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I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it
by rebeccaskinner 4y ago
I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual.
As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their camera on in any particular call. I want people to be able to do their best work. Building a solid team culture means you should see one another from time to time, but it doesn't have to be every call, or even most calls, and there are a lot of people who struggle from time to time to do their best work on camera.
Sometimes people are in a messy room or feel self conscious about their appearance. Sometimes people are just distracted staring at their own image on a call. Some people have to share their workspace with a partner or roommate who might be distracting in the background. Sometimes people are running something compute intensive in the background while taking a call and their computer gets too bogged down trying to encode video while also running whatever more important task it should be doing. Whatever the reason, I want people focusing on the work they are trying to do and if having their camera off lets them focus better, I'm going to encourage them to do that.
- bawolff 4y agoSometimes zoom fatigue is real and being watched all the time is exhausting (somehow more so than real in person meetings)
- kayodelycaon 4y agoIt’s because in real meetings, you know who people are focusing on. In virtual meetings, everyone is staring at you all the time.
- itronitron 4y agoThis is why meetings, and especially online classes, should be held in Minecraft, as it's very easy to see where people are looking.
- simonw 4y agoI tried a few audio-only meetings recently and they were SO refreshing - massively less tiring than a video meeting.
- dijonman2 4y agoIt’s exhausting to be seen and presentable all the time.
- Invictus0 4y agoHard disagree. At my last company, "people should have the choice" very quickly turned into "I didn't know you had a beard".
- kjs3 4y agoWe've had quite a few "going full Viking I see..." video calls in the last year.
- hiptobecubic 4y agoWould you not have gotten such a comment if you had gone into the office as a full viking?
- kjs3 4y agoI think you missed the point...
- civilized 4y agoA decent, humane manager. At my company, all the ICs I respect have camera off meetings. Only managers, obnoxious ladder climbers, and outside consultants are constantly pushing face time.
- side_up_down 4y agoIt sounds like there's some other cultural problems at your company :)
- civilized 4y agoNot with the people having the camera off meetings!
- andrei_says_ 4y agoYeah where did phone calls go? Just a couple of years ago the standard medium for a meeting was a conference phone call. Just because it’s easy to always have a videoconference doesn’t mean that we should.
- ttmb 4y agoYMMV, apparently. For me, the standard medium for a meeting for decades been face to face, with videoconference in second, long before covid changed everything. I have always hated phone calls, and conference calls specifically are one of the circles of hell.
- microjim 4y agoIn a general sense yes agreed, but there's a genuine value to seeing peers in meetings that I didn't appreciate until I did more stuff that was in essence presenting stuff for feedback. For individuals choosing camera on vs. off when participating in meetings, whatever the choice, I bargain more than would admit are making some form of status calculation. Personally I bias towards on often as it feels more... friendly?
- jimbob45 4y agoAn okay compromise might be: cameras on for the first ten minutes, then it’s your choice.
- kjs3 4y agoSample set of 1, but my (large) company has been something like 20% work-from-home long before Covid threw a turd in the punchbowl. We're still something like 50% WFH. It seems like the sales and other customer facing teams do more live video in their con-calls (I'm asked to sit in occasionally), but in most of IT maybe 1 in 20 people have their camera on during meetings, and in my area virtually noone has it on. Hasn't impacted our ability to get things done at all.
- iamthemonster 4y agoI'm not sure how common this experience is, but my company seems to have spontaneously settled into a great habit - cameras on (some with digital backgrounds) for the "hey how you going, how was your weekend?" niceties at the start, then cameras off when we get into the meat of it.
- eastbayjake 4y agoThis feels like a thoughtful way to balance "Zoom fatigue" (which is very real) with the (also very real) need for human connection and interpersonal relationship building
- osigurdson 4y agoHumans communicate via audio. Actually seeing a person's face doesn't seem to add much to comprehension in my opinion. As an absurd example to illustrate this point, consider a cameras on, mics off meeting to get a sense of what proportion of information is communicated by audio vs video. As a second example, consider a meeting with cameras and audio but with a 1 second delay in audio - this would almost be as bad as the first. I don't mind having cameras on at all really but they don't add much - it is largely just a novelty. Audio is everything.
- stult 4y agoFaces are helpful for communicating around emotionally nuanced issues, which is usually not part of routine communications. So if it's a potentially emotionally charged conversation, maybe that should be the signal it's time to require cameras on.
- grzm 4y agoHigh definition audio is great. That said, upwards of 90% of human communication is non-verbal, including body language and facial expressions. One benefit of high-quality audio vs text is that we include intonation. But it doesn't encapsulate everything. This isn't to say we've cracked that nut with the current state of internet-transmitted video. A blanket "humans communicate via audio neglects these other channels of communication.
