Don'tcha just LOVE meetings? Microsoft does, too, so here are some new Teams features, you lucky, lucky people

Because its customers apparently can't get enough of meetings, Microsoft has added some new Teams capabilities in the form of Standard and Premium Microsoft Teams Rooms. While Teams Rooms Premium offloads the responsibility for running meeting rooms (and compatible devices, which Microsoft's partners will be overjoyed to flog …

[Anonymous Coward]

Meetings, Bloody Meetings

Why are so many useless and unproductive meetings? Modern technology hasn't helped. It has if anything made it worse es.pecially since we implimented Teams. I'm sure that there are detailed logs of who attends what and when and for how long. Those will no doubt be used against people when it comes to being selected for redundancy

The title of this post is from an old training video fronted by John Cleese and called 'Meetings Bloody Meetings!'.

I hate the things especially ones that start five minutes BEFORE the work day is supposed to begin. I've started to request a detailed agenda with time slots.

There has been a reduction in requests for my attendance. The upside is that I can actually get some work done until I get laid off that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

The saddest bit is not the endless meetings which occur at times which suit nobody, it is that various people can be relied on to talk complete bollocks for the original length of the meeting meaning it has to be either extended or rescheduled to cover the actual purpose of the original meeting.

Moving these meetings online seems to have actually made things worse as they are even harder to shut up if you can't reach over and slap them so I just say I am leaving and drop off the call. If I get invited to the next one I give them 5 minutes to get on with it before I just leave

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

amen to that. I hate the creeping death "team meetings" - let's go around the room updating the boss. I don't understand why these can't be done in 10 minute individual 1:1 meetings so that just the boss gets to burn down an hour of their life instead of the entire department. There is zero interaction between the rest of the team so you just end up in a video surveilled queue to provide your stock answer: "everything is fine, see you next week."

what passes for management these days needs more than a software update.

[thondwe]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

Some analysis by Microsoft on Microsoft's use of teams (in Harvard Business Review)

https://hbr.org/2020/07/microsoft-analyzed-data-on-its-newly-remote-workforce

[Triggerfish]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

Many years ago in a council office i saw a sign it said something like. 'Want to waste time and eat some biscuits? Call a meeting'

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

You can guess where I worked at the time.

I once was invited to a meeting - with a FOUR hour (4) time slot blocked off in the calendar, over 40 participants, and chaired by the country manager (luckily I reported elsewhere in the chain of command).

I declined to attend, and wrote in my reason for declining stated "any meeting with over three attendees or 10 PPT slides is public masturbation... just send me the summary"

Needless to say, the CM was not amused, but my direct boss pissed himself laughing (I bcc'd him).

[AMBxx]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

I don't mind, but I do charge by the hour...

[Moonrunner]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

Some days I'm attending so many meetings, I literally don't have the time to get my ACTUAL work done. This only started when we went remote. Before then, we may have done like 1hr a day, on average. Now, I've had some days where I'm booked up for 5-6 hours.

[EnviableOne]

Re: Meetings, Bloody Meetings

dual screens are your friend, ACtual work on one, vaguely pay attention to the meeting on the other, its how i've been surviving the advent of teams, that and the appear away mode.

[FrogsAndChips]

Double Key Encryption

One key is under the control of the customer while the other is retained by Microsoft. Both are needed to view data

Why would you entrust MS with one of the keys? If you don't want anyone else to access your data, isn't it simpler to encrypt *only* with your own key?

[Malcolm Weir]

Re: Double Key Encryption

Well, you kinda are: from a security standpoint, the Microsoft-controlled key is irrelevant and may as well not be there.

The only (nebulous) benefit is that if your key is compromised, MS may be able block access by withdrawing their key from the data set (aka dismounting the drive), but this could just as easily and safely be done by any means of taking the data store offline (or firewalling it to just your HQ).

[thondwe]

Re: Double Key Encryption

MS's Key help's protect them as well as you - e.g. if a physical disk goes wandering off (drive swap/upgrade process) - same reason your phone storage, laptop disk etc are encrypted

[Jon 37]

Re: Double Key Encryption

Most users suck at security. If the user key leaks, their data is still protected by Microsoft's security.

Also, this is probably built on top of the pre-existing way of working, which was "everything is protected by Microsoft's security". Adding another layer of encryption won't make anything worse. Changing things may make things subtly worse in ways not realised until someone hacks it in a few years. What's worse, having the underlying mechanism change depend on whether the customer is using the "customers's keys" option makes that code more complex - and hence more likely to have bugs, and much more difficult to review or to security audit.

So this way is probably more secure.

[EnviableOne]

Re: Double Key Encryption

Its just a way MS can get round having to comply with the CLOUD act,

Honest $TLA i cant access the info, they have the key...