Show HN: A virtual office for remote work | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A virtual office for remote work

ploito.com

30 pointsann_kasumova79 comments

This looks like a very well-designed and functional product. From an engineering standpoint, I genuinely applaud your work.

As someone who works remote, this seems like a nightmare and I hope my company never adopts anything like this.

> You no longer need to call colleagues - you are already in touch. Always. Just wave your hand and start talking. Colleagues will immediately hear and see you. Just like in a real office.

I thought this was satire first :)

With our patented DeepWorkDisturber(TM) algorithm we'll make sure you never concentrate again!

This is very important because how does your manager know the organisation is running at maximum throughput? A: By making sure they are busy with constant trivial interactions!

Not sure you want to interact? We even detect those tentative, might-be-waves and connect you right through, because we'd hate for you to miss on a possible interaction! PLEASE SOMEONE TALK TO ME I'M SO LONELY AND I CANT STAND BEING IN MY OWN HEAD. Anything for more interactions.

Destroyed your attention span with TikTok and social media? Well you can ruin everyone elses too with your constant, incessant waving to get everyones attention every time you have the tinyest thought, because you're a special snowflake and every single trivial spark of thought needs to be broadcast to everyone all the time. HAHA PRODUCTIVITY!

Its difficult to learn how to do work effectivly, and all of those tools you have to learn are complex. If you have to Google something : that involves sooooo much reading! Skip all that and go straight to someone else. Who cares what they are doing just wave and interrupt!

Without going into detail, you described everything as a spherical cow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow In fact, in addition to Do Not Disturb mode and room locking, which you can turn on at any time, you can simply agree with your colleagues so that you are not interrupted by trifles.

If your perceptions dared venture beyond the literal immediate you would see this is tongue in cheek satire.

Your solution is "just turn it off when you dont want it" - well, I NEVER want it

and it's so so so much worse than a real office because you can feel the stare of the always on camera the whole day, whereas in a real office you know if someone is staring at you

I'd quit so fast if my company adopted this. It wouldn't even be a choice, it'd be like having someone stand behind me and watch me work. I can't do it, I freeze up, I panic, I have an anxiety attack, and I get nothing done. Eventually I quit before they put me on a PIP.

I tried to explain this once to a manager who insisted on moving me to a high traffic location where I could not focus, and wound up eventually quitting (to go remote, to avoid this problem) when I was not productive.

This product is a nightmare.

Everything is individual, and for some our product may be truly unacceptable. Further actions are determined by your management

> Finger and nose

> No one will see you picking your nose The moment you touch your nose, your live avatar will immediately become very blurred.

Relatedly, this is actual copy from the page. Emoji will probably get eaten by HN: there's a nose and up-pointing-finger emoji after the first occurrence of "nose" in the second quoted part.

Yes, exactly. Is this not good?)

Oh, it's not exactly bad, it's just another thing that's surprising enough (though not necessarily actually a bad idea!) that it reads almost like parody.

Hi! Thank you for your comment. So do you think this is bad, right?

I don't necessarily think the product is bad, however if I were to think of it strictly as a user, I do not want this at all. A couple of reasons if you were looking for some legitimate feedback:

- It feels very intrusive

- I do not want to be this accessible to anyone. Even when I was in an office, I didn't want to be this accessible.

- I would have hard time trusting that "auto blur" would always function as expected

Concur, stressed out just reading the marketing page. This looks unpleasant enough I'd probably leave a place that adopted it and didn't reverse course fast, and I've got at least an average tolerance (by tech standards) for poor workplaces.

Maybe some non-tech departments would like it? IDK... sales?

Thank you for your comment! I understand your point of view! There are many different situations, for example, for some it is unacceptable, but people from poor countries cannot get a job remotely, due to trust issues with the employer, and for them it would be a great tool to facilitate their recruitment.

Ah, this adds some useful context to the motivation for the product. I follow what you're aiming for now, I think.

Agreed. I've used a tool like this (sococo) once that I liked for a while. It had the ability to go into an office and close the door. So you'd see the avatar as not available and would have to "knock". That was better, but really only good when we were a small team. Also it's super hard to provide zoom-quality voice and video, and they couldn't, so it was glitchy and we eventually stopped. But it was nice because if you were taking a break you could drop into a "public" room and anyone else taking a break at the same time would be able to drop by and say hi. And as a manager, sometimes I would catch folks having chats and ask if I could join and it would be OK.

