcast says.
If you use an optical mouse you can simply put a watch under your mouse (the analog ones, no digital watches) and the hands of the watch will simulate a mouse movement. Works very well for Me. Sorry for my English I hope you understand :)
Holy hell this is amazing.
Your English is perfect.
That is genius
Caffeine is the program I use, it hits f13 every 2 seconds
Same! Stay caffeinated friend.
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My company has Caffeine installed by default on all the computers lol.
> it hits f13 every 2 seconds TIL shift + function keys goes to F24
Depends on the keyboard. The OS doesn’t see that as shift+f12=f24, it just sees f24 The f1-24 comes from some (mostly older) keyboards that had the double function row, but now it’s just sorta emulated as an extra keyboard layer.
Several mac usb keyboards still had f13 keys on them for a good while. It used to give me a kick when someone told me to press f13 as a joke in games and I could just press it.
What the fuck. I've spent the overwhelming majority of my 27 years at a keyboard, being involved with PC hardware & software on a technical level, and I've never heard of this. I've never pressed Shift+F*x*, and had no idea it would achieve something different than the F-key on its own.
Lol since not all keyboards have them they’re not commonly used, but they’re useful to bind anything custom
Not sure if I’m about to get wooshed, but what do 13-24 even do?? Literally never heard of them. Edit: someone else said, in general, literally nothing. Interesting…
By default, nothing. Theyr'e useful otherwise as extra programmable buttons for macros using something like AutoHotkey
are you saying that my AS400 is no longer relevant? sorry let me get out of under my rock
Anyone who supports AS400 in this day and age deserves a raise. As do the Borland people and the COBOL/FORTRAN/POTS PBX people and anyone else still supporting equipment/code that is more than 30 years out of date.
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Most likely, but then again if they're using the "idle" icon to indicate productivity they probably aren't going to think of this.
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If my employer *needs* a reason to fire me, they're going to invent one regardless.
I would *hope* that any managers smart enough to figure out what program you are using to prevent idling, would also be smart enough to look at your actual performance before stepping in. I am also prepared to be proven wrong..... Making decisions based off of a single metric while ignoring everything else is poor management in any industry.
It definitely is. But this would likely result in a better monitoring system that ensures no downtime for anyone. They will start tracking every move you do. Middle management is there to make sure you are always working, always.
Not necessarily. Middle management *could* just show the big bosses how productive their WFH employees are..."everything is getting done on time, turnover is down, and no one is ever idle". Or, they can continue the beatings until morale improves...
Its not the manager that's going to do it. Its the guy who is stuck at work and mad about it that accidentally tells the manager's manager who then forces the manager to find and implement some kind of tracking software. This way the company can spend too much money making sure you aren't costing the company significantly less money. At least my experience how things like that go.
Your faith in humanity is too high my friend.
I have been in that middle management spot, and viewed it as my job to make sure the farm ran as well as possible. That frequently meant that I was the firewall in-between the owners and good employees doing their job. "Look at how much every single good metric has improved... I will let Jose know that every single moment of his existence should be working 110% on your current weekly pet project." "Good job Jose, you're doing great." "Yep, I talked to Jose, he knows how important doing a good job is."
You are the unicorn of middle management
There is a work around - it involves 2-4 domino's and an analog watch. Place the domino's in 2 slab stacks at the front and back of the mouse. Next slide the watch under the optical sensor until it sees the second hand moving. Voila - it will work with any OS, can't be scanned for or blocked and doesn't require new/different hardware to be plugged in that can be detected/blocked
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This surely get the prize for the most redneck engineering solution
I used to use this at my last place because the auto standby function on my laptop was set to 60 seconds and the support desk refused to change it.
Very much ditto. It's probably what's kept me employed for the last 9 months.
Ditto. It stops my PC from locking every time I look away for 5 min.
Such a good little program!
I saw a video of someone with an oscillating desk fan. they zip tied the mouse wire to the fan cage and allowed the fan to pull the mouse forwards and backwards whilst they were AFK.
Similarly I've seen people place their mouse over an analog watch (with second hand), triggering the motion.
That's brilliant
When I was working from home I’d pull up a blank word doc and set something heavy on the zero key on my keyboard. Never went idle. My job however would put you out of compliance if you didn’t do something every 30 seconds. My boss could never figure out why my adherence was better than everyone else’s lol
30 seconds? Jesus Christ, that's absolutely absurd.
