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.

@CMOTDibbler to organise : on the left, click and drag the names of the teams up and down. You can also use the star to favourite a team. The unstarred ones drop away into the "more" at the bottom of the list.

OP I've found Askamanager blog v useful to develop some skills to address the issue you're facing. I've also decided that 90% of the time I CBA to go against the grain and speak up. I still get paid and don't have to obsess over whether I was too "aggressive" in tone..

I think Teams is great - sorry to hear about your colleagues though

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

To an extent. I also notice it when people (try to) make others look small - male and female. But maybe they don't notice whereas I cringe for them. Anyway I was derailing the thread slightly!

You have a sexist team problem. I don't think you can blame the software for that!

@overandunder9 oh that's a shame!

YANBU - men make up the top 71.4% of all exec and senior positions in the UK, it would be a bit silly to think certain tech being used wouldn’t have an impact on the visibility of women.

I’m looking forward to Caroline Criado Perez’s take on this in the future.

@PippaPegg I've found that- but at the moment I have 78 active teams and I need to organise them by theme/ group, or to put a header on them so that I know at a glance what they contain - often the title isn't very clear, and I'm tangentially involved so remembering that 'Project MN' is the one to provide feedback on conferencing (for instance) isn't at the top of my brain

@CMOTDibbler - have a word with your IT staff. Ours was able to setup channels within teams for the small stuff so there's a hierarchy of sorts, makes it much easier to navigate. To do this they had to take away most people's ability to create a new team. It got out of hand initially when everyone could setup a team willy-nilly.

There are videoconferencing systems that have automatic adjustment that will dial participants volumes up/down if they are dominating the call or being overlooked. Not sure if any of the cloud based systems have that though or just the more expensive hardwear set ups.

Thanks @MissConductUS - I don't think they'd do that as its a big company, and it seems like my annoyance isn't enough to take several thousand peoples rights away. I'm just the victim of my cross functional/team working

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!

^^
Yes this is what my 6yo does

Teams is a pile of pants, mainly I think because it relies on everyone having brilliant WiFi and not having an autistic kid dominating it.

Hahahahahahaha, oh wait... you’re serious? FWR is over there 👉🏻

Don’t be absurd - teams is not made for men - I work with both and both sexes do fine. Maybe it’s your colleagues - very unfair and silly to generalise Really.

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

Of course it can be, it will embody all the assumptions and prejudices of the team building it. If its a simple binary question being asked that may not be an issue but for anything making a decision it absolutely makes a difference.

That is exactly why diversity in design and built teams is so important.

Thanks for all the replies. I purposefully didn't post in feminist forum because I wanted a wider range of replies, many of which are very depressing. Of course I personally speak up but that doesn't solve sexism for others. Yes I probably do have a crap team etc, but I wish the software made us more equal not less.

And yes of course I am a sexist man hater because I call out everyday sexism that I encounter

I work in a male dominated industry. Women not speaking up isn't a problem in my world.

Meh so speak up and be heard? My team is mainly men and if I have something to say, I speak.

Teams isn't sexist. It shows the person currently talking and the other people who recently talked, and then it filters on who joined first as well I think, or at least it seems that way. I don't know the actual code behind it.

Doesn't help me do my job though. Already had Skype and emails, this is just a third method of communication. I just don't care about it. The advanced admin stuff though will make my job easier when I'm finally allowed to use it.

Completely laughably ridiculous to blame the software for arsery. You could suggest guidelines such as pre reads/prep, no sharing screens unless really necessary (could just say it wastes time and meetings taking too long), set time for meetings, tighter agendas, etc etc. Sounds like they are unfocussed and the document thing is terribly managed.

This is why we've chosen zoom even with issues - although main organisation uses both noticed that teams doesn't encourage participation to the same level and it can feel like it's the same voices each meeting so for our sub group we've set up with zoom so we start off seeing everybody - also send out intro prep questions and circulate answers before each meeting so that everybody gets a voice even those too shy to talk - so far it helps with the younger members of the team who naturally defer to the older

@GetUpAgain - YABU - Teams is just a platform - which I love!
It certainly requires good communication skills and damn very good Stakeholder management (by the host and attendees)
I always start with a meeting etiquette - and before you were wondering I am not a man, but working in a male dominated industry, team .. where every single attendee would love to have the final say.

MS Teams is amazing! There are some great videos on how to use it. Maybe you just need a bit of practice (and confidence?)

I thought that the stats prove that women in STEM experience a greater amount of discrimination so it could be that this bias is built in to the software as the software developers work in that industry. I work in data protection/compliance and work mainly with men, when I am conducting due diligence I mainly liaise with men in software companies, anecdotally I think there is bafflement and undertones of irritation if you question things too much, almost like it is an affront to them but I often don't know the age of the man I'm talking to so maybe it is a generational thing.

@Vampyress there is a theory that software can and often is inherently sexist - this isn’t on purpose but due to side effect of the data gap between data collected on female behaviour/ lifestyles compared to data collected on men which informs the algorithms upon which programs are based.
I’m not sure I agree with everything in the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Peraz but I do see that collecting behavioural data on only a certain sub sector of the population will lead to problems with extrapolation and design
It’s an interesting read recommend it to be read with an open & questioning mind.
I work in construction and my mother was a computer programmer so am used to not being confined by societal conventions for women but I do see that we have some issues embedded deep in our culture that make issues difficult for some to overcome
and I think some of them we are so used to just dealing with we don’t do anything about them.
Sorry rant over

I work in a female dominated industry so we don’t have any men

I don’t know why it’s supposed to be better than Skype for business?

That's genius, I wish we had it for my team so I could prove that Brian and Steve* never shut the fuck up and let anyone else speak.

*Names changed.