This one seems entirely worse than sococo. It drops the idea of physical space and you're just always on with everyone. Ugh.

That was my exact thought. Cool looking product. I'd legit start applying for new jobs instantly if my company required this tool.

Hi! Thank you for your comment! As an employee of the company and as a person, this is of course understandable. But what would you do if an employee of your company did not want to use this software, although it does not violate his privacy?

>although it does not violate his privacy

Can you please elaborate what's your definition of privacy?

Ahahha thank you so much for your comment! We think about the way of promotion to show that it is not a nightmare!)

Well, good luck with that. As of now, every line from your product features is an instant "nope" from me.

Also, the short description of "burnout prevention and employees health tracker" very obviously mean the opposite of what it says. So if your product doesn't actually threaten burnout victims or helps management in heath-based discrimination, you should think on something completely different to say here.

I wonder if this is just not the right crowd. I bet there are workers that crave this where it wouldn't interfere with their productivity.

Got you! Thank you again for your attention and feedback!

I would rather go live in a hut in the mountains writing angry manifests for the rest of my life than work with an invasive nightmare like this.

I have ADHD and a few other issues. I still manage to do good work on average and keep a job. But if my boss was able to micro-manage my attention, my fatigue and my hour-by-hour productivity I would go insane within a week. I'm never going to fit whatever ideal model of attention and productivity you come up with. Taking a five minute break when the computer tells me to is an invasion of my autonomy, and passing any health data to a work web-service is an invasion of privacy.

I'm not a robot that needs to be optimized and maintained by my employer. I don't want to be watched constantly. I don't want to watch myself and report on myself either! Why do you think would I ever tell a service about my fatigue level, when that service is being paid by my company? That is nobody's business, and thinking that this will not be abused to put extra pressure on employees, no matter how good your intentions are, is delusional.

The one non-creepy feature is basically "video call with desktop sharing", which I believe has been done, and let's not kid ourselves about the invasive metrics not being the primary selling point.

On the plus side, the nose-picking-blur will create a lot of unintended hilarity, like those "unnecessary censorship" videos where you bleep people to make it look like they just said a swear word.

The decision to use this product is made by the business structure, which has a completely different vision than the employee. If, based on your personal characteristics, you agree not to work in the application and if you are a valuable employee, then perhaps you can reach an agreement with the employer. However, for many employers, such reluctance to use the application will also be a signal that something is wrong

> Ploito determines the employee focus using a specially developed formula, as well as tracks the attendance based on hours and work schedule (which are set separately in each employee's profile).

Feels pretty invasive.

Indeed. This reminded me of the Panopticon[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Thank you for your reply! Hm, it's interesting, but it's not like Panopticon because you can't even see anybody if you are not in the app:) So to see someone - you must show up!)

I was thinking it might be some premium feature available for the employer (see, without being seen, and without any blur).

But yeah, if you do it the right way, that might not be the dystopian tool I am thinking of, HAHA ;-)

This is no different than how "Crossover for Work" is run. They take snapshots of your screens, record video to check if you are in front of your computer, checks productivity based ok keystrokes. While entirely legal, highly unethical

The software itself is not aggressive, it already depends on the management style and purposes. Thank you for your comment!

And yet you developed the functionality to enable them to manage in an aggressive manor. Doesn’t make you come off any better.

This just an app, and aggressive manor of management depends on your manager/employer

Do you really not understand that software influences people's expectations of what's normal? You're normalizing the idea that everyone should be always available by conflating "attendance in the app" with "working"

You were so preoccupied with building an invasive tool, that you didn't stop and think if you should.

Tools do not exist in an ethical vacuum. The design of tools also encourages people to act in a certain way.

If we call ourselves professional software engineers I think we should also consider the potential negative impact of what we build.

There are creative professions, including developers and software architects, who do not do routine work, but come up with ways to solve complex problems. Of course, there is no point in measuring such work in hours spent at the computer, because the solution can come on its own, at any moment. At the same time, there are IT specialists in poor countries who cannot relocate, but want to find decent remote work, and the factor of distrust in them forces companies to refuse them.

In addition to qualified personnel, there is also low-skilled labor as the first line of customer support, where it is important to stay at the workplace strictly at the computer at strictly defined hours

Sounds like you want to pivot from office video walkie-talkie to low-wage employee video surveillance. Enjoy your life choices!