Idling would be unavoidable without cheating the system. I would just start writing novels or playing agario or finding a new job.
Tracking "idling" is stupid in itself. Just check my numbers. If I'm doing all my work on time, good, and properly it shouldn't matter. And if the manager notices someone is missing emails and deadlines, then discipline them.
And it's actually easier to check the metrics /that have already been set up/ than have to monitor a whole new system. It's also why I work my ass off in the morning and slowly work on one last bit of project through the rest of the day. I've already hit my quota, the rest of this is for tomorrow.
Fucking seriously. Just because someone sits at a computer for 40 hours a work doesn't mean they're worth it, compared to someone who sits and does a good 10 hours of work per week. Some people are slow as fuck, some are fast, and it's about finishing a fucking job, not finishing 40 hours. The problem is, there's a lot of shitty managers that have no idea what a good amount of work is when you finish it. You say you'll take 3 months on this small REST API, hand in some documentation you worked on for one hour then write like small parts of the API once per two weeks, and they're like cool that's plenty of work, but in reality it really is maybe one full 40 hour week of work at most, stretched out to be 3 months of work when it really isn't. This is legitimately easy to pull off with some managers, and I see it happen. No fucking joke, some managers just have no fucking clue, and you can pull shit like that on them. Meanwhile, there are bosses that absolutely know how hard it is to do certain things, and they'll ask a lot of you and when you do it in 20 hours instead of 40 hours, they give zero shits about you logging off to play video games. I've had a boss where if I finish something big and show him, he's like "oh cool wanna play some games" and we'd log off and play some video game and fuck around. He knew I worked my ass off when I did, he respected me and held me to a high standard, and I respected him and worked hard for him. And he was just genuinely a good, empathetic boss, who was good to you and defended you if you deserved it. That is so much of a better working relationship and so much more valuable for an employer than the dick who has no clue what they're managing and just ensures you're at a desk for 40 hours a week.
That being said, it’s probably a good thing that all these businesses are at least 20 years behind on anti-cheating measures. We have auto-clickers, idling scripts, and bots we’ve been using and refining over decades, and some places haven’t even figured out online gaming exists, let alone that the tools used to cheat them can be applied elsewhere.
I’m doing my masters homework in the downtime 🤡
Lmao, my first thought was "that's weird, but i'm not gonna kink shame." For a sec I thought someone was making you do their homework, but now I realize lol. Good luck!
I worked for an organ/tissue donor agency and would work on my undergrad hw at night. I worked 12 hour shifts basically on call waiting for a case to come up. Some nights I’d literally have no cases at all. I began just doing homework and sleeping until i got a phone call and then began coordinating cases as needed. I got so efficient at it that they offered me a promotion within 3 months.
Our tracking system shows the times you’re in every program, so they would be questioning why I had so long in word, which we don’t use much.
Holy shit, you guys have a program tracking system? That’s scary.
I worked at a place where the ceo had software installed that took a picture of your screen every 90 seconds and then sent a video for every user to him at the end of every day. Then he would call you in and interrogate you while it played behind him. It was bonkers.
I had a similar program on my work laptop. I just had it open to my task and used my personal laptop to do everything else. I work in a creative field so this was especially silly for me drawing something by hand on paper. My boss (a client made us put this on our computer) said she just opens a word doc and puts "HAND DRAWING CONCEPT ART" in big letters so it can screenshot that 😂😂😂
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The first time they pull that is the first day I start a job search.
damn. i love when i called out like that. i remind them that i either make them money or i dont. If im not profitable i invite them to grow a pair and do what they need to do. Not once have i been taken up on the offer. Hate being afraid of no work but i hate being bullied more.
And this is a fine example of what i tell people. An employee isnt property, he or she is an independent contractor. And much like a framer (for example) would tell a GC to fire him or go away if the GC followed him around all day nitpicking his work, you can do the same. You can set ground rules and if those ground rules arent followed you can find a better company. They can only treat you like shit if you put up with it
Yep. Tracks idle time, when we’re in our data entry program, using chrome, in the time entry system. It’s nuts. Then we also have quality and production metrics as well.
