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.

@MadameBee
I don’t know why it’s supposed to be better than Skype for business?
Skype and MS Teams are both Microsoft products.
Skype (aka Lync) is going - in less than a year. MS is not going to support it for any longer, hence they deployed Office 365, including MS Teams.
The advantages to Skype are incredible:

• you keep your conversations
• you can tag / invite / nominate / share with anyone within or outside your organisation
• you can still chat or make call or initiate Teams meetings which can be added to your Outlook calendar
• Outlook calendar - not only add it but when you set up a meeting / have a Teams meeting the link will be there and you can join with one click
• chats are recorded and saved to your OneDrive...etc

....and my personal fave - blur the background!!!

There is a hands up function.
Our team uses it all the time.
Secret is to have a good chair person who seeks everyones opinion.

You need to SHOUT louder OP. That will show 'em (not really, but I think you just want to dominate or your tribe to dominate, anyway).

Put on a Delorean backdrop or wear a funny hat. Everyone will talk about you instead.

The hand raising feature is fairly new, so it might not have been deployed in all companies: office365itpros.com/2020/04/16/hands-up-in-teams-meetings/

To be honest, during most meetings I don't feel the need to see people staring back at me whilst yawning, playing with their hair etc. Seeing the 4 most recent speakers is fine. 9 will be ok when it arrives. I guess it depends on what you do - I use it for team meetings on 10-12 people, but also for delivering webinars to up to 150 people. I make sure I keep an eye on the chat pane and give others the chance to speak.

OP, if you're feeling militant, you can mute others!

Yes I probably do have a crap team etc, but I wish the software made us more equal not less.

So you want it to pick out womens faces? Voices? And keep them on screen even when they arent saying anything?

Utter nonsense. Any excuse to have a manmoan.

Peggysgettingcrazy, I suppose arguably, does the design encourage certain behaviour that is discrimanatory, should that have been a question when designing it in the same way that, in my field- data protection, 'Privacy by design' has to be thought about at the engineering stage.

Goldenbear I dont the design is discriminatory. It shows who is speaking.

If you have a bad team, teams will highlight it. It will highlight people who constantly interact, inappropriately.

If you have a good team it will high light that. Our board meetings mainly consistently of men. My department is run by females, we get as much 'screen time' as any of the men.

I dont see how showing the faces of someone not speaking, does anything except highlight that, that person is not talking.

The software, is as discriminatory as the people using it.

If the people in the team are dicks and its not well controlled, then the dickish behaviour becomes more obvious.

Then you have the issue of how does it identify females? Face, voice pattern? What if you arent particularly feminine? Thats a whole different host of problems.

And what if the women on the team, at that meeting really don't have anything to add? Just keep them on anyway?

Kind of defeats the point of video calling.

I bet if you went in with a different mindset, things might be different. Try it some day OP, I dare you.

Sounds like OP is suffering from Classic PICNIC syndrome - problem in chair, not in computer. I found her ‘oh the software is so sexist woe is me’ simultaneously depressing and laughable

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

This sort of crap is the reason why people take the piss out of feminists. This could not be less of an important issue and yet here you are claiming it's sexism.

I suspect your team has a you problem.

Teams has its faults, I spent FOUR hours today trying to resolve a memory clash because it is badly written and poorly tested. Right now, I hate the bloody thing, but I can’t accuse it of being sexist.

Have a long slow breakfast with your favourite food and be Intentionally late today. Get some fresh air before work.

Sounds like you need better version control. You do sound a bit sexist yourself though tbh, as do most people who use terms like ‘the menz’ / mansplaining, etc.

I loathe teams/Microsoft sharey things in general. It’s like they’re specifically designed to glitch on OS X.

It’s you that’s the problem, OP

I love macs but I shudder at the thought of using one for Word docs etc.

I am afraid that any software that would put women in the spotlight even when they are not saying anything would actually be more dentrimental to their development and confidence. Also, as a woman who has always worked in a predominantly male environment - I find all measures that are designed to push women forward for the sake of equality offensive - as if it is presuming I am not capable enough to do so on my own. Can't imagine a bigger assumption of inequality than that. Women being ignored at a meeting when they want to speak is a team issue and very much team's manager's oversight and fault.

I agree, it’s so called colleagues, not the software.

MS are releasing new functionality this month that will allow up to 9 faces to be displayed on Teams, so it will be more like Zoom.

Genuinely batshit....

A conversation program shows the people engaging in conversation.

The problem is with you, not the software.

I'm a pretty big feminist... The answer is yes you're unreasonable.

Sounds like you're a little sexist and/or have issues with a particular group of men in your workplace.

On zoom you can change the view so you can see all members of the meeting, not just the one talking 👍

WOW you are looking for problems that aren't there and shouting sexism at everything you don't like.
All our conference calls are dominated by 4 woman most of the guys don't speak wouldn't think our calls are sexist at all.
Sorry to be blunt you sound a nightmare to work with and you are even pissed of by an auto email off MS as if it's a personal thing to you.

I think there could possibly be some discussions about the equality impact if this way of working becomes long term. In one way it more be equal with the development of a wfh culture, and setting up infrastructure which could benefit women who might stereotypically be more likely to work from home. People ending up in a similar position where they have to work at home with children present.

Equally as another poster mentions it might mean that people are more easily excluded, eg if someone is in the office they might be involved in conversations about projects etc but virtually these are closed discussions that need an invite and can become much more cliquey.

I know my team had a discussion about making sure work is evenly distributed (including the more intresting work!) to those at home, so that those without carer commitments who've worked in the office dont come out unfairly advantaged.

These are discussions worth having but the idea of being able to update versions, and mics showing whos speaking just seems to be a personal gripe

but I wish the software made us more equal not less

Stop being a plank. The software doesn't give a shiner shite if you're make it female. It picks up on the people speaking if you want to be seen/heard- then speak up!

FGS you don't want to be 'equal' you want priority

I'm a female executive in the tech industry - i.e. the most male dominated segment of a male dominated field.

And I'm with all the PP who've pointed out that it's not the software but the people with whom you're collaborating over it.

There is one area in which Teams has a genuine sex bias, mind: you'll notice that the background blur/picture algoritm has a tendency to assume that busy backgrounds must be hair if it doesn't find actual hair and cut people's heads out with a bit of unblurred "halo". Unfortunately, male baldness is a lot more common than female baldness. So, really, Teams is sometimes just telling bald blokes there's something missing and tries to fix it. Inconsequential but can look rsther hilarious.