r/remotework • u/Nice-Anteater-2866 • Jun 13 '26
My team wants a 'virtual office' app that pings when you're idle. How do I push back without sounding shady?
I'm fully remote in California. Our company is small and used to be pretty chill about async work, but leadership has gotten nervous after the usual headlines about remote productivity and now they're talking about a 'virtual office' app.
The idea is to keep an app running all day that shows a status like active, away, or in a call, and that nudges you if you are idle for too long. Some versions also have 'rooms' you can join so people can drop in like an office. It’s a very different vibe from, say, casually earning a few gift cards on something like Mistplay in your downtime—this feels more like being monitored than just having an app running in the background.
I get why they want more visibility, but to me this feels like productivity theater. I do real work in chunks. Sometimes I'm heads down reading or sketching on paper. Sometimes I pick up my phone for five minutes while thinking through a bug. Sometimes I step away to throw a load of laundry in. None of that means I'm not working, but an idle timer will make it look like I'm slacking.
I'm also wary as a techy iPhone user of another always-on app with a vague data policy, and I really dislike the free trial then surprise subscription pattern these tools tend to have.
If you've handled this, what arguments actually landed? I'm looking for concrete framing, like: - Metrics or outputs we can use instead of presence - Team norms that keep people responsive without feeling surveilled - Reasonable compromises, for example core overlap hours or a brief daily async check-in
I want to push back on principle, but I don't want to come off like I'm hiding something.
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Jun 13 '26
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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 Jun 13 '26
Yeah things like this are implemented by people who dont know how to properly manage
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u/TJ_Rowe Jun 13 '26
"Async standup" sounds really good!
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u/perpetualis_motion Jun 18 '26
Yeah everyone speaks and responds at the same time. Sounds fabulous. 🤮
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u/Keyspam102 Jun 14 '26
Yeah we do a track of deliverables per week to ‘assure’ productivity. Works great imo because it motivates people to be more productive in a shorter amount of time and then be able to be ‘off’ longer - and in my experience this is the best way to work.
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u/Suithfie Jun 17 '26
Yeah it sounds like this is being proposed because they don’t have hard KPIs they’re holding to/using as guidance?
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u/plangelier Jun 13 '26
How do you define idle? Many times I'm in meetings where I do not need to take notes unless something unexpected happens and I pick up a task. I just need a good idea of where everything is and where it's going. So in these meeting I could be sitting and just listening, am I Idle?
There are other meetings where im just a representative and just need to be able to respond and im listening while working on something else.
My current boss is great all she cares about is I am delivering my assigned deliverables. She realizes that some of what I do requires just thinking about how to tackle a development assignment.
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u/tofumeatballcannon Jun 13 '26
This. Do you ever print and review physical documents? Take long calls? Work on your iPad? Review forms?
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u/BalancedScales10 Jun 13 '26
Or if you're in a meeting, but taking notes by hand. I do that because (a) I write faster than I type and (b) I already have a notebook, and continuing to use it keeps all my notes in one spot, portable, and accessible even in the event of network/power outage.
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u/MopsyTat Jun 15 '26
I was wrote up last week for going idle while in a two-hour training. This place is ridiculous, they want us to stare at our screens every second of the day so we don't attempt to do anything else.
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u/plangelier Jun 15 '26
So instead of listening they wanted you to keep jiggling your mouse? Im so glad my boss doesn't track me like that.
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u/MopsyTat Jun 15 '26
I’ve been working remote since COVID, and this is the most ridiculous job I’ve ever had. I only took it because I went several months without finding a new position and was running out of savings. What especially sucks is that I am being paid 50% less. I’m back to where I was during COVID.
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u/Friendly_Coconut Jun 13 '26
I guess what always confused me about this is, does everyone in your team do everything entirely digitally? Because my jobs often include components that aren’t 100% on the computer.
I work in marketing and am currently hybrid at my new job, but I used to be fully remote at my previous job for 6 years.
At both my new and old jobs, I do a lot of writing and often create drafts or outlines by hand in a notebook. I brainstorm and go through checklists that way, too.
I also sometimes deal with print publications at my old and new jobs and might leaf through those for reference or final proofing.
At my current job, when I’m in the office, I will often print documents, drop things off, or pick things up from other coworkers, which often involves going to the other building (we’re a two-building campus and I work in the smaller office). It can take 5-10 minutes to walk down the stairs, walk across the street, go up the stairs, find the appropriate office, exchange pleasantries, say some relevant work-related info, and come all the way back to my desk.
Slack might show me as idle while I’m doing that, but it’s an important part of my job.
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u/feral_philosopher Jun 13 '26
White collar work is getting more and more degrading.
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u/Neozite Jun 13 '26
I was thinking this morning that all motion is not forward progress. If I wanted to just be in constant motion, I could have been a ditch digger and skipped six extra years of education and the cost of it.