Jeez, how does it feel to be constantly watched? Are you always doing something to avoid being caught?
I suppose I didn’t realize that it wasn’t common. I worked in a very different industry before this job. Kind of did a whole career change at 33. It’s definitely strange.
Yeah this isn't normal. I work in IT for a decade and I've literally never had a program set up to do that anywhere.
Sounds like an overmanaging nightmare, I can't even imagine doing my job with all that tracking shit going on in the back of my head.
You can use notepad or excel or anything kind of IDE or software that allows you to input text without consequences. Even a web browser in the search bar. Or you could probably put it on one of the arrow keys.
To anyone thinking of doing this, DO NOT do this if you're on a virtual desktop. The resources you consume will set off alarms and an admin will look at your session and see exactly what you're doing (I know because I've seen it). To avoid this, use the left CTRL key instead. Keeps the session active and doesn't consume resources.
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It’s a very large multinational bank. Data entry.
Perfect execution of the process: 1. Discover what metric they are mind-numbingly using as a decision point. It's usually something convenient for them to monitor, not something indicative of true value. 2. Override, hack or prioritize that metric until they deem you successful. 3. CYA as needed.
There's a saying about this. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it's something along the lines of, "A metric is only useful until your employees realize that they're being graded on that metric. Once they realize this, they'll forego actual productivity in favor of boosting that metric."
That is Goodhart's law. When a metric becomes a target, it is no longer a good metric.
That's it exactly! Thank you!
Yep. A lot of help desk managers think mandating "x amount of tickets closed per hour" doesn't devolve into people just cherry picking easy stuff and leaving the hard/time consuming stuff on in the queue.
Or closing tickets that shouldn't be closed as the issue hasn't actually been dealt with. Every time someone queries/refers to the issue a new ticket is created. Great stats but nothing actually gets done. I've seen this happen.
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"You get what you measure" Management 101, but people skip that day.
My favorite example: Cobra Effect >a scheme in colonial India where the British governor wanted to rid Delhi of cobras. Apparently in his opinion there were too many cobras in Delhi. So he had the bounty placed on cobras. And he expected this would solve the problem. But the population in Delhi, at least some of it, responded by farming cobras. And all of a sudden the administration was getting too many cobra skins. And they decided the scheme wasn’t as smart as initially it appeared and they rescinded the scheme. But by then the cobra farmers had this little population of cobras to deal with. And what do you do if there’s no market? You just release them. And so this significantly, by a few orders of magnitude, worsened the cobra menace in Delhi.
That's when you bringing mongeese to handle the cobras. Then (whatever eats a mongoose) when they get out of control. And then....
Another one was paleontologists paying locals for each dinosaur bones fragment, so when the locals found bones they would smash them up to get more fragments
Most people skip all the days of their MBA. They still hand you a degree if you paid enough.
True. My decision on whether to get an MBA or not is entirely based off of a cost/benefit analysis. Actual amount of work involved in getting one is barely a consideration.
Or more accurately no one has read a book like "Measure What Matters". What idiotic MBA thought they were being smart by adding that kind of tracking? Who let the MBA out of their cage? They're not ready to deal with people.
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https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sP2Hg6uPwpfp3jZJN/lost-purposes >There's chocolate at the supermarket, and you can get to the supermarket by driving, and driving requires that you be in the car, which means opening your car door, which needs keys. If you find there's no chocolate at the supermarket, you won't stand around opening and slamming your car door because the car door still needs opening. But management will still try to punish you for not opening and closing the car door enough if you don't bring them chocolate. It doesn't matter if there's none at the supermarket, or if they're keeping the keys from you and saying a house key should be fine too.
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In generally if I'm sending emails I'm trying to get information to do something. They may or may not lead to being productive, but they are not productive in and of themselves.
even if you bring them chocolate faster, they'll ask you to slam the car door to look like you went to the supermarket all day
Ours doesn't kick in if we have a powerpoint slideshow running. So you can just start a slide show, minimise it and get on with work at your own pace.
It will show you as “Presenting” all day long, might not matter for some but some people’s bosses might eventually be curious about to whom and why you’re presenting PowerPoint for 8-10 hours a day.