Yes, it is indeed our choice: to create a tool to weed out the lazy and deceitful, thereby forming a healthy and efficient team.

Might I suggest you adjust your slogans then? Be honest about your ambitions of computer-surveilling the untrustworthy lower class workers!

> Combining the best of the office and remote work, we create the ideal conditions for efficient work.

This is a panopticon, not ideal conditions.

> Privacy first

Having video of your face sent to a 3rd party server for a whole working day is not privacy first.

This whole discussion thread (the whole thing, not just this branch) appears to have gone the way it did because people took the marketing site at face value and thought this was intended a general tool for OECD-state offices, but it seems it’s actually aimed at imposing surveillance on low-status offshore remote teams. The feature set makes a lot more sense with that framing (though the reframing may not affect the ethics of it)

My name is Anna, and together with my husband Timur we are the co-founders of Ploito.com — a virtual office for remote work.

Without AI….. Maybe a little bit:)

I am a marketer, Timur is a developer and created Ploito himself.

In Ploito you always see the faces of your colleagues as live avatars with facial details blurred. If you see a colleague's face, it means they are at the computer, and you can talk to them. To do this, make a special gesture and start speaking. No ringing or scheduling calls.

Privacy first. So if someone picks their nose, the live avatar blur becomes stronger :)

This solves many remote work problems:

- Turns scattered remote workers into a team

- Creates Proof of work that cannot be measured

- Increases efficiency through fast communication

And it's cheaper than renting an office! --- We kindly ask you to watch our video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgkB7k900hQ

And to visit our website https://ploito.com

We will be glad to read your comments:)

Hey! Thanks for showing :) I work on a full remote team and we've been using Gather for our virtual office (https://www.gather.town/). We love customizing our space, tables, chairs etc but they lack your "smart" blur part (if that really works?) and health tracking part.

Hi Friend! Thank you for your comment! Yes, the part with blurred live avatars is really unique feature and we are proud of it. It helps to recognise that you are at the computer but it respects privacy and really you can't see what you shouldn't. Also we have smart reminders about warm-up. They are really smart. You can't just swipe them. If you have more questions, write me @ploito_support (telegram) Or whatsapp +37495125073 We can offer you free work for your company!

Is there a good way to try this out without getting the entire team on board? I think this could be very helpful for me but I don’t think I can reasonably expect others to use it. Zoom integration, for instance, would be huge for this.

Hi Friend! Thank you for your comment! You can try it with 3-4 team members at first. And totally free. You can write me in telegram @ploito_support or whatsapp +37495125073 We are open to any features which you need to add. Feel free to write me:)

This is…probably right for some people, definitely not for me.

> Rating - Individual metrics are summed up to the rating formula. This is a collective indicator of the quality of an employee's work. The rating is also presented in a leaderboard that includes all employees.

I never ever want to see a leaderboard of my “rating” vs my peers. Imagine being at the bottom of that leaderboard - it’s probably because of several factors, and “losing” for the week in the productivity leaderboard would probably not help.

Also, nitpicky, but having a woman who isn’t smiling under the “smiling is cool” line is tone deaf imo.

We have a single channel in slack, anyone can /zoom and anyone can join at any time. All meetings are public.

This scales to multiple channels over time, probably not good for orgs > X where X is culture/company dependent.

I like Discord even better. Anyone can join and leave at will, no need for 3rd party app juggling. Multiple screen share supported out of box and the UI/experience is better than slack (for me)

Thank you for your comment! Every tool has its own purpose. No doubts every tool can help any task. But with different level of effectiveness

I've been using Roam (https://ro.am/) which is much less video focused (but still has video rooms). The helps those on our team who are camera shy. Plus it has a 2D overhead map of the different "floors" and "offices". See this for a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/zFmedvl.png

Hi! Thank you for your comment and screenshot! I'll check them also

This seems incredibly distracting. How do you get away from people without being penalized with this?

Hi! Thank you for your comment! We have DND mode and possibility to lock rooms. My opinion it's the principle of communication in society, so in our case we solve this by agreements between people

Yikes. This is like saying software tools don’t inherently change human social behaviors and social norms which is easily seen to not be the case. See social media.

This is great - reminds me of Focusmate and similar (the idea of on-screen accountability buddies) with added communality and privacy. Very clever, seems like an intuitive but original spin on Team/Zoom formal monotony.

