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Comment by gwillen | Hacker News Reader

Let me summarize my take on the 'don't mute' advice in this article:

* Is the call 1:1 or extremely small? If so, it's down to the preferences of the people in the call. Otherwise, for larger calls:

* Are you in a quiet environment? * That was a trick question. You are not in a quiet environment. You think you are, because your human brain is good at filtering out background noise. Your microphone is not. You are not being forced to actually listen to what your microphone hears. The rest of us are. Mute your fucking microphone!

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Some environments are actually quiet, and even silent if you sample from a boom microphone that will pick up barely any ambient sounds. Not everyone is an idiot. Forcing people to use headsets is, in my experience, more bulletproof than forcing people to mute. Our company is considering making it a policy (just like "turn on your cameras").

>Our company is considering making it a policy (just like "turn on your cameras").

Sounds like a horrible policy though.

Ahh, but the key problem which leads me to swear and make generalizations is this: Not everyone is an idiot; but idiots don't know they're idiots. (Also, to be clear, I don't think that people who unknowingly transmit background noise on calls are idiots. Clueless, sure. Inconsiderate, sure, if someone's pointed it out and they're still doing it.)

Forcing people to use headsets protects everyone from feedback, not from ambient noise.

Headsets with boom microphones (specifically) capture virtually no ambient noise because the gain on the microphone is extremely low (the relative volume of your voice picked up 1 inch from your mouth is much higher than that of anything else at the same location).

I can vacuum my house while on my bluetooth headset and people won't hear it on the other end.

There are mics that are good at filtering out background noise: https://www.jefftk.com/p/wired-headsets-for-video-calls

I leave my headset unmuted, and even if my kids are shouting in the next room my coworkers can't hear.

Cursing at readers undermines the value of your comment. Please don't.

Also, cardiod mics and good software filter out background noise.

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