- osigurdson 4y ago> 90% of human communication is non-verbal, If true you should be able to communicate effectively without audio. Clearly this is not the case.
- thesumofall 4y agoI must admit I’m one of those always-on people and everyone in our team does so. For those speaking I feel it is quite rude to not give them any visual cue on how they are doing: I’m I understood? Are my points appreciated? Do I bore people? Are people even listening? Personally, I think the only good reasons to turn off a camera are either technical issues or if you indeed briefly want to send the message “I am distracted for a short while, but will be back with full focus in a while” To your other points: - Don’t like your own image: turn self-view off - Messy background: enable blurring (or an alternative background)
- lixtra 4y agoPeople also have ticks. Some drool when concentrating, some stare in a strange way. The cam on your laptop is shoved right in your face which is different from a normal larger f2f meeting. Also people don’t secretly take pictures of you in real meetings. I always turn the cam off when I share my screen. I want people to focus on the content I’m sharing, not the pimples in my face.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ResearchCode 4y agoThere's nothing rude about non-video calls. They are frequently carried out between heads of state or royalty, that is at the highest level of politeness. If people are disinterested, you might want to invite less people to your meeting or use email.
- subpixel 4y agoI manage a team of 5 and our meetings are mainly driven by screen sharing. When I’m sharing my screen I don’t see anyones face. When I’m looking at what someone else is sharing I want to see it full screen. I’m not really looking at anyone unless we are speaking on a direct call.
- banannaise 4y agoThis is not at all easy for neurodivergent people. This comment reeks of "why can't you all just be normal and not weird?"
- aldebran 4y agoI was this way. Then I realized it’s a work culture thing. Is the team culture accepting of each other the way they look and the surroundings they are in? I’ve been part of 2 teams since the start of the pandemic and I’ve experienced both sides. 1- where my manager would visibly get annoyed at the slightest auditory or visual disturbance. He wouldn’t say anything but it was clear he was displeased to see kids in the background. 2- we all accepted each other (except this one person who didn’t understand that people with kids have different issues to deal with). My kids would barge in through the door and my team mates would wave to them, smile and continue our conversation. We’d all joke about how our shower times are all messed up so we don’t look “presentable” and yet we’d turn on our cameras because we liked seeing each other. My current perspective is that the team culture has a big bearing of comfort level on videos.
- sokoloff 4y agoI agree with you in general, with one difference: there are specific topics in a 1:1 meeting that I’ll ask to have video on or be willing to reschedule. I’ve done this with people who report to me, with peers, and with people higher in the org chart.
- DavidSharff 4y ago+1 from a manager of a fully remote small team. I find the mental overhead of the always-on camera exhausting, and I prefer voice only communication for certain types of conversations so I can dedicate all my processing power to what's being said. I also pace when I'm thinking, make coffee, lay down, etc. In a pleasant twist of fate, migrating our full company (20ish people) into gather.town has largely made it a moot point for me now. I have the choice between zoom like video boxes or switching to small thumbnails I largely ignore in favor of viewing/interacting with the 2D scene. Also, when you see someone walking by and they "drop in" for a quick chat, the context for the visual feed seems more natural and less encumbering than spinning up a zoom meeting: they approach, you talk, they walk away, and you're alone again. If I pace IRL during the discussion and am off camera, my avatar is reinforcing that I'm still in the same space with the other participants. If I don't want to be interrupted I go to a blocked off private area; the 2D equivalent of a DnD status. (Wish I didn't have to add this disclaimer but this is the internet: I am not, nor have ever been affiliated with gather in any way. That friends was just an earnest anecdote and soft reccomendation)
- SecurityLagoon 4y agoThat's really interesting. I have used gather.town for conferences before and it works really well - but I haven't seen it used on an ongoing basis. It does make sense in a lot of ways to incorporate some of those physical cues of an office environment into a WFH setting.
- DavidSharff 4y agoIt's strange but really cool to zoom out and see various meetings between people in different rooms, or when we bring an outside contact into our space for a meeting you can introduce them to coworkers ad-hoc (like a real office). Swinging by with a guest, like other real world experiences translated into a 2D world, require developing a new set of social norms. For instance, if you're screen sharing through their app, you won't see someone approaching and the screen share feed will show up expanded by default for whomever enters. That can be problematic for a number of reasons (client data, personal info you were sharing with a close coworker, etc.). We also have recreated games like tag using the confetti feature, have rituals like hitting a lap around the entire space on go karts after code reviews, and occasionally raid Client Experience's office for supplies. It is a jealous god when it comes to CPU though and since modern JS environments are greedy as well, my fan gets a lot of work.