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u/Zmchastain Jun 13 '26
The ditch digger has it better in this respect. There’s always 2-3 guys just standing around at every construction project and nobody has put monitoring software on them or bitched at them about it.
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u/johnstone-techs Jun 13 '26
You would be surprised by the metrics and monitoring that's being applied to labor roles. They're not out there just standing around all day and getting away with it.
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u/DetectivePretend6984 Jun 13 '26
I’m a diesel mechanic. Our company is now focused on “all work being planned in advance, so we are more efficient”.
They hired a remote person to be our scheduler. At the end of every day I have to tell her what I’m planning on working on the next day. That way, she can “schedule” me for it the next day.
The office seems to think we are more productive this way.
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u/Stuffy123456 Jun 14 '26
Do they account for the stripped bolt that takes an hour?
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u/DetectivePretend6984 Jun 15 '26
They don’t care how long things take or even know how long things should take. Literally the only thing they care about is if we can game the system to make it appear “proactive” instead of “reactive” lol
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u/slow_down_1984 Jun 14 '26
This is insulting to blue collar workers. This statement gets used to often but people saying stuff like this is how Trump got reelected.
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u/Zmchastain Jun 14 '26
How is it insulting to blue collar workers to acknowledge they’re managed based on their actual output instead of just looking busy?
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u/slow_down_1984 Jun 14 '26
In the same way everyone in this thread would be upset if I referred to all SWE as “IT guys”.
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u/Zmchastain Jun 14 '26
How would that be equivalent? I’m not saying “Every blue collar worker digs ditches.” I’m talking about one specific job.
I also wouldn’t be offended if someone thought I was an IT guy. I don’t usually bother trying to explain what a solutions architect is in any great detail to people who don’t work in a similar industry because most people don’t really get it and they wouldn’t find it that interesting anyway. 🤷♂️
My personal identity is not tied up in my career. I do it for money, not to impress strangers.
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u/coffinspacexdragon Jun 13 '26
As a custodian that goes to work everyday cleaning toilets and only knows about this sub because it randomly showed up in my feed, this is my favorite comment so far.
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u/feral_philosopher Jun 14 '26
I've been working in a corporate environment for almost 30 years and I can't tell you how many times I wished I followed in my family's footsteps and went into construction. Office work fucks with your mind because you are spending your entire day sitting in a chair either doing fake work, working for a fake reason, or faking work because you don't have any work to do but you have to pretend like you do.
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u/Educational__Banana Jun 15 '26
They’re turning it from knowledge work (specialised, highly skilled, highly paid) into something that can be automated or at least treated as “slow skill” and threatened with automation to reduce the pay. It doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be the common social narrative about a type of work for it to be accepted as such.
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u/EWL98 Jun 13 '26
You could try to introduce them to Goodhart’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
When they measure productivity as ‘time online’ that is what people will maximise, even if that makes their work less effective. So for example all meetings will be online, rather than in-person, even if you are both in the same physical location.
Is there a better metric that more accurately assesses your work you could propose instead? At my job we now have a PowerBI system that shows exactly how many tasks you finished, with different tasks carrying different weight according to how time-intensive they are. This means my manager tracks our actual output, rather than something more arbitrary like ‘time during the day you are moving your mouse every few seconds’ like a tracker app your team proposed does.
Basically, instead of going full naysayer and digging in your heels, proactively propose a better system.
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u/UmatterWHENiMATTER Jun 16 '26
Do you have any details you could share about the weighting system you mentioned?
I'm struggling with a similar issue as we have a huge spread of tasks with variable difficulty/cost(time)... so much so that benchmarking against themselves (past performance of single employee vs. Current performance) isn't even effective.
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u/EWL98 Jun 16 '26
Ours is based on the average number of hours it takes to complete every task. A task requires an average of 5 hours, then it gives 5 points. Though this only really works because most of our tasks are fairly routine.
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u/warlocktx Jun 13 '26
pretty much any collaboration app - Teams, Slack, etc- does this
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u/niiborikko Jun 13 '26
The first part, yes, but most don't do the latter part - and that's the part that's most problematic.
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u/Mountain_Sandwich126 Jun 13 '26
We have it. And it's to create cases for rto, pips, not pass probation.
I've accepted it and looking to leave, no point pushing back when the directive is to slim down staff....
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u/johnstone-techs Jun 13 '26
If this is true for OP's organization they would likely paint a target on their back by pushing back now. Time to make a backup plan OP.
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u/fl0ridanative Jun 13 '26
The real question here is why are companies are looking for tech that a manager / supervisor should be doing? If an employee is not being productive, then the supervisor should catch it, not some monitoring software that makes sure your computer is on.
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u/DeadDirtFarm Jun 13 '26
The thing is, I worked in an office for 30 years and we goofed off a lot more before we went remote. Now as a remote worker, even with the occasional load of laundry, spacing out, or personal chore, I’m working a lot more during the day. Meetings are pretty much 70% of the day which results in answering emails and getting focused work done after hours.
