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Comment by neya | Hacker News Reader

Ok, the discussion of MacOS vs Electron aside, I happened to check out the actual product and to me it seems like a glorified surveillance tool for remote workers. I think the best part of remote work you get is the flexibility, privacy and freedom that you don't normally get with 9-5 day jobs. To turn your desktop into a CCTV seems like solving the wrong problem for me. I don't know how employees even agree to this! "We will monitor you 24/7 via a video call on your laptop"

Why would you do that? I have never been pissed off at a product this bad.

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Cofounder here: agreed that an always on CCTV would suck and is counter to our approach.

Our website does make it seem to some folks like your camera would always be on, but that’s emphatically not the case. (We need to fix this on our site.)

The only things we show when you’re not in a call is online/offline status. You can then opt in to sharing your calendar and whether you’re in a Zoom/Meet call. We chose those status automations because they’re things you can find on your coworker’s shared calendar anyways.

Suggestions for how to clarify on the site are welcome.

Ok, constructive feedback - Why I think this product isn't for me or my company - When 7/10 team mates comply and keep it on always, the pressure is on the remaining 3 to turn on their cameras as well. I can understand the need if it's a sales or pre-sales call, but this would be a pressure even for daily/bi-weekly standup calls.

The most important point of all - when you go offline, it is now amplified in terms of visibility. For example, when I work remote, I'm not 24/7 on my desk. Heck, I may not even be on my desk for hours when others are working, but I may work at night to compensate for that when it's usually peaceful. But, a manager's perception of me might be that I'm most of the time unavailable, when it's not true. This may affect my performance reviews, etc.

IF you had pitched this as an alternative to Zoom with a privacy angle, that would be a real sweet deal for me. Perhaps, you could try to have a separate sales page for it as a pro-privacy zoom alternative, I have a feeling it may be received well by remote workers like us than what is pitched on the homepage.

I hope this feedback helps :)

Appreciate this feedback! Our site is ~6 months stale and we're working on updates next week onwards, so this is very timely.

> When 7/10 team mates comply and keep it on always, the pressure is on the remaining 3 to turn on their cameras as well.

This is our site being unclear again. Remotion coworking rooms default to audio and video muted. However, we struggling with how to represent Remotion on our site: When you're out of a call or your camera is off, we show users as "selfies" because we think those feel more human that just a green dot. Website viewers often interpret these selfies as being live video.

> when you go offline, it is now amplified in terms of visibility [...] This may affect my performance reviews

Candidly, I think that the root symptom of what you're describing is your team/manager. Let me ask you this: Do you want to work on a team that wants you to be at your desk all the time?

Our philosophy at Remotion is to be radically transparent about breaks, to the point of celebrating them. Apart from a few hours of meeting overlap in the middle of the day, we work on our own terms, including taking breaks for walks/errands/etc in the middle of the day. It goes to the point of actively posting photos of our midday breaks in an OOTO channel. Teammates react to those, making a point of saying: "Hey, prioritizing yourself is good. Being offline is good."

> pro-privacy zoom alternative

Interesting, will bear in mind.

> When you're out of a call or your camera is off, we show users as "selfies" because we think those feel more human that just a green dot. Website viewers often interpret these selfies as being live video.

Even though in-app you encourage photos, maybe for the marketing website you could display this as avatars/cartoon-versions of the person (which presumably people can set, if they prefer)? It'd make clear that live video isn't mandated.

Thanks for the suggestion. This is a good idea.

> Heck, I may not even be on my desk for hours when others are working, but I may work at night to compensate for that when it's usually peaceful.

Check your employee handbook. Chances are pretty good you're not allowed to actually do this.

Depending on where you work, you maybe right and/or wrong. You're held accountable for the deliverables, not for the time stamps. I never work with companies that do time stamps, might as well go to a 9-5 for that.

Your comment made me curious about this. I found their old home page that seems much more oriented around assuring that it’s not meant to be an always-on tool. https://www.remotion.com/home-old-2

It’s important when applying for a remote job to figure out what kind of remote culture the team has. Some are reading and writing only, some like frequent short video interactions, some longer video meetings. This seems optimized for the second type of culture with the option to use it as the third type.

Cofounder here. Thank you for taking the time to check that out.

Spot on re culture:

- Teams who are strict-async don’t want Remotion.

- Teams who are distributed but still like hanging out want Remotion.

Looking at it, I suspect a lot would depend on the specific team/manager's expectations. The basic idea of "there's a fluid always-going video call that you can drop into whenever you want" isn't awful, and I can see how it's a reaction to not having a shared office space. But if people hassle you about not having your video always turned on, that'd be a problem...

Thanks, this is a more accurate understanding of what we’re building.

Re video on/off, the defaults in the app can influence a lot here. Our coworking rooms default to audio and video off.

Yeah no thank you. It's fine if they pitch it as a slicker alternative to zoom but not an always on surveillance tool.

Cofounder here. See my reply(ies) to the first comment in this thread: We are emphatically not building an always-on surveillance tool.

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