I I'd be WFH for two years during covid, and everyone had their cameras off, I'd go crazy. Not seeing a face for months, being stressed about the other party in a meeting not even paying attention, just speaking into a void etc.
Not everyone is like this. I can have a great time with people who compare inputs, see they diverge, and weigh the one that provides the most charitable view higher. This is usually my actual words, which I've been told sometimes comes with a "tone" that sends all the wrong signals. It turns out a lot of people read my usual pace--which can be way too fast at first--as anger or annoyance. When people focus on the words, it's obvious (by their own account) that I'm calm and enjoying the conversation.
It's usually a cue to take a deep breath and slow down. But it's hard to remember to do that from the start, and not everyone is willing to let the tone go once I take that control. And then the deep breath becomes part of the imagined anger/annoyance. It's made me wary of voice and video chat, and wary of people who prefer it specifically because they want to use the way people look and speak to determine what's going on in their heads rather than pay attention to their words.
I feel it's extremely rude to dismiss others' experiences with the damn camera on for a virtual meeting. What is up that you need someone else to have a camera pointing to their face that you can't have with their voices? For most meetings that I don't require my computer I'll even go for a short walk around the house, while bouncing ideas, raising questions and so on. I feel much more productive in the meetings I'm able to disengage from my computer and surroundings and immerse on the conversation without having to care about a camera showing my face.
Being very honest, being forced to turn my camera on is a major red flag, the fatigue is real and consumed me after a year on this, since last December I've been turning my camera off and it's been incredibly productive.
Judge as much as you want but it seems you have no empathy, worse than that, you want to force your ways of working unto others without even considering others' struggles with it.
Smiles, frowns, nods, glazed looks, puzzled looks, surprised looks, I-want-to-say-something-but-I-can't-get-a-word-in looks, zoning out, impatience, et cetera, et cetera. There's really a lot people communicate with their faces, both consciously and unconsciously.
If I'm at an in-person meeting of 5-8 people, and 3 of them get into a longer discussion about things that are irrelevant to me, and for understanding which I don't have the background, I can zone out and nobody cares, because nobody is looking at me. Everyone is looking at the people talking.
On a video call, my zoned-out face will make the trio feel uneasy; instead of discussing their topic quickly, they'll stumble and try to "talk to the audience", or god forbid, drag everyone else into the discussion. So with forced camera on, I have to look focused while squinting at the other screen, discretely playing 2048 and pinching myself to not yawn visibly, while with camera off, I could get off my chair, stretch a little, or do something actually useful for the company.
I'll be happier with having always-on camera on long videocalls when videocalls start working like real-life meetings: not everyone is looking at everyone else all the time, and everyone can tell who's looking at them in any given moment. The way things are today, I find this constant surveillance to be mentally tormenting, and only activate my camera on the basis of courtesy: 1:1 meetings, some team meetings, meetings with an important higher-up who also has their camera on, etc.
I feel very uneasy looking at myself when talking, so I've figured out how to remove my tile and it's suddenly like a normal conversation.
There are way less social codes you have to follow when wfh and people tend to not bother as much with enforcing them.
I'm being a bit encroaching here, but I'm guessing you'd have to do as much and probably more self regulation in in-person meetings. Nobody cares where your hands are, probably no one even looks at them because you're one of many tiles. Where you're looking is not interesting because nobody knows where your camera sits related to your face. I constantly look out the window while talking. Genuinely, I've had to force eye contact on bad days in in-person meetings and everyone knew, it felt as pathetic as looking at my own face and checking if my gesturing and face ist appropriate
What do you do in in-person meetings? Or supermarket visits etc.? Everything you do is way more visible in those, and I've never heard anyone complain about being surveilled in person.
It's not about the visibility, it's the psychological impact it has, having a camera pointed directly at my face 100% of the time is very different than sitting in a room, reading others' faces, attention (where are they focusing their gaze? When are they drifting off? When are they tapping their fingers on the table?).
I don't know why I hear this argument so many times, a camera on my face is a very different experience than sharing a room with others, I don't see the parallel.
