It looks like MS Teams will never be getting installed on my phone.

I don’t even allow location sharing with my own family on and ongoing basis.

There was an article here not too long ago about someone decrying a fellow cow-worker for their rather liberal usage of AI and how their manager would see it and promote it, changing company process in the meantime. The writer found this revulsive. But what I found interesting is what was not discussed. This “Microsoft just did X” is another entry in that.

Folks, let’s not beat around the bush: if you’re not your own boss, you don’t have agency and ultimately you have no control over the situation. The frustration is rooted in the lack of control, or at the very least in the lack of perception of cooperation that is a temporary substitute for agency and control (until the rug gets pulled from underneath them). It’s not Microsoft, it’s not Teams, it’s not AI. It’s not the person being promoted for doing this. It’s you. If it was your company, you could have put an end to it and changed the processes immediately. But it isn’t. So for having the privilege of working at whatever company you’re at, and getting paid whatever money you’re paid, you have to eat shit. This is the price you pay.

If you don’t want to eat shit from your bosses, you have to be your own boss. I think that’s as succinct and straightforward of a solution to things like these that you can find.

> Remember when you could text Dave from the office to turn your PC on because you were stuck in traffic?

I don't understand why this doesn't still work. If Dave from the office has access to your PC, presumably Dave and your PC are in the office, connected to your office's network, and thus it would appear that you are in the office?

Or is the assumption that you're carrying another device with you that would give you away? In which case, shouldn't the complaint be more about being forced to perform some kind of work task (like carrying/being accessible by your phone) when you're off the clock...which is hardly a new issue/complaint?

> If you connect to a Wi-Fi network that isn't your company's, Teams will simply display the name of that network. So if you decide to take a "working lunch" and connect to "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantly.

Looks like I need to rename my home wifi to "Corporate Network."

I think the only outrageous people here are the paranoid and the slackers...

My manager has called me when I was doing a mid-day grocery and I just told him: "sorry for the noise, I am at the grocery store at the moment". This is absolutely no problem at all, he asked if I wanted to call back when I got home...

It's pretty much making a storm in a glass of water here.

That's karma farming by bitching the ebil Microsoft...

Assuming your office has entry gated with a badge (which I assume most do in 2026), don't they already know when you're physically at the office?

Heck, my employer's entry system was already coupled to my phone's location (optional, but meant I didn't have to reserve a desk manually). So, I already looked like I was coming to the office on weekends because the grocery store is next door.

EDIT: not to mention Teams already shows your status as "Away" if you don't type for 5 minutes. Sitting there reading a document - yep, you're clearly smoking in the parking lot or wandering around gossiping.

> If you connect to a Wi-Fi network that isn't your company's, Teams will simply display the name of that network. So if you decide to take a "working lunch" and connect to "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantly

But what if I have a secondary wifi network in my home that says "BigCorpSuperSecureWifi", wouldn't that work? What if that's the name of my phone's hotspot?

For what it's worth, unless it can be conclusively argued that surveillance is necessary for the task to be done this sort of continuous surveillance is illegal in Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. It violates the privacy of employees.

Most middle managers will either not require this, or require it but find ways to themselves avoid being tagged as logging into their home wifi. The prevailing culture around middle-management is one of inefficiency and rule avoidance. Middle managers need to be replaced by AI already.

Can I kill this via pihole somehow? My wife uses teams. This is a sick “tool” that will be wielded asymmetrically by middle management to fire people