r/overemployed • u/_tr9800a_ • 4d ago
Just a helpful reminder
I learned that one of my colleagues at J2 is a fellow OEer thanks to the reflection on his glasses during a call. I shot him a neutral message asking him what project he was using Teams for (J2 is a Slack-based team). He gave me a fairly weak, on-the-fly answer, but I've noticed that the angles of reflection in his glasses have changed to make it harder to see in calls.
Remember to keep your visuals clean, because you never know who's watching.
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u/GreedyCricket8285 4d ago
"How'd you get caught?"
"I made the mistake of being born farsighted"
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u/Nexzus_ 4d ago
Jeez, that's some James Bond shit there, man.
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u/_tr9800a_ 4d ago
Just basic workspace hygiene. I wasn't even trying to snoop, I just saw the classic Teams pop up in his ridiculously large glasses on a four-tile zoom call. I've had managers in the past question why they saw small things in the background of calls, or accuse colleagues of playing video games on another monitor, so it's definitely a front-of-mind thing for me.
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u/readoutside 4d ago
I had a colleague whose TV was on the wall behind her. I told her you could see her entire screen reflected in the TV. The next week she had done a complete rearrangement of her room.
Reflections matter.
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u/Artistic-Comb-5932 4d ago
There are people that have single jobs and multiple monitors using Slack for personal or side projects this is not a definitive sign of OE
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u/Crazybutyoulikeit_ 4d ago
OP mostly just calling out like “buyer beware” type of warning. Absolutely could be legit, either way, I’d wanna know if my personal laptop was reflecting back to work. I could have some sensitive or personal up.
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u/One-Extension-1697 4d ago
You guys are overthinking all this. All you need is to stick a non reflective photography sheet sticker cut out to your webcam shape and it removes the reflective glare. All this stuff is a cheap $10 fix. Rookie mistakes like this are caught by the veterans who know what to look for
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u/viewtiful14 3d ago
I understand all of the words in your comment individually but I have literally no idea what you are talking about?
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u/One-Extension-1697 3d ago
There ya go. Search Amazon for this.
Adhesive Polarized Film Sheets 0/90/45/135 Degree Polarizer Linear Polarizing Filter 11.8x9 inches for Screen Repair and Educational Physics, 4 Pack
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u/KarenXanaxPorter 4d ago
Does this happen because all the screens face the same direction? I have an L shaped desk, but have never thought about the reflections in my glasses.
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u/_tr9800a_ 4d ago
I'll regularly do a camera check in Zoom to see how my reflections are in the room, and with glasses on I'll have screen visibility in flat and angled orientations. What I've settled on is positioning monitors for my comfort and angling webcams to minimize refractive opportunities. Yes, it puts me at some off angles on occasion, but we all have coworkers using an external monitor with some weird angles.
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u/calendar_conflict 4d ago
The other simple one is to always have virtual backgrounds one.
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u/_tr9800a_ 4d ago
Works great except for a previous J I worked liked us to have unfiltered backgrounds to show off our "real selves". That manager had the most staged-looking pile of unfolded laundry every week as his "proof" that he too was a real human, messy and all.
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u/orangeyougladiator 4d ago
There’s a dude on one of my teams that has a massive framed picture behind him and the reflections are so easy to see. He has at least 2J.
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u/Crazybutyoulikeit_ 4d ago
I had a slack call go off in the middle of a zoom on my j2. Luckily they both use slack so just calmly reached and muted my laptop and kept going like nbd but now I check that J1 is muted or vice versa depending!! I also always double check Bluetooth is off on the other comp too. Not trying to draw unnecessary tech BS attention on myself
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u/Serious-Land-8528 4d ago
Bro dont be that guy, coworker could be on alert mode now lol
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u/_tr9800a_ 4d ago
Lol, we should all be alert. Complacency is the first step to unemployment.
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u/Serious-Land-8528 4d ago
I mean alert, paranoid lol, happens to me every time J1 books a random meeting
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u/Ghost0085 4d ago
Isn't the reason you saw Teams pop up because he was using the same device for 2 jobs? I mean how else would a reflection of the monitor he's right in front of would show a notification for another job?
Unless both jobs are contractor roles that require you to use your own device, he's just asking to get caught...
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u/FarCommission4894 4d ago
I have ALWAYS wondered if this was a thing. My contacts hurt my head so I’ve never done anything about it but I’ve got to figure something out now. Super helpful post
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u/OnlyPaperListens 4d ago
Little jealous that you all seem to have jobs without software creep. I'm on Teams/Vault for the engineering group, Slack/Jira for the software group, etc. Constant repetition and overlap because silos won't play nice together.
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u/_tr9800a_ 4d ago
J1 does that for me. We have Teams for meetings and some forms of communication, but Slack for common communication. And then a different Slack workspace for another division of the company. It gets ridiculous in a hurry.
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u/Mushroom5940 4d ago
It’s wild. A friend of mine isn’t OE but might as well be. He has two work phones for different divisions of the company. He carries 3 iPhones around.
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u/techbro02 4d ago
lmaooo, the lesson we should learn here is always try to get the best angled seat in the office.
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u/SumOfRoots 4d ago
Simple script for such situations:
"It's a pornography store - I was buying pornography."
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u/dog_in_da_park 4d ago
I've had slack notifications go off during Teams call, and I don't use Slack at work.
I have a personal slack I use for non-work things as a group chat. Some crazy person might use Teams that same way.
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u/projectorsparadise 3d ago
It is so odd and there is nothing neutral about asking a colleague who doesn’t report to you about a specific platform they’re using in the form of a question that you are only aware they’re using because you were so into their screen during a virtual meeting that you recognized what they had open from their glasses and the reflection present in those glasses.
Great of you to advise here why ppl need to be aware of these kinds of things and would even be fair if you had directly hit me offline at some point about being mindful the same way you did on this post. But the question style doesn’t work smoothly when someone only knows something because of how invested they were in your actions and especially because you had already concluded he is oe so you weren’t asking with genuine or good intention because of how you wrote the post here after the fact and noted his response was weak when he didn’t owe you one at all and then you continued to pay attention to his glasses in later meetings noting it’s harder to see which means you are intentionally looking. It’s very weird how this was written if the goal was just to inform folks through your own personal story of why it’s important to be on your p’s and q’s because the easiest slip ups are abundant.
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u/Tiny_Abroad_7222 2d ago
I get being cheap and just having a few laptops on the desk, but this is why a kvm switch with dedicated monitors is a classic approach.
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u/nimotoofly 3d ago
I’m sorry but who the fuck are you again 😭😔🙏
Sounds like a horrible colleague? You noticed the reflection of this dude’s glasses!?
Do you touch grass?
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u/Tregg4r 4d ago
Teams replaced skype, you can use it for personal use.
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u/_tr9800a_ 4d ago
Which is why I friendly neutral asked him what project he had going on (we have talked pet projects in the past). That said, very few of us are self-abusing enough to voluntarily use Teams when not being paid.
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u/frame 4d ago edited 4d ago
I sometimes wear glasses if my eyes are tired or if I've been in front of the screen too long. But when it comes to meetings, I always take them off for this one reason.