Microsoft Wants Your Driving Time To Belong To Your Boss

Photo: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto (Getty Images)

At the end of a long, stressful work day, the solitude of a car is nice. It’s a place where you can decompress, de-stress, and scream along to your driving playlist so you arrive home at least a little bit normal. Companies, however, don’t see it that way. They see the sacred solitude of the commute as a waste — as time that’s theirs for the taking.

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Microsoft announced a Teams integration for Android Auto back in May of 2023, and that update is finally coming late next month. Workers unlucky enough to be at companies saddled with Teams will no longer have that time in their day free of screens, when they can be blissfully unaware of various pings, chats, calls, and DMs.

In a just world, this would mean the commute becomes part of the workday — any time you’re online, accessible, and expected to respond to messages would come between the hours of 9 and 5. We, however, don’t live in a world that just.

Instead, more connectivity between workers and employers is likely to only further blur the already muddied edges of “working hours” — allowing for “a quick question” or “just one small edit” earlier and earlier every morning, and later and later each night. You’re online in the app, it’ll just take a few seconds, what’s the harm in helping out off the clock just this once? Just this couple times?

Don’t fall for it. Keep your work within working hours, as much as you can, and make a point to be offline beyond that. Refuse to update your phone’s Teams app for this new Android Auto compatibility — better yet, remove the app from your phone completely. Defend the sanity-restoring solitude of your car.