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> Watch out for people with frequent excuses for missing meetings, having to turn their camera off, excuses like "my camera isn't working today", and so on. Send everyone known-good webcams and company laptops.

Yes, "camera isn't working" should be the easiest problem for the company to solve! "OK, we're overnighting a laptop with a working webcam to your address in our HR system. Please use that known working camera tomorrow."

I keep my camera off all the time because I don't like having it on when I'm tabbed off doing my actual job. While the PM is bleeting on about whatever they feel is important I can do actual work.

Cameras shouldn't be required. Learn to vet your employees.

For me personally I need people's cameras on as I find hearing a bit difficult (I wear a cochlear implant) so I utilise lip-reading to fill in the gaps.

That's a good counter-argument. Don't most major providers provide closed captions? Or is it only Google Meet?

Skype does, teams does not, slack does not.

Zoom does, Teams does, Slack does.

How do you manage it if there are latency issues / sudden quality drops?

Personally I find it disrespectful when people don’t pay attention in meetings and decide they’re going to make their own call about what’s important and what isn’t. So I’d probably enforce the “camera on” policy, notice that you’re not paying attention and this means the issue gets discussed.

At this point I do more digging/reviews and I either agree with your point and work with the PM to get them to be more concise, or I disagree with you and you’re released from the team for having values that don’t align with ours.

Either way my problem gets fixed because I had people put their cameras on and communicate like grown ups.

Personally I find it disrespectful to be pulled into random meetings I have no reason to be in. Or be held up in meetings that are 45 minutes longer than they need to be. "They are paying you" only goes so far. If I wanted to be paid to be in meetings, I would have gotten a business degree.

Right, so the solution here is not to have you in the meeting if you’re not required (and perhaps give individuals some latitude to decide for themselves whether they’re required), but if you are in the meeting you ought to be paying attention.

I'm not your slave. If you have important info, I'll listen. If I think you're wasting our time then you are, unless you convince me otherwise.

This is the kind of attitude and response I would expect from a 9 year old, not a professional adult.

If you think you're not needed in a meeting, or the content isn't relevant, or someone else should be there instead, pretend you're an adult human and raise the issue. But if you're going to be in the meeting, pay attention. It's astounding to me that this could be a controversial statement.

The only thing controversial is you saying someone with a differing opinion is acting like a 9 year old. This is only serving to further reinforce the general feeling that PMs are overall useless, overpowered, and undersupervised.

Likewise if it's a problem my camera is off except in certain meetings (with clients or whatever) then bring it up to me. To this day that has yet to happen. Shockingly, work gets done, I listen to the important points of the meeting and talk when needed, and I don't have to let someone look at me while I'm not looking at them. It sounds like you have a problem communicating without a face to look at. If it helps, you can tape faces to the screen or request people put an avatar/photo of themselves up for you to talk at.

You're arguing a point I haven't made.

> > If I think you're wasting our time then you are, unless you convince me otherwise.

That's not a differing opinion, that's petulant and childish.

Your coworkers deserve the benefit of the doubt when they say you're needed for something.

> Personally I find it disrespectful to be pulled into random meetings I have no reason to be in. Or be held up in meetings that are 45 minutes longer than they need to be.

Then raise those issues like an adult, rather than passive-aggressively tuning out.

Quoting from The Testament of a Dealer:

> Do you spend far too much working time at meetings? Do you try to make important decisions in groups of more than 10 people? Do you have more than, let’s say, 15 co-workers under your direct management? Do you receive daily reports which you don’t read on the day you get them? Do you have days when you don’t have time to ring back the person who’s been looking for you to discuss an important matter? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then you yourself are part of the problem, because you’re no longer on your guard against ever-increasing bureaucracy.

I am paid to write code not sit in 10 meetings a day. If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty. There is an unspoken feeling of being forced to attend every meeting assigned to you just in case something feels useful. You deliberately ignore this to make your (absolutely wrong) point.

> I am paid to write code not sit in 10 meetings a day.

Unless you're some kind of modern-day ornamental hermit, writing code is unlikely to be the end goal; more likely you're getting paid to produce something useful, something for which communicating and understanding the problem is often far more important than actual coding.

> If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty.

This does not sound like a healthy working relationship, although I'm not sure the problem's on their end.

> There is an unspoken feeling of being forced to attend every meeting assigned to you just in case something feels useful.

Well, nut up and get over it. Either attend or don't, but don't half-ass it. The surest recipe for pointless meetings that go on for too long is meetings where half the participants are coding instead of paying attention.

> I am paid to write code not sit in 10 meetings a day. If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty.

Then it's time to move on. This is not a way mature adults should be handling such a situation.

A passive-aggressive reaction isn't mature either though, so maybe this is mutual and your company and you are actually perfectly in tune.