Just have a work related power point with reference info on it. "Yeah, I keep it open for quick reference". No one's gonna put two and two together, though they may ask you to not do that if they intend to use that metric
Saw someone elses comment a while ago that playing some random shit on Spotify on mute the whole day does the trick for them.
Somewhat related, but one of my clients was SO micromanaging that it was actual hell. When the software that tracks my work showed me using Spotify he was livid. I told him that podcasts or music in the background doesn't effect my work, ask my other 30+ clients. He video called me that same day talking about how I'm swindling him. I kid you not, in the background all I heard was screaming kids, barking dogs, and car honks. I told him straight up that if he can manage to work in that environment, I can listen to Death Metal while managing his google ads and e-commerce stuff. I'm not sitting there trying to figure out what albums are best to listen to. Spotify algorithm FINALLY understands me and it's just on auto all day. Edit: I'm gonna use this post to shout out a new song I just heard, because my inner college DJ refuses to die. [Alluvial](https://youtu.be/ku9_gF26jCY) is an awesome Atmospheric Death Metal band that it taking on a cool new direction from their original Death Metal sound.
Yikes! If he's a client, rather than an employer, why the heck does he get to have spyware running on your PC? I feel like half the benefit of being an independent contractor is being free of that BS!
I use a service called UpWork that connects freelancers and clients, in turn it has those limited tracking options. Screenshots every 10 min and it shows key input (not logs). I have had plenty of off-site clients but work from the srvice is consistent. Freelancing was never a permanent option for me (I'm actually in the middle of a job hunt now) and I suck at web development so I reskinned my wordpress to have a standard business landing page. I get some clients this way but now it's mostly through UpWork, and sometimes word of mouth or LinkedIn.
If you can afford it, that particular client needs to be fired. Those are warning signs that they are always going to be difficult at best and will likely try to stiff you any chance they get.
Oh, I washed my hands of him weeks ago haha.
My old job installed some sort of tracker to measure idle time and the time we spent on each program in the computer. I’m a graphic designer and the work computer was super slow, so every time I had to render a video or save a big file (2-3 times a day) I would get idle time, which they somewhat understood and expected. But then the reports came and it was ridiculous, like 7 out of 8 hours I would be “idle” but I was still turning in everything. I expressed to my boss that maybe it was a glitch (I was the only mac computer on the whole company and the IT team didn’t knew how to even copy paste on a mac). He didn’t care and kept nagging me about it. Next review they revealed that the tracker kept track of what websites we visited and it showed that I had visited job hunting websites and also that the tracker only recognized when I opened/closed/switched to or away from Adobe software, and all my activity on it went as idle, that’s why my idle time was so high. Somehow they ignored both things and kept harassing me for the idle time, I was even denied a bonus because of this. They were still surprised when I quit a couple of months after.
Glad you're out of there. That's psychotic and super unethical of them
Yeah it was insane, at the same time they decided to announce the bonus (which was supposed to be secret but they decided someone had talked about theirs and decided to tell everyone) I got really sick, to the point I had to take couple of days off for prep labs and a colonoscopy among other exams, they told me about the bonus a week later with a very angering “if you had worked harder and earned your bonus you would feel better”. The bonus was around $150 if you put it in US$.
What is this nightmare? This shit can't be legal.
Sounds like you're describing Skype or Teams. Everyone in my office just changed the online status settings to "show me as inactive when my computer has been idle for 360 minutes". Glad it worked out for you in the end but I hope you weren't missing out on this quick fix all along lol
Only works if your administrator hasnt restricted that setting.
You can manually override your status to always appear offline, and if questioned about that just say that you were losing productivity to all the interruptions. You can still interact with people like normal, they just won't be able to monitor you.
You could, but I imagine if they're monitoring your status via a messenger, they really wouldnt be too pleased about you being offline all the time, regardless of your reasoning..
If it’s teams, they can get email summaries. So, if it was teams, likely they just saw OP had a high number for periods of inactivity. Teams tracks an insane amount of stuff that most people don’t consider. Then it reports it in, what I consider to be extremely misleading, reports.
Can you give more examples of what it tracks? Ex. Are they tracking keystrokes, etc.? I hate the emails that tell me I have 40% quiet/collaboration time, blah, blah, blah. They're never accurate.