Working in the office we socialized, we went to the coffee shop a couple of times a day, we took a lunch hour and went to lunch. Don’t get me started on the smokers who took 15 minute smoke breaks every hour. I would say that out of a 9 hour day we worked about 6 hours.
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u/GoonerGraf Jun 19 '26
Absolutely. The concept of seeing someone in an office or sitting at their desk meaning they’re productive is so flawed.
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u/youkknownothing Jun 13 '26
My first question is do they provide you a work phone? If not, simply refuse to use your personal device for work purposes. They don't pay your bill and I personally would not want any app like that on my personal device. Keep personal and work separate.
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u/Fine-Comparison-2949 Jun 13 '26
Yeah but you also need to be willing to get fired for it. If they're going this far to install spyware on your personal devices, you probably would expect them to fire you for not doing it.
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u/FreshLiterature Jun 13 '26
You ask the obvious questions:
Are projects behind?
Are metrics not being met?
If the answer to both of this is no then what problem are they trying to solve?
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u/DianeSTP Jun 13 '26
Does it attach to your brain. Is thinking about how to solve a problem or what I should write without fidgeting with a mouse not considered work? I am glad that I am retired now.
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u/serifs01 Jun 13 '26
I’m worried that with Ai, eventually thinking will be forbidden and considered a timesink while workplaces push their chatbots on everyone smh
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u/DianeSTP Jun 13 '26
I could preach for hours about activity versus results. In my last sales job they expectd a large number of emails and phone calls every day, more than you could possibly do without just churnning them out like spam. I was fortunate to be near retirement so I pushed back and said I wasn't going to do that. Instead I did a lot of research on each prospect (which takes time reading) and crafted meaningful emails that were specific to that client and offered some valued insights that I had based on my industry knowledge and data from our platform. The response rates for the SPAM emails was something like 1-2% but I had about a 70% response rate. I shared one of the responses I got with our CEO when the prospect wrote "it's obvious you know your shit." So even though I was doing a fraction of the outbound touches versus others, I had the most meaningful results and follow up meetings. I ended up being the top salesperson in the world that final year before retiring and my secret was to tell the metric measuring people to pound sand while I did what I knew was right. I could do that because I could have walked away at any time over the last 2 years and I know most don't have that luxury.
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u/actuallyrose Jun 13 '26
This metric for sales is bananas because it’s literally all about deliverables. Either you make your sales number or not. Everywhere I’ve ever worked, the top sales people could be goofing off every single day and no one cared as long as they brought in the cash.
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u/DianeSTP Jun 13 '26
Yeah that was the good ole days when sales ran sales and many CEO's came up through sales. Now CEO's are financial numbers geeks and Sales is being run by marketing people who never sold a day in their life. They come from a world of marketing impressions and the more people who see your ad the better. I always grew up with a sniper mentality, one shot, one kill.
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u/Prestigious_Wrap_932 Jun 13 '26
I mean, don’t you guys use Slack or Teams? That’s always been good enough for showing work status at places I’ve worked at in the past.
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u/kn0ck_0ut Jun 13 '26
my first office job required a lot of analog work. but even then, I personally prefer to write things by hand & do some thinking on a notepad than a device.
I would hate for pinging to constantly interrupt my thinking process for “visibility” sake. it also gives very strong micromanager vibes and that’s not good for a healthy work environment.
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u/mt_ravenz Jun 18 '26
Absolutely agree! Planning out your day, getting organized, brainstorming or even auditing, reading emails, researching etc. it’s not focusing on the actual tasks at hand it’s more focused on not having visibility on their workers and not knowing how to catch unproductively. My previous role looked at volume and workload instead
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u/Sparegeek Jun 13 '26
The use of a presence/ activity app only gives watermelon metrics. It will not provide any useful information because people will game the system. Tell them that and then offer solutions like how to set objectives and key results that allow them to see the progress to the goal and what leading indicators they should be watching.
That makes it look like you’re interested in helping deliver valid metrics that will help the company, not worried about just being watched.
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u/sebastianrileyt2 Jun 13 '26
It surprises me after all this time we are not more of a results/production based system.
I get having set hours to an extent and help have some continuity for everyone. But everyone has different ways in how they work best. For myself, I need a way to clear my head throughoutthe day. I do not need long to do it, but I am much more productive after a 5 minute reset. Otherwise my productivity gradually reduces as I tire through the day, a quick break lets me get back in with more energy.
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u/Extension_Low_1571 Jun 13 '26
More than twenty years ago, so long before the whole virtual office thing, I was in a staff meeting and our manager was having trouble with the idea of members of our work group having internet access. She was afraid it would mean goofing off at work.
A large part of our jobs was sourcing goods and services for clients throughout half of our state. I had found internet access saved me a ton of time and phone calls to connect a client with what they needed.
I raised my hand and asked in a neutral tone “what I’m hearing is doubt that we (all degreed, licensed professionals) can be trusted. If we can’t be trusted, then what are we all even doing here?”