The parallel does not work, I don't think it's that hard to realise that a camera pointing at your face, showing how you look at any given moment to anyone that looks at you and you can't tell if they are looking at you or not is equivalent to an in-person setting where you are aware of your surroundings much more naturally.
I really don't know how to be more explicit than this about the major differences between in-person to a virtual meeting with cameras...
You feel this way shopping in the grocery store? Where the cashier is constantly looking at you when speaking? Is your productivity lower because the other people in the store can see you?
This may not be an issue for you, but it makes some people uncomfortable. Add anxiety disorder and it's a fucking nightmare. I have no issue if I can see where people are looking.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986737
It's not that difficult to see that this is a very different experience than sharing an office. And I'm tired of repeating this.
I had female coworker confide to me that she didn’t like turning her camera on because it takes 40 minutes to apply her makeup every day. So she only does it for important meetings, but otherwise leaves the camera off.
So... if you don't understand someone else's reasons for doing something, you assume they aren't being honest with you?
I feel you are getting somewhere with this train of thought, so far I've replied a few people on this thread that seems to think this way and project this need of having a camera on because they don't understand how that can negatively affect others and assume people are being dishonest.
The underlying issue is thinking of other's behavior as if it it was own behavior and then determine the other person's motivates from that assumption.
If you don't understand someone else, you'll assume their reasons for a specific thing are the same as if you were doing that thing.
Example: I take more days off than I have PTO for.
Conclusion: I'm claiming to have a disability to get to have more vacation days.
Reality: I've gone six months without any kind of vacation and many of my weekends spent barely recovering from work. My disability has taken so much from me that I find it hard to justify staying alive.
When I get back to work, people ask how my vacation was.
If you are working remotely, does it matter? Does it matter if someone hasn't showered in a week and doesn't want to show that on camera but is still a productive worker?
I really don't get this nosiness about people's lives when you aren't sharing a common physical space.
I enjoy sometimes being able to get out of bed a bit later, not having time to do a full morning ritual before work if I can get some 30-45 min more out of my sleep, why should I have to care about all of that to show my face to colleagues on camera? Why should you judge someone that doesn't want their camera on?
Is it any of your business?
Going from mostly physical office to mostly work-from-home on zoom is already a massive change that gives a lot of comfort to people. I think refusing literally ANY kind of human interaction apart from sound and written text is waaaay too anti-social.
Interaction is good, interaction is fine, this is where good ideas come from. Don't become a virtual entity. Humans are real.
The big difference to presence meetings is that you send your picture into the void and don't get any social cues back, or very different ones.
You're arguing against a bit of a strawman there.
Video conferences are as if everybody were potentially constantly staring at you, but you couldn't tell if or when this was the case, and despite everybody looking at you, you couldn't even make eye-contact with anybody, share a smile etc.
If anything, video conferences are dehumanising.
This is the 3rd time I'm replying that I feel that the experience of a camera is very different than real life interactions and I like real life interactions, I'm getting really exhausted of this non-sequitur being repeated...
For my company we’ve used zoom for the last 3 years, and never turn on our cameras unless there’s a specific reason.
For the first ~12 months of the pandemic, I was working from home, using my desk in the living room because there wasn't a good spot for it anywhere else. Having my camera on would have meant having my living room in full view, often including my partner on the couch in the background. While background detection/subtraction does exist, it isn't perfect, and so that would be an intrusive view into our private area.
I've since moved to a different location, with a room to be a dedicated home office. Here, it wouldn't impose on private space to turn on the camera, because that was part of the intent behind that room. However, you as the person on the other end of the call cannot know which situation somebody is in, and so it would be rude to insist on video beyond a polite request.
Different people have different expectations and there are probably a lot of reasons for the wide variety.
However it kinda sounds like you have a different expectation than the team you work with. Would be mindful of taking the stance that ‘everyone else is wrong’
> no one at my workplace except me
That tells you your opinion is wrong. It is not rude at all and nobody but you minds. Just say "I would prefer if" instead of claiming that something "is rude".
Not having a camera distracting me helps me to help the other party and give them my full concentration. This is amply reflected in the audio, just like a telephone call, and in a one-on-one call you can both just leave the mic open and have a normal conversation with all the social cues audio communication offers.