At my last workplace, we got into a “camera off” default in my team during the pandemic because one person initially had lots of connection issues with their wi

At my last workplace, we got into a “camera off” default in my team during the pandemic because one person initially had lots of connection issues with their wi-fi, and it kind of stayed that way even after that was resolved, but I felt meetings probably suffered from this in terms of people not participating (plus it’s nice to see people’s faces!). My new place doesn’t say anything about cameras but most people seem to go for camera on - but their policy (which was agreed upon by the team and is written down, which is great when you’re a new starter trying to work out the culture) is that they’d rather more people were invited to the meeting than fewer (so people don’t miss out on potentially relevant topics), but if you don’t think it’s relevant you’re under no obligation to attend and if it’s only somewhat relevant, you should feel free to get on with some other work or whatever. This seems to work pretty well in practice as there’s no “shame” to having your camera on and clearly be looking at another screen if the topic isn’t relevant, while still having the benefit of keeping your camera on if you are happy to.