I wish the good old fashion art of writing an agenda was still practiced. And not an hour before the meeting. Give me at least a day. I’ve clarified many a meeting just by looking at the agenda and communicating with the host that J. Doe has more experience in that area than I do. I’ve also been able to get meetings canceled by reading the agenda and figuring out what the person needed.

Agendas. They’re worth the 10 or 15 minutes you’ll spend writing it.

My biggest pet peeve is meetings that come out of Zoom chats “Let’s chat about that later in the week” and the subject of the meeting is “Continue Discussion from Zoom”. Awesome.

Oldest trick in the book was to write the agenda AND the minutes of the meeting in advance, run the meeting per the minutes, tweaking them on the fly and publishing them as soon as the meeting was done.

Only the minutes count as the results of the meeting. Works only in large, bureaucratic, political companies.

Then say no to the meeting.

And if you can't, find a job that treats you like an adult.

You sound like a great boss to work for lol.

I know, right? Boss who listens to the team and tries to resolve problems, must be awful for people. /s

Seems like a collective punishment for people who are perfectly attentive to the meetings with their camera off.

I'm an adult, I can work on something else while listening in and make the decision to shift my focus when it affects my area of responsibility.

Bullshit. Everyone thinks they can multitask, no-one actually can.

I did not claim to multitask. I listen for key words and stop coding.

People should be able decide if they want to allow a camera in their home. So mandatory “camera on” policy is completely off limits.

You could decide to work an office job?

Maybe that's people which absolutely want to see other people face that should take office jobs ?

Lots of open source software have been developed in the last 40 years with what we call now "fully remote team" without any need for webcams. Why it's suddenly becomes mandatory for some people that develop software ?

I agree that people should be able to decide if they want to allow a camera in their home. But workplaces should also be free to decide if they only want to employ people who are OK having a camera in their home.

ICs literally have half their work time taken by meetings here. Nothing would get done if they didn't work at the same time.

I think you are not seeing from the other side, many times the information conveyed for a certain duration is not relevant for some members of the team, instead of always saying i dont want to join this meeting entirely its much easy to only listen the parts that are relevant to you. Using a camera and forcing them to look won't help much here, as they won't be paying attention still.

Turn it on for the initial greetings, turn it off for the rest of the time, on a big enough call nobody is paying attention anyway. Turn it on if you need to speak. I don't think your crown would fall off your head if you did that, and it would be a compromise.

> we're overnighting a laptop with a working webcam

"Sorry, boss, this latest laptop didn't work just like the last 10 you sent that I definitely didn't sell on ebay"

I mean this is just getting silly now, isn't it?

Selling or not returning company equipment is a crime and will land you in prison. If you don't have appropriate reach in a given jurisdiction to use the police force there you probably shouldn't be hiring there anyway.

> If you don't have appropriate reach in a given jurisdiction to use the police force there you probably shouldn't be hiring there anyway.

San Francisco?

San Francisco doesn't have a police force so much as it has a couple thousand people just hanging out sucking $700M off of the city budget.

> For remote work we require video interviews and cameras on during meetings.

I can understand interviews, but once a person is part of the team and team members have met with him often enough (with the camera on) to recognize his voice, what is the point of having the camera on?

> I know some people don't like this, but it improves communication and team cohesion in a noticeable way.

This is one of those things for which there is no True Method. Yes, a lot of people have better team dynamics with the camera on. And yes, a lot of people have worse team dynamics with it on. Mandating one way or the other is suboptimal.

> what is the point of having the camera on

Human social interaction is deeply dependent on facial communication.

I don't know, there was a time when an enormous amount of human social interaction took place over the phone. Even when doing business.

> Human social interaction is deeply dependent on facial communication.

It's a broad statement, and not clear how applicable it is for work purposes and for which category of work.

Also, while it has its positives, it also as clearly has its negatives. Most miscommunication is due to misreading of visual cues. I can say it certainly is nice to be able to talk to people and not have them register any frown I may have, when the frown is unrelated to them. Not having to modulate my facial expressions frees up my brain to focus on the content of the meeting.

In my experience, people who seem to need facial communication do exist[1], but it's not a universal thing and likely not the majority. It's annoying when instead of phrasing it as an accommodation they would like to have, they try to make objective sounding statements to support their preference.

[1] I'm guessing that set has a strong intersection with the set of people who used to insist that they be able to travel pre-COVID to meet other team members as "in-person interactions are more effective". They certainly are - for them.

Have things changed that much? I have worked in quite a few teams where remote meetings were a thing and never come across anyone who regularly had video off.

The only exception is one on one work meetings, like pairing, where both of you are going to be looking at code or something and the video serves no purpose.

> Have things changed that much?

Funny question, as it should be asked the other way round. People have been having remote audio only meetings for quite long - videoconferencing was very costly until recently.