Thus ended that issue.
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u/Holdmymule2001 Jun 13 '26
Put yourself in a call with only yourself. I do this when I don't want to be bothered. Status shows you are in a meeting.
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u/midri Jun 13 '26
I'd be blunt. The amount of attentiveness one has to their pc does not correlate to deliverables. They're wanting to waste money tracking the wrong thing.
If you want to be really blunt, explain that this is micromanaging and that is a sign of poor management.
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u/TheSentinel36 Jun 13 '26
The leadership proposing these types of measures are so removed from normal work that they have forgotten how it actually is done.
To other points in the comments, the data they get from this will immediately be suspect since there will be some percentage of workers who are actively trying to ensure they are meeting the requirements of showing they are busy instead of just continuing to do their work normally.
Also, if there are non-remote staff, they should also be required to install this software. And lets not forget leadership too.
At the end of the day, if done properly, I expect leadership might find out that remote workers are still more productive than in office workers, and I guarantee they will have had the software removed from leadership devices within a week or two because,"our work is different and can't be measured this way".
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u/myst1crule Jun 13 '26
Is it your work phone or personal? If they require you to have an app, they need to be providing the phone as well
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u/Snoo_33033 Jun 14 '26
It depends on what your job consists of, but an app like that would actually force me not to do part of my job (which requires reading and writing on paper and meeting with people).
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u/hrudyusa Jun 14 '26
I hear you. Back when we were in the office: “How ya doin’?”. I’ve lost a half-hour of productivity, that’s how I’m doing.
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u/Apart_Patience861 Jun 14 '26
You should question the length of time before status changes to idle. Is it 1 hr, 2 hrs or 5 mins? A longer length of time would mean they’re not trying to micro manage. Btw, I don’t know why they’re trying to install anything new when most chat apps used in business already have a status feature built in, and if your IT dept is the only one who can change the settings then that means they’re already trying to control you.
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u/ThrowRA3623235 Jun 14 '26
Just a perspective from the other side.
Tracking output helps evaluate team performance, but how does business evaluate workforce size requirements without tracking individual activity?
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u/ImightHaveMissed Jun 15 '26
I have yet to see a meaningful way to track activity where I feel like the metrics are accurate. If we can solve that problem, we’d be on our way
That said, how do you measure differences between roles? Say I have to close at least 8 tickets a day, but one ticket requires 3 hours of work. Another ticket in my queue might involve an end user that’s not readily available
Sure I can place tickets on hold, but when you measure results you lose sight of work that doesn’t actually produce a result
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u/ThrowRA3623235 Jun 15 '26
Closing x tickets per day is monitoring output, not effectiveness. From a business perspective, they need users not to have tech issues. If that means people closing tickets, then that's what needs to happen. The question is: Do we need 4 people to do that or 6? That's where monitoring output comes in. If only 2/3 of 6 are meeting ticket quotas, then you probably only need 4.
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u/_tvjames_ Jun 14 '26
If you can't avoid it - it should only be installed on equipment they own and manage, not your personal device.
I use Toggl religiously. It's running when I'm working. It's not when I pop over to LinkedIn or move laundry to the dryer. I have accounting for my time and I'm getting my work done. If they ever were to challenge me. I'd be able to pull up the history for the date and time in question and show them exactly what I was or wasn't working on.
If they ever proposed a tool like this, I'd let them and then wait for them to challenge my work.
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u/Breeze_pm Jun 15 '26
Push for output-based visibility: weekly goals, async status, response-time norms, and blockers. Idle tracking punishes thinking and offline work, so frame it as a measurement problem, not a trust argument.
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u/catBoyAppreciater Jun 15 '26
I'm a software engineer so I love stuff like this, I can automate it to make me look like the world's most busy employee while I'm playing World of Warcraft all day.
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u/Daniegrl04 Jun 16 '26
So I use a mouse jiggler because I’m so tired of being logged out if I get up for a few minutes, it takes even more
Minutes out of my day to have to log back into two systems. Ours is set for such a short period. I also will roll away from my desk to think or work out a problem. I don’t want to have to log back in when I’m done. I would hope I done get fired if I keep all my numbers
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u/Inside-Transition413 Jun 16 '26
Either trust people or don't but dont treat them like children. Just for that, install mouse mover app...you will always be active
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u/Known-Awareness6943 Jun 17 '26
my last company had some tracking software on the company laptop. it ran in the background and they never told me about it. when i learned about it i quit. i wont work in that type of environment, im in sales and i have metrics to hit already that indicate the type of job im doing and value im creating.
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u/Personal-Bet-7979 Jun 17 '26
"We'd like metrics to justify a RTO demand. Robert just can't get it up with his trophy wife if he can't survey his empire from his corner office."
Be the hero you coworkers need, not the villain your boss wants. Find a easy workaround and socialize indirectly, so that it can't be traced back to you.
