People
What "who is online" actually needs to answer
Presence is not a green dot. It is whether you can ask someone a question right now.
R
Rumman Khan
Co-founder & Engineering Lead
3 min read

A green dot tells you someone has an app open. It does not tell you whether they are mid-focus, in a meeting, or four hours from their next working hour.
The useful version of presence answers a scheduling question, not a surveillance one — and it should be just as legible to the person being shown.
Rumman Khan
Co-founder & Engineering Lead · Rumman leads engineering at Huble. Previously shipped infrastructure at a Series B observability startup. Writes about distributed systems, the ethics of workforce monitoring, and why most time-tracking tools get it wrong.
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