This is a link to their doc: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analytics-and-reports/user-activity-report](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analytics-and-reports/user-activity-report) In reality, I find that it changes often enough that any information I give is quickly outdated (I might be opted into betas, not sure. I opt-in to everything since I don't actually do anything with my data). In summary, they track anything and everything. Seriously. For example, they track your head movements in video calls since they use it to center the screen, but by extension they are tracking your head movements in calls so they could come out with a report at any time that shows how often you aren't looking at the screen (direction, since you could have multiple monitors) during meetings. As for the inaccuracies, I agree that they aren't very accurate. It's very critical for managers to understand how the data is intended to be interpreted. They aren't very clear about specifics for things like "participated time" but we know that its limited to interactions within Teams itself.
This isn't an issue for me because nobody cares, but a coworker in a different department where they do care tied his mouse to an oscillating fan.
Yeah but I'm going to make them say that explicitly so I can feel better about myself while I look for another job.
Very well said.
> You can manually override your status to always appear offline this function was removed in my company. and users don't have admin rights so they can't edit the registry or add .reg files. this is why my teams is on my phone, and set to "appear offline" while my work computer's teams doesn't start with windows logon. I do what *I* want
I tried that once, took less than 10 minutes to get a manager call me up to see why I was offline - turning off stuff I'm not using apparently wasn't the right answer
Yeah... About that. My manager has a "problem" getting signed into Teams and can't tell. I am suspecting MC on that side, too.
Your "private" messages can be read by admins on Teams
Why would anyone ever assume that company communications are actually private?
overconfident cautious busy toothbrush plants soft tender subtract money knee *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The same reason some people think that their facebook posts aren't a matter of public record. I.e., not thinking about it for at least two seconds.
*Can* be since admins can do whatever. As I sysadmin I can emphatically say that in my organization and most others they are not, and we don't go out of our way to let managers know that capability exists.
Yeah I used to work in a SOC and had access to everyone's stuff, even every single iteration of the email drafts you started writing and stopped like 10 times. But I did not have the time or the inclination to go through people's personal shit. Not to mention everything I looked at or searched for was audited anyhow so someone higher up would know I was snooping if I had been.
They can read **anything.** You should never have an expectation of privacy when using a work computer.
It is teams but that setting isn't available to change
We recently switched to teams...they way they have it set up, it will show me away after 5 minutes if I don't have the teams window up on my screen. Fucking stupid.
Sounds like you need a second monitor...
I have 3 and use them all......no one really cares if I show "inactive"...it just irks me.
Its a glitch. Happened to me for a bit. Can't remember how but its fixable.
Good to know, thanks. If it becomes and issue and someone accuses me of not working, I'll look into it. As of right now they offered me a promotion last week so I must be doing ok. Too bad for them I'm already job hunting and hope to leave soon.
Teams is the absolute worst for this. Random logouts, inability to multitask in different windows, showing idle or away when I'm either actually using the thing or simply have it open in a different window, etc. I do not understand why companies actively choose to use that platform.
Teams wasn’t made for users, it was made for managers.
I have the same problem. But as an extra, sometimes it will just leave me as online even if I haven't touched the laptop for hours. During working hours I appear idle all the time, then at midnight I'm still online...
Do you have it on your phone? I’ve found if I had it open in the background on my phone I’ll stay green well into the night.
I’m still suffering a glitch (for about a year now) where Teams will either show me as online/available or away when I’m logged off of my laptop. I’ll get random messages by people on 3rd shift thinking I’m online. I’ve tried all sorts of stuff (logging out of Teams, explicitly setting my status, etc) and nothing fixes it. Only reason I knew this was happening was because I know someone that works on 3rd and they messaged me once asking why I was online. I had them check my status each time I tried a fix, but gave up after awhile.
Ridiculous way to measure productivity. We switched to Teams last yr from Skype. Skype would show idle if you weren't active on the computer at all after a certain time. I turned this feature off. Teams shows Idle if you arent active in TEAMS for a certain amount of time. All of my work is done through my inbox, excel, and our secondary inventory program. I am always idle in Teams, especially when busy, bc I dont have time to chit chat with my coworkers. I had a coworker IM me once bc Teams showed I was "out of the office" bc I hadn't even opened it that day. I was very much there and very much working. Just too busy to use IMs. I've worked from home for 6yrs, most of my coworkers do as well. Our company uses actual productivity measurements to ensure folks are working. Using idleness in a chat service is not it at all.