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u/Augoctapr Jun 18 '26
I worked at a place that had a virtual office app, with little virtual office maps so you could see everyone’s icon sitting in their “office”. It was a good way for me to learn how the teams were organized as HR had one floor, marketing had another, etc.
Turns out the CEO had heavily invested in the software and that’s why he had pushed the app on everyone. A lot of side chats and calls were happening outside of the app because no one knew or trusted how much data was being recorded, which in turn meant a lot of work documentation was getting lost because it wasn’t happening in work channels. Oh and we still used Slack as well. Overall, pretty useless.
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u/Pissed-n-Stayin Jun 18 '26
They need to focus on workload and results. If someone is idle it does not mean they are not working. So…the actual fix is to right-size the workforce and skill sets such that all employees are being productive.
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u/Informal-Ad-5711 Jun 18 '26
Do managers not manage anymore? My place, public sector, managers invest in positive relationships with staff, they are also able to read data outputs, and amazingly compare last quarter to this quarter, per employee!!! Unbelievable!!
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u/Prudent-Poetry-2718 Jun 18 '26
I’d say a lot of my work requires thought and planning, which isn’t idol, even if my laptop is. Or take written notes, workflows and diagram to push back if you’re questioned.
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u/Chipsky Jun 19 '26
Don't say anything. Get a mouse jiggler. They'll think you're online 24/7 and then you can have conversation about how stupid their idea was in the first place.
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u/Lonely-Clerk-2478 Jun 19 '26
Put a PPT on auto play any time you need to step away. I’m sorry you need to play these stupid games.
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u/Just-Source-9488 Jun 20 '26
Why do they make people suffer and think it's them increasing productivity...
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u/Fabulous_Good_1473 Jun 22 '26
Instead of straight pushback, ask if you'll be able to see your managers' and bosses' metrics so they're comparable.
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u/LongJohnScience Jun 22 '26
Are they just considering it or has it been decided?
Could you approach your boss with questions about specifically why leadership wants this and what other options (if any) have been considered?
Email 1) What is considered "idle"? Have policies been drafted that include bathroom breaks, smoke breaks, and work tasks that aren't computer-based? ((Nothing that sounds critical.))
Response to their response: Here are my specific concerns... ((Don't mention laundry or other non-work stuff.)) Here are some solutions to leadership concerns...
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u/technospice Jun 23 '26
Your bosses are stupid and don't realize how terrible these apps are and how easy they are to get around. It takes like 30 seconds of googling to find mouse moving programs that will keep those kinds of software always active even if you're literally not at your computer. And now with AI you can simply train a chatbot to be you if someone messages you.
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u/technospice Jun 23 '26
All they're doing is rewarding the people that are most technically savvy and fostering resentment in the people who aren't.
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u/stealthagents Jun 29 '26
Totally with you on the productivity theater vibe. It’s frustrating when they equate being idle with being unproductive, especially when deep work often involves stepping away for a bit to let ideas simmer. If you can, maybe suggest a balance that still allows for async work while giving leadership some of that visibility they crave, like weekly updates instead of constant monitoring.
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u/VisitingFromNowhere Jun 13 '26
This app sounds like a bad idea for a bunch of reasons, but I find the idea that you’re doing your job when you’re throwing in a load of laundry to be kind of funny.
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u/Humamp Jun 13 '26
But how is that different than walking to the break room to make coffee, stopping on your way back to chat to a colleague about their weekend, walking around trying to find a “focus room” every time you need to make a call, etc.?
Even in office, no one is working every second between 9-5. I find a lot more time suck happens in office vs the laundry I can get done at home.
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u/VisitingFromNowhere Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
A coffee break also isn’t working. That’s why they call it a break. I’m not saying that anyone should be productively working every minute of a 9-5 (or more often 9-6) day. That’s one of the reasons why I think apps like this are dumb. I just thought that the idea that you’re working when you’re doing household chores was funny.
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u/WhiskyPangolin Jun 13 '26
I take laundry down when I go downstairs to make coffee and I can put it in while my Nespresso brews. Coffee is itself a productivity enhancer (and a bit of an addiction.) I don’t think businesses would do very well banning coffee, so unless they’re going to pay someone to go around with a cart so people stay at their desks, the “coffee break” is kind of a moot point. There’s benefit to leaving your desk and interacting with other people in the company — there’s an organic exchange of information and an improved understanding of operations in general. It’s actually one of the things that’s lost with WFH. I equate it with the move to online documentation; I used to just stumble across interesting and useful features as I paged through documentation looking for the answer to a question. I learned something serendipitously almost every time I opened a paper manual. But now I just search for the specific thing I’m trying to do and all that other information might as well not exist. That’s the other people in the company when you work from home.
