Just be careful using them at work as there are other methods to detect if someone is working or gaming the system and it could get you fired (source: fired someone for using one of these)
Just curious: What is the basis of firing people using these? I mean, what’s the justification, public or otherwise, for saying this is not allowed?
I use an autohotkey script for something similar myself, mainly so the laptop doesn’t fall asleep while I’m waiting for something. I don’t really care about what my employer may or may not think about it though, as I handed in my notice last month.
This alone wasnt the issue. They weren’t getting their work done and they would never respond when they showed they were online. Respondes would be 2-4 hours later and always some excuse of “oh I didn’t notice the message”. When we discovered that they had this and weren’t doing work because, well they weren’t doing anything, they were gone.
While I do not condone stealing time and not doing your job, for anyone who has a job without a lot of work that still requires you to look “busy” and are wondering how to get around the “people are suspicious because it says I’m online but I wasn’t responding” issue, set up a meeting for the time you’re up from your computer so teams will indicate you’re busy. Probably won’t work in a super small team where everybody knows whoever would be in a meeting with you, isn’t, though.
There has been one time I needed to keep a computer and stop the screen saver, I had no access to the settings but realized that if you just play a video in WMP or on YT the screen saver never activates, and you never need too install anything.
Just be careful using them at work as there are other methods to detect if someone is working or gaming the system and it could get you fired (source: fired someone for using one of these)
Just curious: What is the basis of firing people using these? I mean, what’s the justification, public or otherwise, for saying this is not allowed?
I use an autohotkey script for something similar myself, mainly so the laptop doesn’t fall asleep while I’m waiting for something. I don’t really care about what my employer may or may not think about it though, as I handed in my notice last month.
This alone wasnt the issue. They weren’t getting their work done and they would never respond when they showed they were online. Respondes would be 2-4 hours later and always some excuse of “oh I didn’t notice the message”. When we discovered that they had this and weren’t doing work because, well they weren’t doing anything, they were gone.
Ah, ok. That makes sense; the wiggler was seen more as proof than the issue itself.
While I do not condone stealing time and not doing your job, for anyone who has a job without a lot of work that still requires you to look “busy” and are wondering how to get around the “people are suspicious because it says I’m online but I wasn’t responding” issue, set up a meeting for the time you’re up from your computer so teams will indicate you’re busy. Probably won’t work in a super small team where everybody knows whoever would be in a meeting with you, isn’t, though.
There has been one time I needed to keep a computer and stop the screen saver, I had no access to the settings but realized that if you just play a video in WMP or on YT the screen saver never activates, and you never need too install anything.