To think Microsoft Teams is a sexist load of male wankery

[GetUpAgain]

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.

Wow, you ok? Sounds like you're dying to find something to be grumpy about. By the way, you can change the set up so you don't only see the person who's speaking, sounds like you don't actually know how to work it. Have a cuppa and chill for bit

I use teams - sorry but I find your comments ridiculous - it focuses on the person speaking (female or male)

Agreed RE: not Microsoft’s fault, however as a woman in STEM too I do know exactly what you mean!

Love MS Teams, it has enabled me to do my job from home and still being visable, as well as continuing to be paid (very well). I thank our organisation for the infrastructure in place to have in excess of 5000 people working from and carrying on as normal, all using Teams.
Yep I sound like the advert...

I work in a men dominated field and use Teams daily - no such problems. I second whoever said you have a team, rather than Teams problem.

To person who asked how to raise a hand, we use side-chat for that and there is always a moderator of the meeting that monitors the chat and makes sure everyone is heard.

There are plenty of studies showing that men dominate in group contexts from schools up - it's an ingrained societal norm. It's also true that the more you're noticed, the more you succeed.

Software reflects the society and teams it was written in and by, so yes, by emphasising that the men are speaking more, they get more face time, so they are seen as contributing more (even if all they contribute in practical terms is actually noise).

Like another here, I've been working largely remotely for years, and rarely turn on the video - I've also learned to speak over people when necessary (eg. when chairing, or when someone is speaking rubbish, or when they're saying something they shouldn't, or that I am better placed to answer correctly) - but it was a learned behaviour, after too many frustrating meetings

Pretending that there aren't societal biases, and that they can't be reinforced or mitigated by bad or good technology, management, or teams is silly. Of course there are biases. My mother in law counted herself lucky that she was allowed to keep working when she married - you don't just lose that kind of baggage in a generation.

With, ime, men cocking up what is meant to be finished, because they want the last word.

.....and in my experience this is exactly what happens, but with women. I don't blame MS for that though.

@whippetwoman I work in an all female team. Teams works just fine 🤷🏼‍♀️

What you describe is nothing to do with Teams though. It is to do with the people you work with.

I don't like Teams for meetings and we've resorted using Zoom for that purpose. Everything else is okay.

Although our leader is male, there are two women who dominate the conversation a lot, so nothing to do with the sex of people using it either.

Skype for Business rather than Teams (because the useless IT department has been thinking about Teams for about 2 years now and doesn't see why a pandemic should make the slightest difference to their glacial progress). I work in a mainly female team and usually have considerable difficulty getting a word in edgeways.

So it works both ways.

It just seems like you hate men

Well my team Teams meeting is dominated by me (as I am the manager) and by one of my admin staff - because she never shuts up. The male staff really don’t dominate.

I tend to dominate my Teams calls because generally the people I work with need me around to direct/focus/force them to make decisions otherwise they'd dither and debate all day.

Fairly equally mixed team, the women are just as vocal as the men and I'm female.

Its not Teams you have an issue with......

The technology isn’t sexist, I feel like you are.

OP, as PP have said, it's not the tool.

To other posters, have a look at the product roadmap if you're waiting for features like more faces. There's a huge list of them.

I've been watching and waiting for the hands up release. It's in dev and the news was saying this month. Tracker says Q2 2020 (cy) so should be soon.

It'll make so much difference when I'm running my bigger meetings.

Why don't you just speak up and be heard in a typically male-dominated field? This will help yourself, the current women in tech generation and future women in tech.

Hoping it's hacked is not a solution to the root of this problem.

Talk more the . Your sex doesn’t hold you back. Act the same way as your colleagues and don’t expect to have a nice conversation gap for you to speak. Some women are just being polite by hanging about in the background. I’ve worked in banking for past 18 years and see this all the time. Push yourself to the front, no one else is going to do it for you

As PP mentioned, MS is working on more faces - it will be a three by three grid instead of the current two by two.

We just started using Teams during the lockdown and I haven't noticed the problems you mention, but we're not versioning documents. Most of the staff are women so haven't had the issue you mentioned about the video selection either.

YABU.

I have been on three zoom meetings today. All of which were mixed gender and all of which were dominated by female speakers.

If you don't like the man-face, speak up.

Software after all does not have the human problem of being sexually prejudiced

Actually you'd be surprised at the amount of in-built bias in AI.

Last week I was reading a report from the Institute of Work about the equality issues around using AI to recruit people because AI has its own bias. Lots of work has been done on the data/privacy issues around AI but not equality.

But in terms of Teams, you can switch the screen in Zoom and bluejeans to show everyone, you don't have to have it on speaker view. I've not done a big meeting in Teams so I don't know if it has the same functionality.

I do sort of see the OP's point. If the software displays the person who's speaking and men do more speaking, you see more men, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not as straight-forward as saying "women need to pipe up more". Have you heard the old adage, "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"? I keep quiet in meetings because I just know that if I say something it will be stupid or I will be made to feel by the mansplainers, that it is stupid.

I keep quiet in meetings because I just know that if I say something it will be stupid or I will be made to feel by the mansplainers, that it is stupid.

But that is something you need to work on, you see that right? Don't let yourself be made small.

I dislike Teams because I can't see all faces. I need to see faces and reactions as deaf person. In our Teams chats some people dominate more chatting away while others have faces 'let me get on with email/something else'. Introvert vs extrovert problem?)

@overandunder9 if you are using Zoom there's a 'raise your hand' feature on it, might be worth using that?

Zoom is exactly the same and you can configure it to not switch to the active speaker on both Teams and Zoom.

@Nikhedonia Unfortunately our school only uses Teams. A ‘hands up’ function like the one on Zoom would make life so much easier.