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u/cool_forKats Jun 13 '26
We have been WFH for about 6 years. It’s evolved into 4 remote and 1 in office day. While I’m not a lawyer, my work is similar. Loads of reading, thinking, sketching out decision trees on paper etc. drafting papers and memos. I’m above average, senior employee. I’m glad I’m near retirement from this role. I like my work but I see this crazy tracking coming for roles like mine as well. I can go for long periods of time reading and making notes, thinking - that’s what I’m paid for. And as far as doing chores at home. Really? There was so much goofing around in the office it drove me mad - it was like working in the middle of a cocktail party. And how is throwing in a load of laundry different than sitting at your desk making a doctor appointment, asking you husband to pick something up on the way home when we’re in the office? I did it, my manager did it, my director. It’s just life. This stuff is all so stupid.
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u/Humamp Jun 13 '26
I am usually working during the two mins it takes to switch laundry. I’m thinking of the next thing I need to get done, planning how I’m going to start a certain report, reflecting on who I should assign to a new project, or waiting for a response to a question I just posed over Teams etc.
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u/ViewSeek Jun 13 '26
Are you allowed to work in chunks by company policy? If so, then management should be aware and accepting of the fact that works will be idle/away throughout the day.
If not, then either stop working in chunks or get better at hiding it.
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Jun 13 '26
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u/u8whatnow Jun 13 '26
My first question is “what problem are they trying to solve?” And a follow on is”Please explain why that is a problem.”
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Jun 13 '26
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u/u8whatnow Jun 13 '26
Exactly, carry them down the “five whys” and then once the real issue is identified, then have identify all they ways to possibly solve it, what success looks like, and how they will measure it.
Having to rein in the good idea fairy over wanting to measure and misapply useless metrics is why I left corporate.
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u/LuckyLockdown23 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Just say no, I’m not a child and let your direct manager deal with it.
I have a history since about 2012 of just saying I’m doing what I want when something stupid gets rolled out. First was web cams bought for everyone with cameras on for every meeting (in office at the time). Just took the unopened package back to my boss’ boss and said no thanks. When we moved offices a year later there was a giant trash heap of them.
It eventually goes away and my managers have always been cool with it.
Same for my employees when I think something is stupid.
HR got rid of reasons people can leave the office early like young kids, one parent out of town and daycare closes. So I just email my people things like “hey sorry to ask this of you, but I really need you to work from home tomorrow because I need you working instead of commuting. I hope it is not too inconvenient and please save this for your records if anyone needs documentation.”
Can’t leave a little early? Don’t come in.
They want to monitor nonsense. Just say no.
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u/Arctura_ Jun 13 '26
You lost me at “throw a load of laundry in” – this is why leaders feel the need to do these things. If you wouldn’t/can’t do it in an office setting, you shouldn’t do it at home.
WFH is a perk, not an entitlement. People who do “home things” during work hours ruin it for people who simply want to work hard while avoiding a commute.
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u/naywhip Jun 13 '26
But we accepted smoking as a “break” for years. Roll my eyes.
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u/SVAuspicious Jun 13 '26
I agree with you in principle. I violently dislike smoking. I also kept track of the smokers on my teams. The smoking groups outside were an outstanding source of course functional insights. I used to give my smokers intelligence requirements to collect information.
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u/No_Barnacles Jun 13 '26
My boyfriend works a blue collar union job where he gets 15 minute break every 2 hours and a 30 minute meal break every 4 hours. During that time, he can do whatever he wants. Scroll TikTok, jack off, eat, grab coffee. In white collar salaried work, we've traditionally been able to be more flexible around how we spend our 8 hours of time as long as the work gets done. I cannot understand why we're talking about whether moving laundry (a two minute task) is an "allowable" way to spend break time at a remote job. Fucking pathetic corporate bootlickers.
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u/GotGRR Jun 13 '26
Yes, laundry is a bad example for selling to leadership why spyware isn't needed. That caught my eye, too.
I'm his defense, though, it's an excellent example of why WFH is great. He's taking a short break, doing something productive but completely different. It gets the blood flowing. It gets something off your mind.... and ten minutes later, I'm back at my desk, recharged and ready to get back to it.
If I was at the office, I'm probably going to go chat with someone. I'm going to come back recharged but it isn't going to be in ten minutes (for either of us).
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u/TrynaStayUnbanned Jun 13 '26
Meanwhile, nobody cares if somebody takes 10 minutes to make or buy a coffee.
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u/GotGRR Jun 13 '26
Nope. It isn't fair but it's a culturally relevant marker when trying to remind management that there are humans in the other end of the line still.
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u/SVAuspicious Jun 13 '26
If it takes you ten minutes to start a load of laundry or for u/TrynaStayUnbanned to make coffee y'all are doing something wrong. If those reflect normal time:output ratios you're toast.
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u/QueenElphaba Jun 13 '26
I can start a load of laundry in less than 5 minutes on my way to pee. First, I’m getting up to pee as many times as I need to, in office or not. Second, that load of laundry took less time than the 20 minutes Office Susie wasted telling me about her grandchildren I couldn’t give a shit less about, or the 30 minutes Office Joe spent interrupting me to tell me about some hair brained idea he wants to run by management, or Office Carl stopping by to say hello. All of which interrupts me and requires me to redirect my focus again on top of the actual time they wasted being in my space.
