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Comment by asyncscrum | Hacker News Reader

Am OP, can speak to the lack of cameras. We actually crafted our process in the Microsoft Lync era. Video was brutal. Also because of the diverse accents (Vietnamese, Portuguese, Russian, Scottish) it was easier to 'listen' without distraction. Obviously if you were starting today, cameras would be on. As you pointed out, probably a mistake.

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I feel like it's much easier to understand what someone is saying when you can see their face and mouth than if it's just audio.

Same here. Seeing their lips move often provides just enough additional information for me to correctly guess their words.

Nowadays, with high definition and close to no perceivable latency. Early video chat was so bad that having the video on was more distracting than helpful.

I can see this not being the case with international latency causing lag between audio and video

I'm so very sorry for Pete's suffering and the loss to you and your team.

I hope I didn't imply that "cameras are required for distributed teams!!" I don't agree with that and you're right that it's super impractical a lot of the time.

I do hope to suggest that in-person team-building shouldn't be overlooked for the success and well-being of distributed teams.

I’ve never used Lync, but Teams with poor internet connections is terrible, so I’m not sure everything has improved.

I used to have a lot of Australian colleagues and their connections made calls with 5+ people just horrible.

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