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Original poster

To think Microsoft Teams is a sexist load of male wankery

218 replies

GetUpAgain · 04/05/2020 13:09

Maybe it's just my experience, I work in STEM, but I fucking detest Teams. And now Zoom has bad press I'm being pressured into more and more Teams wankery.

In a meeting, you only see the faces of the most talkative people. As men tend to dominate meetings this makes women (who are already less-heard) less visible.

The facility to share documents and collaborate in changing them just leads to 50 million wrong versions of the almost same thing. With, ime, men cocking up what is meant to be finished, because they want the last word.

'I will share my screen' = I didn't prepare properly and will now waste your time mansplaining shit you already know.

And then Microsoft sends me this emails telling me how smart I am working. It can get to fuck. That's not how you measure productivity.

Can someone please just hack it, let's have a scandal that means we don't have to use it anymore.

OP posts:
IceniSky · 04/05/2020 13:15

I guess there is some bias here. In F2F you are at least present in the room. With Teams, yes, more men in a team means more mens faces being displayed.

Tbh, I'm finding that in my male dominated STEM job, they are having more sideline chats and calls. Like attracts like etc and I feel so excluded.

rottiemum88 · 04/05/2020 13:16

Okaaaay... Confused

minettechatouette · 04/05/2020 13:19

If the face display thing exacerbated existing behaviours - ie discouraged less talkative people from talking even more and encouraged more talkative people to talk more - then it would be an issue, but I'm not convinced it does do that. It just means that you can see the faces of the people talking. If it's mostly men talking, you will see the men, but I'm not sure the software is actually encouraging men to dominate.

itsnotcakeitsbaby · 04/05/2020 13:20

If I'm honest you're the one who sounds sexist in this scenario! I'm sorry you're having a bad experience though.

BlackForestCake · 04/05/2020 13:21

These issues are endemic to meetings, it's not really the software's fault.

DailyMailHater · 04/05/2020 13:21

I work on oil & gas - a very male
Dominated industry we are using teams and I don’t feel the way you do about it....it has made working from home and collaborative working so much easier and we are already looking at ways to utilise it when things are “back to normal” (whatever the new normal is)

fascinated · 04/05/2020 13:22

You don’t have a Teams problem.

You have a team problem.

peoplewhoannoyyou · 04/05/2020 13:23

You are just experiencing badly-run meetings. The software is irrelevant if meetings aren't conducted in a proper manner.

You can easily expand the list to see who is on the call. If you feel women aren't talking enough, pipe up! Encourage them to participate!

BlueJava · 04/05/2020 13:24

I use it all the time and haven't experienced those issues and my industry is very male dominated. Document versions are very easy, I am currently pulling together a large doc with lots of contributors and we have all kept to rhe same one - i did make it clear how we were going to use it beforehand though. Perhaps you need to speak up more?

fascinated · 04/05/2020 13:24

And if women are not speaking up then it’s their own shout. Why don’t they? It’s not like they are rendered mute by the software (or real life). Just get on with it.

Vampyress · 04/05/2020 13:25

As a female software engineer who works with exclusively men, I get the distinct impression that it is your colleagues who may or may not be sexist. Software after all does not have the human problem of being sexually prejudiced. I am sorry you are having a negative experience, I have used teams to have very meaningful engagements with my colleagues and consider it to have been invaluable during isolation and remote working.

whippetwoman · 04/05/2020 13:25

I agree with you OP.
It's not so bad on my mainly female-based team but my OH has been having Senior Management meetings on it and it is almost exclusively male dominated - the men talk a lot more than the women who seem to wait for a gap in which to speak rather than the men. This is purely anecdotal based on our work place which is a University - we both work at the same place.

@rottiemum88 I guess your experience of Teams is different though? What's it like in your workplace?

thatmustbenigelwiththebrie · 04/05/2020 13:26

It's definitely the women that are the most talkative in my team. I hardly ever see the faces of the men as they never speak!

dontdisturbmenow · 04/05/2020 13:26

What a lot of nonsense. If you have an issue within your team, tackle that, don't make it a generality.

DoTheNextRightThing · 04/05/2020 13:26

Um... what?

All my work teams are predominantly women, so there's never a risk of males taking over. Sounds like your workplace is sexist. The software is just designed that way due to tech limitations. It's not some master scheme by Bill Gates to suppress women through video conferencing...

cinammonbuns · 04/05/2020 13:26

Is it teams that is sexist or the people you work with?

FTMF30 · 04/05/2020 13:29

My goodness. That's the biggest load of tripe I've ever heard. Don't blame your shit colleagues on MS Teams.

And if you want to be more visble thrn speak up. Things like this make me embarrassed to be a woman.

BendingSpoons · 04/05/2020 13:29

We use it and I definitely talk more than my male colleague Grin

I don't particularly like that you can't see everyone but we have used it for meetings of 90 people, might be tricky to display everyone then.

The thing about amending documents, we normally have shared documents so others can amend them anyway. I like being able to see where in the document people are so I can spy on the work they are doing!

SRS29 · 04/05/2020 13:29

You don't have a Teams problem

You have a team problem

This Smile

BendingSpoons · 04/05/2020 13:31

My 4yo has also worked out that all these (Teams, Zoom) highlight in some way who is talking. When she is there (with family) she makes constant noise!

overandunder9 · 04/05/2020 13:31

I hate it. Having to teach a class using it is a nightmare. Could have 27 kids giving me the middle finger the whole time and I wouldn’t have a clue. Plus no way of them signalling that they would like to speak so it’s interruption after interruption.

Cordial11 · 04/05/2020 13:31

Ok.... I work in a business with 99% men, we heavily use teams and have before all this. We have none of these issues???

CMOTDibbler · 04/05/2020 13:31

Those things are Teams, its the people you work with.

Now, if you were complaining about the stupid product design which doesn't allow you to organise your Teams, so now I have fifty squillion different ones and can't find anything, then I'd be totally with you. I'm not sure who did the usability studies on it, but it does my head in

lazylinguist · 04/05/2020 13:32

Sorry, but that's absolutely ridiculous! It's not Microsoft's fault who does or doesn't speak in your meetings. And it's the normal (and polite) thing to do in face-to-face meetings to turn and look at the person who's speaking. If women aren't getting their say in your meetings, that's a problem with your company. Ditto if male colleagues are dominating or being arses.

DrDreReturns · 04/05/2020 13:32

Haven't found this myself. The first person to show me how to share a screen on teams was a woman.

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