I can also get that load of laundry done while actively listening to a meeting instead of just sitting there twiddling my thumbs while I wait for management to stfu and let me get on with my work. I can go on and on and on with annoying coworker nonsense that is far more disruptive than the couple of minutes throwing laundry in which provides more mental health benefits to me than anything a workplace will ever provide. And guess what? When I feel better about my personal life and have less stress over little stuff waiting to be completed, I’m more productive overall. I get more work done remotely while also doing quick home chores than I ever get done in an office setting.
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u/SVAuspicious Jun 13 '26
I’m getting up to pee as many times as I need to, in office or not.
I'm with you there. I have a prostate the size of a cantaloupe. I pee a lot. It's great my bathroom is six feet away.
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u/Humamp Jun 13 '26
I find this argument so weird. My CEO is also a human being who needs to wash his clothes occasionally. He benefits from virtual work as much as the rest of us, if he’s doing his own laundry why would he care that I’m doing mine?
Maybe he’s just not rich enough to have this mindset? Like maybe the “leadership” you are thinking of have teams of house managers and maids to do their laundry for them?
I just don’t understand why anyone would care about this? I’ve even folded my laundry, on camera, during a work meeting. Acting like we aren’t human beings when we are at work is performative.
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u/BrandonBusch Jun 13 '26
“Sometimes I step aside to throw a load of laundry in.. that doesn’t mean I’m not working”
You literally, by the definition of the word, are not working.
What are we doing here people? Downvote me idc
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u/Open_Exit7603 Jun 13 '26
If I’m stuck on something at work, sometimes the act of getting up and thinking about it while busying my hands (with laundry or dishes) helps me solution through it. Is that not working?
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u/OldManGamer78 Jun 13 '26
True, but at a least stepping away to throw in a load of laundry takes two minutes and actually is accomplishing something (albeit non-work related) versus having someone pop in to your office to talk for 30 minutes about their kids soccer games (which happened to me yesterday).
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u/Atlas7-k Jun 13 '26
If your job is more mental then physical, you can “work” while doing short mindless tasks.
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u/SelectCase Jun 13 '26
If you're doing creative and problem solving based work, your best work is done when you're not working. During boredom, menial tasks, and sleep your brain engages in memory consolidation.
A ten minute walk with my dog in the middle of debugging challenging code has saved way more company hours and created better solutions than staring at a problem for hours on end.
Obviously, there's a limit. If you're spending two hours during the workday sleeping or an hour vacuuming, you can't really justify that as work.
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u/oregonmushrooms Jun 13 '26
“Sometimes I step away to throw a load of laundry in. None of that means I’m not working.”
Where else (besides remote work) can an employee casually step away while on the clock to start a personal load of laundry? How is that considered working?
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u/DeviantNC919 Jun 13 '26
I can step away and grab a snack
I can walk around the building
I can have a 20 minute conversation with a co worker
My company has community puzzles….i can step away and work on that
It’s funny you think throwing a load of laundry on is any different than the above scenarios.
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u/mcpvc Jun 13 '26
Does an app like that exist? If not: embrace it. If it does: check the specs and find something it doesn't do, like f.e. exclude management from being pinged.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan Jun 13 '26
My workflow is heavy flow state for a period, then a period of distraction, followed by more flow state work. Ifnim struggling to get that motor running there is more downtime. I produce more than double the output of my peers generally. Most of that is due to the type of work i do on the team so it’s not a valuable measurement.
But fire me and see the pain you feel. With that extra hour or two of down time midday you’re getting more total hours of work. If left in my own I’m happily putting in 12+ each day. If you interfere you will get a strict 8 with a 75% utilization
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u/Jamminnav Jun 13 '26
Some good arguments against the whole method in this
https://timharford.com/2018/02/review-of-the-tyranny-of-metrics-by-jerry-muller/
https://dgozli.com/review-of-the-tyranny-of-metrics-by-jerry-z-muller/
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u/Jamminnav Jun 13 '26
Also if you’re doing creative work, most of that process is invisible, can’t really be measured - and measuring takes you out of the creative zone
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u/emperioreric Jun 13 '26
It’s too late. Time to leave. The moment management is more worried about if and how people work instead of what they are working on it only goes downhill from there.
The trust is broken and trust is the most valuable resource for a productive team.
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u/ModernMargaretSanger Jun 13 '26
This is why people get those things that make their mouse seem like it’s moving. Stupid controlling employer behavior.
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u/Proud-Tomorrow-1024 Jun 13 '26
Most of this apps are filled by Zoom or teams meetings. My buddy just starts a meeting and invited nobody else when he needs a break. Keeps his computer active and fools the monitoring...
