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Comment by ahstilde | Hacker News Reader

I think everyone focusing on the "always on" aspect is missing the point.

This is a standalone device which takes care of a major part of the headache in transitioning to remote work -- a second monitor and webcam, a whiteboarding device, and a "who's online for me to talk to" visibility feature.

It's like paying $25 to bring the social experience of an office to your remote work environment without worrying about technical details or availability issues.

"Someone has their camera on? Cool, I can ping them, no worries."

The only feature I'd like to see is a "camera off but still pingable" mode, but honestly, I'd probably put a piece of tape over the camera and it'd work just fine.

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Sorry but we're not missing anything. Not wanting to have micro managing overlords in your own home is perfectly natural. If you have this and your boss pings you - then the power imbalance puts pressure on you to accept. Any company implementing this is basically saying - we don't trust our employees. Ok, well I won't work for you then.

All those things come with an ipad or a second monitor and you have a lot more control.

This is great feedback. We wanted to make all communication on Sidekick bi-directional -- if I can see you, you can see me. This is to prevent any abuse of the product.

The idea makes sense though, and it's something we'll definitely think about.

> The only feature I'd like to see is a "camera off but still pingable" mode

i think that's called a slack message, or maybe email.

I think the difference is that "pingable" means you are happy to have someone ping you.

My understanding is that camera on = talk to me at any time. And maybe some users would still like that openness, without worrying if someone is watching them pick their nose.

A Slack message would start with "Hey, can we connect at some point..."

depends on how you use slack. if youre using it to its highest potential, people are setting their slack statuses appropriately and you can tell who is in the zone vs not, etc. i really think a lot of this stuff is a process problem. the tools are all there

I’m working on a tool to make that super easy (holopod.com).

We think we can solve for the impromptu conversations with a specified custom status that folks can trigger when open to a conversation (Eg. Water cooler, coffee break, etc).

Would love any feedback!

"camera off but still pingable"

That's called Facetime'ing someone.

Yep or zooming them, or microsoft teaming them.

IBM released a very popular set of working from home guidelines - one of the absolute most important rules is that you never ask an employee to turn on their cameras - it's an invasion of privacy.

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