In my company, it's a rare exception that people turn the camera on during meetings. When COVID hit and everyone switched to remote, I can't think of a single person in any of the meetings I've attended (including 1:1) who wanted the camera on - with the exception of introductions when people were new to the team.

It's not at all surprising as prior to COVID we had meetings with people located in other offices all the time (as well as some remote workers) - it was almost always audio only.

In my experience I think it helps a ton with non-verbal communication. I would never demand someone have their camera on apart from interviews/important conversations. But I can visibly see if someone is confused/engaged/understanding if I can physically see them and I think there's something too that.

I think I've had my camera on once the entire time I've been remote in ~5 years at my organization, and the same for 90% of my colleagues. I understand the need to ensure the person on the meeting is the person hired, but is this really how it is elsewhere? Everyone wants to see everyone else?

For a big meeting where someone is presenting anyway? No. For one and ones and small team meetings? Generally yes unless there’s some one off reason not to.

Completely the opposite in the places I have worked. Never seen anyone who had camera off regularly.

Yep, working for a BigCo and the culture was just as a matter of course to turn cameras on and see each other. I am really curious where the opposite is coming from

During the pandemic, it was HR’s policy that people shouldn’t be pressured to turn on their webcam when working from home. Reason being that not everyone had an ideal working environment, and being forced to turn on your camera would only add to the stress.

That policy has kind of stuck around with our team, and now people rarely turn on their cameras during team meetings. I would prefer to see peoples’ faces, but it seems I'm in the minority, and I’ve given up on trying to advocate for it.

This seems like the kind of policy someone would make if they didn't understand how a blurred background worked.

For what it's worth, the Zoom Linux client didn't have decent support for virtual backgrounds (i.e. without requiring a green screen) until the 5.7.6 release in August 2021.

I can also understand how Windows and Mac users might be hesitant to put their full trust in the technology, as it does occasionally glitch and blur out more or less than it should. Virtual Backgrounds also don't really help with poor lighting, or pandemic induced weight gain, etc.

So would say it's not that they didn't understand how virtual backgrounds work - just they were aware of their limitations and decided to err on the side of being lenient toward employees during a stressful period in a lot of peoples' lives.

Yeah same. I have found a strong correlation between people who always(not sometimes) have camera off and people who are average-to-poor at their jobs and end up getting let go. It’s a decent indicator of someone who is checked out or mediocre. It’s such a low effort thing to do, and shows respect to your colleagues. If you can’t be bothered doing that… (obviously excluding folk who have legitimate reasons, but that’s a tiny %)

Same. I like to walk around while I talk so you won't see me (and I won't see you) anyway. When I'm sitting down, unnecessary visual input (what's with your hair and are you really listening or browsing the web?) immediately distracts me.

It is very company-specific. My last job, we would do cameras on for our monthly engineering meeting (~10 people maybe?) and that was it. Even 1:1s were audio only probably 90% of the time.

In my current role all 1:1s, all meetings with clients, and all internal demos are cameras on by policy. I have friends that work places where the rule is camera on all the time unless it's a larger meeting or there's a presentation or something.

A huge benefit is being able to see how people react to what you're saying. I especially like this during brainstorming or retrospective meetings.

The other is just to make work more fun. Beyond 3-4 people, everyone stays muted, and with no cameras, a lot of the jokes and banter just stops. Dead air is a soul-draining response to jokes (whether good or not) that an individual can only try so many times. This works well during scrum meetings (when it's just the small team anyway).

I say this as very much an introvert: meetings are tiring for me anyway; I'd rather they're not also boring.

I never turn my camera on because I feel uncomfortable. I have zero references. I have zero public facing projects.

I've been a programmer for the last 30 years. I can solve any problem. I've created more than $1B value for companies I worked for in my career. That alone makes everything you said about cameras or strong vetting or online track records simply invalid.

Instead take the time to find out who you're talking to and if they make sense. If you can't, first hire someone who can. And if you're hiring so fast that you can't tell whether you hired the same person as who showed up, then you're hiring too fast. Stop trying to out-grow time.

I agree about the raising alarm bit, that stuff needs to happen very quickly.

Can you elaborate more on why you feel uncomortable? Not saying you're wrong - just trying to get a better understanding of why a lot of people seem to feel that way.

Yes, and I did [1] during one of the myriad other threads that are curiously [2] popping up all the time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674503 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002690

> I can solve any problem. I've created more than $1B value for companies I worked for in my career.

That sounds suspicious. I don't know anyone who "can solve any problem". And in order to deliver larger value you need to work in a team. How can you be an effective team member with a fear of video calls?

> How can you be an effective team member with a fear of video calls?

LOL, maybe because video calls are not part of that?

> I don't know anyone who "can solve any problem"

that's what happens when you hire for "seniors" but pay junior salary: you get juniors occupying senior positions. Not surprised that's all you know - the industry does that a lot.