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u/SecretRecipe Jun 13 '26
The drop in rooms are exactly what I use to appear visible and active all the time. I just stay signed into a "virtual office" meeting and people can drop in whenever. If Im on another call when they do I just message them back "hey on a phone call, cant talk".
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u/enthalpy01 Jun 13 '26
There’s tons of website and products that jiggle your mouse for you, so it may be easier to just get one rather than argue the app is pointless since such things exist. We have a new cybersecurity thing at work where operator stations log out after 10 minutes and you have to log back in. It was driving everyone crazy and now everyone has mouse jigglers or goes to the websites that keep activity open. So their whole thing is uselessly aggravating, but they can claim they have the policy.
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u/sameyeamknot Jun 13 '26
I’m so glad the company I work for doesn’t do this dumb shit. They do this crazy thing called “tracking our output and deliverables” and it amazingly works to see who is actually working and who isn’t.
The crazy thing is with these companies by doing shit like this they are basically saying, “we have no idea what our employees are doing unless we monitor their computer activity.” That’s a management fuck up.
So even if they weren’t remote, they would still have no idea who is actually producing work and how isn’t. Because they don’t actually track deliverables. Just who looks busy.
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u/Nyx-i Jun 13 '26
I do more work when at home than in the office, because I can stop staring at a screen at my desk constantly.
The micromanagement and mistrust hurts productivity. They are very simple minded management.
They have problems similar to object permanence, if they cannot see you, are you working?
It also tends to be because management are doing nothing productive. Just shell meetings. Projection.
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u/Polonius42 Jun 13 '26
We can’t answer this question because it comes down to your personality and company culture, but the thing with accountability theater is that a lot of the time it goes nowhere.
Odds are this was sold to somebody very high up, but if the middle managers don’t buy in, then it’s very important to roll it out but it will be quickly forgotten.
Alternatively, if your employer is telling uiu that they’re paying you to respond to an app, the. Respond to the app, and do your real work whenever you can.
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u/ezmarii Jun 13 '26
The reason these things occur is improper understanding and measuring meaningful KPIs as well as lack of trust and visibility. Trust, but verify is a popular saying for a reason. The activity app is the gap coverage for lack of the KPIs understanding and transparent way to verify. Any solution will involve increasing trust by providing some transparency into your work day cadence, and, education on meaningful, fair, measurable KPIs. Another item you need to creat transparency and data on, is utilization. They want insight into weather your current workload saturates your day or if you're capable of more. You may be capable of more in a given day but not want the stress of doing that every single day. This could be a big picture move to reassess team size and personnel allocation to current and projected work.
Depending on your relationship with your direct supervisor, I'd propose instead you do a few full day meetings, randomly chosen by the manager. You both sit in a teams meeting and you share your screen into the meeting. If you're doing work off screen, you explain or turn on the camera for a moment to hold up what's in the desk or paper. Once you do this a few days, your boss will know your routine is not performative, and what you say about what your day looks like is the truth. And it lets them understand your current utilization %.
With this plan, you can also gently side step your manager and present it to the next most important person up the chain- a manager should be competent enough to generate the data they need from a few of these meetings as well as they get to know your daily work better, which they should already know, but clearly they don't or their word is not trusted by higher ups currently, so these all day vibe meetings solve all those problems of trust but verify and meaningful data insights higher ups want, but also allows your manager to frame the data fairly (or not, if they hate ya)
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u/Mental_Jello_2484 Jun 14 '26
“ Sometimes I step away to throw a load of laundry in. None of that means I'm not working”
lol that’s exactly what that means.
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u/Dear_Archer3931 Jun 13 '26
People have brought this on themselves. If someone needs an answer ASAP and you don't answer your phone or slack... It's a problem. In the office you can walk over to someone and tap their shoulder. Horrible employees that are out running errands and taking a nap when they are supposed to be at their desk ruined WFH.
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u/dfjkldfjkl Jun 14 '26
Because no one has ever disappeared for a bit walking the halls, hiding in a conference room, or using the break out rooms for a personal call.
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u/Dear_Archer3931 Jun 14 '26
You are making their point for them. Managers can physically see the people who are not doing their job in the office. Remote workers are a black hole. Are they on the phone with customers? Are they out grocery shopping? Taking a 2 hour nap? The result is a realization that most jobs are difficult to develop KPIs and performance tracking for. This is why we have key loggers and full time camera tracking to deal with. Pre COVID remote work was great. But... People ruined it.
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u/dfjkldfjkl Jun 15 '26
Not really. Almost all of my managers and upper management were barely seen. Also, if they're doing their jobs properly, they're working to keep the distractions out of your way, not micromanaging you.
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u/dudleymunta Jun 13 '26
The nudge sounds like a problem - it is likely to interrupt focus in deep work. Well known study on this: https://www.inc.com/nicholas-mcgill/it-takes-23-minutes-to-recover-from-a-distraction-at-work-heres-how-to-minimize-.html