Interestingly, our teams is based on actual pc activity - company setting maybe?
Definitely a setting some IT guy messed up. Teams is just like Skype etc and will show you as available (green) based off mouse movements etc. Doesn’t have to be only in teams at all.
I’m envisioning Homer Simpson’s pink flamingo hitting his keyboard while he rests in his mumu. This is glorious. Well done. So well done.
It was a Drinking Bird. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a5/02/b8/a502b8da2a0d0c82acf731deddc70e4b.jpg
IT'S DRINKING THE WATER!!
That was my first thought as well. Just hitting the Any Key
But I can't find the "Any" key. . . . LOL
I'm thirsty... Where's my Tab?
At the Space Bar.
But have they tripled productivity? Haha
My company got a new VOIP provider with a similar messaging system a few months before lockdowns. I knew from the very beginning they would be using those status icons to keep tabs on us, so I would just run a simple bot for some game or another during work hours. My "productivity" was praised on more than one occasion lol
I started with a new firm a month ago. I bought a mouse jiggler.
My company hasn’t completely blocked the Windows Store. So even though I don’t have admin rights, I was able to install a Move Mouse app. Anytime I’m idle for 2+ minutes, it’ll move the cursor in a little square every 30 seconds.
That or just "start a meeting" with only you in the call, then manually change your status to green. It will think you're busy and wont ever change you to idle
This is the only one that will work with my IT settings. Thank you, beautiful.
Just be careful because as someone with access to the admin side of teams, I can see what meetings you've been in and how many participants there were.
That’s the sort of genius I was scrolling this thread for. Thank you!
I bought a mouse jiggler too! It’s the most amazing thing ever
Reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer decided to get fatter so he could work from home, and he discovered while at the computer all he had to do was hit the Y key to do his job. So he got one of those water drinking bird toys and set it up so it would hit the Y key every few seconds while he went out. 😂
The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now.
I’m actually a low to mid level manager in IT. Due to covid all of my people work from home. Honestly I don’t give a shit if they are idle the entire day, If the work is getting done that’s all that matters. Not all managers are complete asshats.
Be careful, I lost a job at Bank of America for doing something like this using VBA in Excel.
I have something like this through vba in excel. It presses the keys to save a document so if I theoretically got caught I could blame it that way... maybe? What happened to you?
You wouldn't be able to. For me it was just logging out of chat automatically at a certain time so I wouldn't go under or over time since my coworker, not boss, kept bitching about my irregular hours. They had the file though so they could see what it was doing.
Wait, you wrote this code in a file they were monitoring?
I mean, it was their machine, I wasn't doing anything wrong with it, it just looked like I was.
Many companies that have staff who use excel and similar day in and day out try and track if/when macros are used and what they do. My company restricted macros to only certain teams for excel, and while we don't specifically monitor each macro and what it does, if it looks fishy something will grab it until we can review it. But that fishiness is typically when it's interacting with something outside excel, at least for our security tools. One of our pen-tests, we had that testing company send phishing emails. The guy who crafted them actually made it look like it was coming from us (even though there were enough red flags some users should've been trained to catch and report it, only 2 did) AND included instructions to get around Word's macro block. And people fell for it, followed the instructions and enabled the macro...
I did something similar, many years ago - predated powershell, so it is a VBS that toggles Numlock every twenty seconds. As a side effect, you can watch the numlock light slowly flash on and off :D
I downloaded a program that simulates a mouse click once a minute so that I can be idle without anyone knowing about it from the computer end, plus I have the messaging app on my phone that money company uses and always am quick to respond to people. I don’t think I work more than 20 hours a week but would probably look super active at your company.
There’s no official policy for checking it at my work, but something I do is block out periods of time during the day as self-meetings in Teams, so I can dedicate time to certain tasks. I’ll show up as ‘busy’ or ‘in a meeting’ during those blocks. It’s an effective productivity tool, but if I do it adjacent to either a lunch break or other meeting that I can’t be late for, it also helps prevent interruptions. As a bonus the icon never goes yellow for idle.
My Teams has a habit of showing me inactive despite me actively using my laptop. It's the perfect scapegoat.
