Ask HN: Remote Working and Cameras-On

I have worked remotely since 2018 and camera-on is certainly the only way to go. Sure, large meetings or recorded sessions mine gets turned off. Cameras on for meeting where you are actually involved is an absolute necessity for trying to make the human connection.

I don’t fully understand the “I won’t turn my camera on” insistence. This is akin to someone in-office bringing a curtain into a conference room saying “don’t look at me”.

I have no idea where this comes from. I've been working for a company that primarily puts me on long-term consulting contracts, which has me working for many different customers. Obviously, this needs to largely be remote, as I'm not going to move to a different city every year to accommodate some new customer's headquarters, but thanks to the last few years, most of these teams have been fully-remote teams anyway, and they have all been partially remote if not fully.

Other than the initial intro meeting, not only do I never have my camera on, but neither does anyone else usually. Meetings typically have three flavors. One, a periodic "standup" type meeting that involves going over an issue board. Two, an engineering peer review of some sort, that will involve going over a diagram or piece of code or a functionality demo. Three, some sort of swarm or pair programming type thing where you're either collaborating on creating something or troubleshooting an issue. In all of those cases, in order to actually do what you're trying to accomplish with the meeting, somebody needs to be screensharing.

But if there's a screen we should all be focusing on anyway, what would be the point of also adding N superfluous video streams to get distracted by?

Add to that the fact that, at least early in the pandemic, my ISP seemed to throttle me if I went over some unwritten weekly data usage cap I was a lot more likely to hit if I was adding in 8-15 HD video streams instead of just one.

This is different for very small free-form discussion meetings where a limited group of people is trying to reach a decision without having something to present. Maybe in that case seeing each other is warranted and helpful, but that is a very small subset of meetings. I don't see how it can possibly ever be justified to require cameras on all the time in all meetings.

Always camera on is far worse than working in person in a cube, IMO. But, during most meetings, camera-on is a reasonable ask. As in, it's fine if that's the norm, allowing for occasional exceptions.

Edit: it is unfortunate though that you'll inevitably be judged for your room/home, etc. This is one reason I prefer in-person work; if my home is noisy or disheveled, nobody is the wiser.

I don't understand the resistance. You are in a meeting with me. If we were meeting face to face, would you tell me to look the other way ? I get it that sometimes when working remotely, you may not want ppl to see you because may be bad hair day, you were casual with your outfit etc but if you resist EVERY time, that is not a good thing. It makes one wonder if you are hiding something.

However, if this is something you want to do at times, not a problem. Just announce early in the meeting "Hey I am not in a good position to be on camera. Hope that's ok". If you do this sometimes and you get flak everytime, then it may be time for you to look for a better workplace.

I hate seeing people in camera. I don't want to know if you are deaf or have four eyes. I don't want to know your disability.

I'm here to offer to information for anyone. If you're not able to hear me, I'll adjust. When I know about your disability I cater to you which reduces our growth.

I wish more people realize that cameras affect vulnerable populations.