I can see this being a useful option for relaxed teams (and being annoyingly misused by micro-managers).

Best of luck!

Thank you for your comment! Too nice to read!

"No one will see you picking your nose The moment you touch your nose, your live avatar will immediately become very blurred." -- that's hilarious! You've clearly done your user-research. Good job!

Thank you:)

What's wrong with Slack? Like what is the point of using something like this for the engineering team for example?

Hi! Thank you for your comment! We are not a messenger and we don't want to replace Slack. We are an another tool, working only as a desktop app. Often it's easy to have a 2-min talk started with one gesture, rather than chatting during 10 min

Ok, hold on. Pretend for a minute that you're not a tech support or whatever.

Why this app?

I want to see my colleagues faces like in a real office and understand that everybody is working with me in my team

The only word that best describes this is “dystopian”. I’m sure some middle managers will love this but I’d run a mile if this was ever forced on me.

At first, this may seem so. But we have another software product and we have implemented this tool there (virtual office). At first there was negativity, but a month later, when the employees realized that no one was making any comments to them and they were working as before, the objections disappeared, and the convenience of quick communication became an integral part of the work process Is this dystopian or no, depends on the employer (manager)

Uh, the async and personally-empowering nature of remote work is a feature, not a bug. Intentionally jumping into a huddle or a room or whatever to hash something out is one thing. Just being telepresent is nothing I'd ever want.

But I'm sure this is a huge achievement technically-speaking. Congrats on that! Maybe it's just a messaging issue that needs to get sorted out here.

You might want to try setting it up as a virtual co-working site for demo purposes. Set up little virtual offices for people working in various kinds of projects, with the acknowledgment that they can be talked to if they put up a little green flag or something. That way you can be open and broadly allow people to demo it, and at the same time get used to the interface.

It's very interesting idea, thank you for your comment. I got it to my list!

I don't see any information about the company that is behind this. The only thing I was able to discern is that it seems to be based in Russia, FWIW.

back in 2013 I was the only remote employee at a Series A startup. We used an app called Perch on ipads that had similar conventions (it was a tap send your audio / video and the other side could tap to send theirs, etc). This seems like the supercharged version. I wouldnt have made it at that startup without Perch, sadly defunct. glad to see this.

Thank you so much! Yes, I know about Perch and it's really great to read that you are glad to see such a tool like ours

J.Toobin asks if certain other types of behaviors can be autoblurred too?

Only if his genitals resemble a face :DDDDDDD

My reactions were:

A video might be helpful - one video showing someone use it. The homepage was a bit overwhelming to me with all the gifs. I wasn't quite sure how to process it all. (I strongly agree with the HN commenter who suggested setting up a virtual co-working site for demo purposes - I think all virtual co-working tools should do that, and put some people from your team in those offices, would be a great way to learn from and interact with users, too.)

The wave felt a little 'Black Mirror' to me - like the way someone in a black mirror show would wave and exaggerate a gesture.

I saw the HN comment from someone saying it reminded them of Focusmate and that they thought it looked great, so I decided to check out the website again, and to write this comment, in the hopes that hearing what went through my mind when I saw the post / site might be helpful to you.

Best of luck with everything! The site does look very polished.

Thank you for your comments! This is very valuable feedback. Now I’ll discuss it with the developer and designer!

How does this limit or prevent burnout?

At the end of the workday, an employee can assess their condition based on two parameters: how tired they are and how satisfied they are, on a scale from 1 to 10.

If the employee notes that the level of satisfaction during the working day is higher than the level of tiredness, then we consider that today did not contribute to their burnout.

If the employee notes that they are very tired but not satisfied, Ploito will count this as burnout (using a special formula).

The situation where the employee is maximally satisfied and maximally tired is also considered a minor burnout.

The employer or HR manager should pay maximum attention to this metric and analyze it comprehensively: what tasks the employee performs, how they comment on their fatigue, etc. In addition to satisfaction and tiredness ratings, the employee can write a comment with their impressions of the past day and mark completed tasks in their to-do list.

Thus, the employer can view the employee's reports and see the situation more clearly. For example, if an employee planned to finish a task but it turned out to be challenging and remained unfinished, the employee's comment might be "Struggled all day but made very little progress," along with the maximum tiredness rating and the minimum satisfaction rating.

This is the first signal to talk to the employee.

I suggest a rebrand. Check if zimbardo.io is available.

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