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Comment by nickdothutton | Hacker News Reader

One of the problems with the Camera-On experience is that… it’s just not very good. By good, I mean good enough to tell when someone is lying, or to tell when someone is trying to interject in that way that is easy in-person but so often ends in stepping on one-another on these conf sessions. It just doesn’t add enough.

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I have a coworker who announces his presence by announcing his self every time he joins. It does not matter if two other people are in the middle of a conversation, once he joins a meeting he announces that " name is here" I just don't understand it.

It's a holdover from the days of teleconferencing, no?

When participants join, all they'd hear is a little chirp, and then invariably, someone would ask "who just joined?"

Announcing themselves just seems like a time saver that is no longer necessary in the videoconference age.

The simple truth is that the in person experience cannot be replaced, hence why so many companies want to return to the office

> The simple truth

It's not simple at all.

Sure, you cannot replace an in-person experience with an online experience with no other changes. But why would you? You can't replace a car ride with a motorcycle, but you can absolutely travel effectively with a motorcycle. Thinking there's only one way to work, and if that way doesn't work in all contexts the working context is correct, is just silly.

Because successful business is all about relationships, and it's very difficult to build relationships with people you never see.

This is just handwaved nonsense. You're telling me that prior to video calls, people didn't cultivate relationships on non-video phonecalls? Just total nonsense.

Certain elements of successs are best deployed by actually showing up in person.

> Certain elements of successs are best deployed by actually showing up in person.

Sure, but how does that relate to video calls? They are by definition not in person, camera or not.

I think if you can be effective enough by showing up in person, there won't be a need for video calls.

> I think if you can be effective enough by showing up in person, there won't be a need for video calls.

The opposite is true as well. Why show up in person when you can be effective remotely?

I feel like we're just saying things now though.

It's harder to. Why do you think long distance relationships are so hard and fail more frequently?

Building relationships is always easier face to face, whether it's a business, platonic, or romantic relationship.

If I look back over 25+ years, I think there’s a time and a place for most modes of work. I wouldn’t want to have to kick-off a high value, high risk, complex project delivery or product development purely remotely. Likewise while IMO fine for day-to-day and mid-point reviews, I also wouldn't want to conduct a project retrospective or (in the case of failure, or partial failure) autopsy or lessons learned, in a wholly remote mode.

I do these, and they work. Mostly because the participants are serious and they know the consequences very well. Sometimes it wouldn't even be possible to do otherwise as several participants are in different parts of the globe.

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