30 years programming, a billion dollars in value generated, and you don't have a single reference?

I’ve been leaving my camera off for the past couple of weeks because I’m going through radiation treatment for cancer in my throat. My neck is red, my cheek is swollen from the canker sores that won’t go away, my beard (which I’ve had for over a decade and was quite proud of) is patchy and falling out, my left eye won’t quit “crying”, etc. I don’t have my camera on because I don’t want to explain all that to people. The people that need to know know.

So just an FYI. Maybe people are turning their cameras off for a reason.

Yes that's what OP said: "We'd make an exception if someone really needed accommodations to keep their camera off for some reason".

Yep. But my concern is with the phrasing “We’d make an exception if someone really needed accommodations”. Like it’s their decision whether or not someone has their camera on. Who is included in that decision? Just the manager? Do they get to look at you and say “You don’t look so bad”? Do you get to veto if you really don’t want to turn your camera on? I think it’s easier to approach every situation with an open mind towards kindness. And sometimes people just don’t want their camera on.

Aren't background checks that include verification of past employment and educational history the norm for North America-based businesses for candidates that have gotten to the on-boarding stage? I'd have thought it would be difficult for a fake candidate to get past those.

Sure, but what we're talking about is working with consulting companies and agencies who are assumed to have done their own vetting of their employees, and are representing the skills of those employees accurately to the companies that contract with them.

The fraud in these cases are standing up all the credentials, then sending some random afterwards

I've seen 30 - 60 - 90 day reviews and seen people let go in that timeframe. Is that not a thing in the US ?

Of course it is, but what does this have to do with someone else showing up for day 1 rather than the person who interviewed?

I'd not saying its helping, but you got a legal out.. at least.

> If someone has logged in from one IP or region for the first 4 weeks and then suddenly you're seeing new logins from a different city or country, investigate. I don't care if people travel, but we need to firmly understand the security situation.

Couldn’t they just say they use a VPN?

A login from a data center IP would stick out like a sore thumb.

Employees should only even use a company supplied computer with a corporate VPN to access internal company resources. That's just a basic security practice.

There are plenty of ways of securing access from BYO devices. There are certainly circumstances where your statement is true but it’s very far from universal.

> You need strong performance management practices in place and clear ways to measure it. People who aren't getting their work done should show up quickly in your system

What performance management practices or metrics worked well for you?

I would absolutely never work anywhere that required webcams on. Maybe for the interview but that's it.

Why not?

It's invasive and draining. I'd have to worry about looking like I'm paying attention the whole time, couldn't do dishes or anything like that, I'd have to make sure I'm wearing something work appropriate (no going shirtless), and I'd have to be careful about what I put in my surroundings.

You would never put it on? I think it’s fine if you turn it off because it’s a huge call or you’re occasionally doing the dishes or whatever, but always off is disrespectful to your colleagues imho.

At my company nobody turns the cameras on in the first place. I don't see any value they would add to a meeting, only distraction.

i mean ok, if thats the culture at your workplace, thats what it is. However, if you cant see the extra human engagement, social/communication cues, and generally increased feeling of attentiveness and respect that watching a speaker's actual human face brings, vs audio only... then i dont know what more to say. If you're just some passive listener in a large group call then yeah, whatever. But small groups, 1/1s, etc cameras on is absolutely adding value, even if you personally don't see it.

> However, if you cant see the extra human engagement, social/communication cues, and generally increased feeling of attentiveness and respect that watching a speaker's actual human face brings

I think his concern, along with several others, is that you are seeing a lot of things that aren't there. As I said in another thread, visual cues are a great source of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Being aware that people can't see you can certainly improve your verbal communication skills.

Our company has offices in several countries, and long before the pandemic it was a given (part of new employee training) to not rely on these cues.

I guess the multi-cultural misunderstanding is an angle I hadn’t considered. However, if you’re not operating in that context (multinational with big cultural/ language differences) I’m not sure why you would pick the lowest common denominator and choose the lower bandwidth, less engaging, less human way of collaborating.

> However, if you’re not operating in that context (multinational with big cultural/ language differences)

If you're operating in the US, it is still multicultural. As a simple example, about 40% of the US is introverted, yet most strongly extroverted people have little understanding of the differences. And they very often misread the facial expressions of introverts.

> I’m not sure why you would pick the lowest common denominator and choose the lower bandwidth, less engaging, less human way of collaborating.

In all these threads, you've failed to understand the low signal to noise ratio that video brings. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but comes with a thousand more falsehoods than words do.

As an example, where I work, meetings are a heck of a lot better than when we used to have them in person at work. The few that insist otherwise are simply unwilling to accept that they have not adapted, and the problems lie with them, and not with the format.

Good advice