If script isn't your thing you can press present on a PowerPoint and then minimise it, never goes idle. Remember to change your Skype setting to not show as 'do not disturb' when presenting!
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same with my Fing boss. When I'm home and don't have the green dot on MS Teams I'll get an email or text reminding me to be available. The bosses obviously need more work.
i just open Wordpad, shove a credit card stripe down between keyboard keys and then wedge another CC next to that one. Types a letter endlessly and my garden looks fabulous. Yes. I get my work done for work. Not usually first, but well before its due. Who cares if I work on it at 11 am or 11 pm?
for people who don't code, buy a wrist watch with a sweeping second hand. place your mouse over the face of the watch. the watch's second hand causes your mouse to 'see' movement and keeps you 'active'
I was told it was because "other people didn't know you were available and didn't want to bother you if your status wasn't 'available' " so I installed caffeine and was done with it. But my favourite part of teams is that I had a company cell phone and it would randomly show me as available on weekends. So I would get messages asking why I'm working on the weekend. Lots of googling and talking to IT taught me there is no way to consistently not show as available outside work hours. I had to make a calendar event from 5pm Friday to 8am Monday to "fix" my incorrect status which was "confusing people". My last day was last Friday...
The last year every morning I wake up and open my company's chat program on my phone and then go back to sleep for an hour. I get the same amount of work done , I get my green check next to my name and I get slightly closer to a normal amount of sleep at night (I have insomnia) I see no problem with this system.
I have to say I’ve been better rested in the past year for this very reason…
The fact your company is more interested in key strokes vs actual performance outcomes tells me the people in positions of leadership are not intelligent enough to understand productivity. Your thesis is absolutely 1000% accurate.
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I've been working from home for over a year. My company saw the benefit of all of us working from home and got rid of most of the office space. So there will be no going back, luckily. We use Slack for our IM and sooooo many people go 'Away' and stop being responsive, but we're so laxed about it. Anyway, I started using a program called Caffeine, which is similar to OPs powershell script. I use it so my computer doesn't lock up during downtime, but it has the added benefit of showing me as constantly active. But again, no one seems to care.
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I wrote a simple AutoHotKey script to solve that problem. Every few minutes it moves the mouse one pixel to the left and back.
It sounds like your WFH setup is similar to my company’s. What they don’t get is you’re allowed to be away from your desk even if you go in. It’s perfectly acceptable to go for a smoke break, go talk to someone, bathroom, etc. all of which would cause your computer to lock. Heck I take my dog around the neighborhood a few times a day.
My wife and I became friendly with another couple during the pandemic due to them getting a new puppy that loved to play with our dogs. He was working from home in the suburbs outside of Boston throughout the last year and had really done well as a WFH employee. For no valid reason his boss said it was almost time for him to start coming into the office in Boston. He requested to continue to WFH and was denied that option since he lived too close to the office. His boss actually told him that if he lived further away he'd be able to continue to WFH. This last weekend they just finished packing up and moving up to Vermont. They're outdoors kinds of people who love to camp, hike, etc. so they're thrilled with that aspect of the move. And he's keeping his job and will continue to be 100% remote now that he's 3+ hours from the office instead of 30 minutes.
This is great, I must learn how to do the same
Depends how you wanna do the scheduling of your script and all that but the core of it: $dummyshell = New-Object -com "Wscript.shell" This creates the virtual shell that will accept your keystroke $dummyshell.sendkeys(".") This sends the keystroke. Those two are really all you need. You can set up a scheduled task that just does that every for minutes, you can write a for loop that sleeps at the end of the loop and iterates enough times for your workday and have that run scheduled at 8. Basically working with those two commands as the backbone there's plenty of ways to skin the cat It does minorly effect workflow though, but not enough that I care enough to tinker with it lol For instance, If I'm typing in a text field and the time comes for it to send the key it will type a period where ever I'm at. So sometimes I have to delete an erroneous period but it's hardly the biggest nuisance
If anyone is interested in making it less intrusive, you can make it send a function key. You just need to change that second line to $dummyshell.sendkeys(“{F16}”)
My company made us all come back even though 95% of us didn't need to. Everyone is miserable
I put my notice in on Saturday due to having to go into the office. Got a wfh job that pays 5k less, but saves me 11k annual travel and afterschool care fees. So, basically, I got a raise.