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Comment by jqpabc123 | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I must be a luddite. I don't get the video conferencing craze.

In most cases, I see little real, added value in a live video feed. What I find more generally useful is simple desktop/screen sharing with audio (i.e. GotoMeeting, TeamViewer)

If you must see the participants, allow a photo/avatar. Watching real lips moving in a stuttered video is quite chic and nouveau and all ... it's nice with family ... but it doesn't really add much value in a typical business setting IMO.

As with most things, there are exceptions but I use desktop sharing way more often.

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I understand people not wanting to be in a large meeting with their camera on but for anything <10 or so where everyone is participating I greatly prefer video chats. Video is still not a perfect substitute for in-person but it's GoodEnough (tm) for me. You don't get the full body motion cues but you get the majority of them and that's invaluable. I've heard/used the phrase "X, you look like you don't agree", "X, do you see an issue with this approach?", "X, do you have something to add?", etc. Personally I get a lot of value from being on either side of that exchange, either me saying it to my boss or my boss saying it to me. With audio-only it would be impossible to notice these things or see that a team member has opened their mouth 2-3 times but someone else talked first, with video I can say "I think X has something to add".

For larger meetings I can understand the fatigue but I absolutely love video chat for smaller meetings. I can easily tell when someone is distracted or might not have understood what I was saying. I've just stopped talking before because I can tell my boss/coworker just got a message or heard something off-screen that they need to address right away whereas without video I would have not known. I would have just kept talking until they finally said "Hold on a second", with video I know almost right when it happens and I don't have to repeat myself or try to figure out how how much to repeat.

I envy your position. I would not be able to participate in meetings without the ability to read lips/faces.

Audio quality is always worse than conference calls in the 80s and 90s (until people started using cell phones.)

I used to dread conference calls whenever most people were on their cellphones, me included. Quality was dog shit. If everyone was using a deskphone, quality was better but you could easily tell you were still on a phone call. Whatever system we call into can't make any use of the high quality bandwidth you'd get from internal deskphone calls or between two iPhones using the internet to do voice calls. Work has been giving out USB headsets lately so people can actually talk through the conferencing software on their laptop rather than using a dial-in number. The improvement in voice clarity is enormous and I will never go back to phoning into meetings. I've been encouraging my coworkers to do the same. We don't have webcams on our work PCs so voice or chat is the only option.

The problem with all webchat, regardless of microphone quality, is the erratic latency and frequent hiccups every time somebody's neighbor microwaves a burrito. Consistent latency is generally tolerable if kept to a reasonable minimum, but erratic latency is incredibly fatiguing for me to listen to.

You do sound like a luddite. Also it sounds like you're not used to remote work or interacting with other people in a remote-first environment.

Meetings are essential. Seeing people face to face is essential. I had lunch with a teammate recently and it bridges so many gaps you can't do with Zoom. And Zoom is orders of magnitude better than Slack or email.

If you don't think that face-to-face video meetings aren't important, then you don't understand human interaction.

Maybe one in ten meetings qualifies as "essential", and I'm being generous.

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