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Comment by klhutchins | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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 %)

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.

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.

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