DevOps company Gitlab posts many of its Zoom meetings onto its Gitlab Unfiltered YouTube channel, including product marketing meetings, product team meetings, technical meetings, and company workshops.
But some of those videos, which are posted as part of the company’s stated commitments to internal and external transparency, have become a method by which people trick their families and co-workers into looking like they’re working.
“So GitLab posts their internal Zoom call recordings on YouTube, and some have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of views…” posted @pronounced_kyle on X on Tuesday.
The reason for that? People are using them to pretend to be working according to the comment section for the company’s most-viewed video, ‘Product Marketing Meeting (weekly) 2021-06-28.’
“Sometimes when I need to get away from the kids for a bit… I turn this on and close the door,” commented one person last year.
“I play this when I pretend to be busy,” posted another half a year ago. “This meeting is literally about anything you want it to be about lol.”
“Im not ready to tell my parents that i resigned my job, so i was telling them im working from home and play this every morning so they would stop bothering me,” another wrote a couple of months ago. “This is a lifesaver!”
Gitlab posts the videos online as part of its stated commitment to radical transparency in their operations. The company takes a position of “public by default,” according to the company’s handbook.
“By having most company communications and work artifacts be public to the Internet, we have one single source of truth for all GitLab team members, users, customers, and other community members,” the handbook explains.
That handbook includes a whole list of corporate commitments to transparency, including guidelines to be direct and transparent at all times.
YouTube commenters on another Gitlab video seem to have taken that directive to heart.
In another video posted four years ago which has racked up 274,000 views titled ‘Product Team Meeting – 2019-07-09,’ commenters detailed all the ways they’ve used the video to avoid obligations and slack off at work.
“I’d like to thank the product team for helping me look like I’m involved in a conference call while I bliss out to Reggae at my desk,” one wrote a year ago.
“I lucked out SO much cause I play these videos so my roommate leaves me alone and today just so happened to be a Tuesday so when y’all said ‘have a good rest of your Tuesday’ at the end I was like WHEW,” commented another.
Back on X, some posters questioned what the point of running the fake meetings was when they already had so much other work to do.
“What is this I don’t even. I don’t have minutes in my day to spare for pretend working!” posted @abemurray. “Let alone the mental cycles to figure out how to pretend work. Just doing stuff! Things like this just make me feel like I don’t get some people :)”
But other posters pointed out that he might be overthinking it.
“its for when extended relatives stay over the weekend & so you pull this as an emergency meeting so you can hide in a room,” explained @tropicalcamel.
“Step 1) turn this on,” summed up @joshuaofthesea. “Step 2) do literally anything else.”
