Personally, I keep my webcam off at all times. Constantly mugging for the camera to show that I'm following along gets old.
Maybe it's my performance background, but if I'm talking (and especially if I'm presenting) it really important to me to be able to read the room, and it's really hard for me to present if I can't.
Face to face communication is way better than text.
I would 100% disagree on that. In my humble opinion the "mental bandwidth" for communication is about 2-10x with video+audio compared with plain audio. Because you can see how the other person(s) react etc.
They do if you're a human with actual emotions and not the stereotypical IT guy that's basically a meaty robot "only following logic" (always the shittiest devs to work with btw no matter how good they are on the technical side).
> And if the meeting is about socializing the camera makes even less sense, you are probably doing something together and that should occupy your attention and not some silly moving picture of someone's face.
Leave it to a techy forum like HN to produce disconnected, unreal shit like this sentence.
Newsflash, mimics and gestures exist for a biological reason and are an essential part in communication. It's exactly why emojis are a thing in the first place.
> Newsflash, mimics and gestures exist for a biological reason and are an essential part in communication.
Blind people seem to do pretty well in both understanding and being understood. So I would argue that 'essential' could be replaced with 'helpful' for person-to-person interactions.
On a personal note: having a conversation with a constant 150-500s lag makes video distinctly unhelpful to my brain - in fact, it is extremely destructive to my ability to focus on the conversation at hand. And I can assure you I'm a human with emotions, [hopefully] not a 'shitty dev', and am neither a meat robot nor a disconnected techy.
Disclaimer: No idea who you are or what and whom you work with.
But still: I think you and the people you have calls with are missing out. Seeing peoples reactions brings very much additional value to communication.