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Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

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Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#31

Post by bsd44 »

All hands: no Everything else: yes

It's rude otherwise. I don't like attention so much that I only have a few pictures of myself as a child, none as an adult. But you have to put your preferences aside when it comes to business and be professional.

We had someone join our team and in every team meeting they would have their camera turned off while the rest of us had it on. I felt like they weren't part of the team, I could barely remember their face from the interview. Far from the eyes, far from the heart. So when the probation review came I gave them a thumb down, turns out others had the same experience and that person was gone.

You wouldn't hide yourself in the toilet and eavesdrop a meeting if you were in the office. This isn't something that needs "adding to the contract". That's so far from common sense that it hurts me physically reading such comments.

Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#32

Post by raxxorrax »

bsd44 wrote: post #31

All hands: no Everything else: yes It's rude otherwise. I don't like attention so much that I only have a few pictures of myself as a child, none as an adult. But you have to put your preferences aside when it comes to business and be professional. We had someone join our team and in every team meeting they would have their camera turned off while the rest of us had it on. I felt like they weren't part of the team, I…

There is a difference in sales teams and technical ones. I don't even have a camera at home and I think it will stay that way. If you have a problem with that please don't call me.

For external workers rules are a bit different, but within the company I don't really want to see people, waste of bandwidth. We have our pictures tied to our accounts anyway.

Team meetings with cams are mostly a waste of time, in productive ones someone is probably sharing their screen anyway.

I do like to work in my underpants from time to time but I understand that some people need to be professional. I believe some expectations are rude.

Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#33

Post by bsd44 »

raxxorrax wrote: post #32
bsd44 wrote: post #31

All hands: no Everything else: yes It's rude otherwise. I don't like attention so much that I only have a few pictures of myself as a child, none as an adult. But you have to put your preferences aside when it comes to business and be professional. We had someone join our team and in every team meeting they would have their camera turned off while the rest of us had it on. I felt like they weren't part of the team, I…

There is a difference in sales teams and technical ones. I don't even have a camera at home and I think it will stay that way. If you have a problem with that please don't call me. For external workers rules are a bit different, but within the company I don't really want to see people, waste of bandwidth. We have our pictures tied to our accounts anyway. Team meetings with cams are mostly a waste of time, in producti…

There's being professional and unprofessional in a business environment. Those are the only two choices you have.

Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#34

Post by raxxorrax »

version_five wrote: post #3

I'd expect people to have the camera on in a discussion they are actively participating in. If it's an all hands meeting or something I don't think it's fair to make people sit there on camera. Edit: I guess I should add though, I have never encountered a problem with the former situation, ie never been in a small discussion where anything is weird or we miss something because someone's camera is off. I have been in…

There hopefully is software that can emulate a very attentive image of yourself. I think if rules get stricter the demand would increase. Perhaps at some point it can even emulate clothing, some facial movements and make yourself clap in longer pauses.

Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#35

Post by retrac »

newsbinator wrote: post #15
crmd wrote: post #9

Much of communication is non-verbal. Why not increase the bandwidth of person-to-person communication?

This is commonly cited, but I wonder if anybody has studied how much communication happens by voice and screenshare, and whether there's a net loss compared to face-to-face. I get all my work communication done through voice and shared files. Am I missing information that would otherwise be encoded in implicit facial expressions? Or in the absence of faces, is that being conveyed to me anyway, through voice and expli…

There are many studies that look at communication comprehension and retention for where you can see the speaker's face vs. where you cannot.

The results are unsurprising. Being able to see the speaker's face improves comprehension. People rely so heavily on visual information to decode speech that there's a phenomenon known as the McGurk effect; if you set up an experimental rig so the brain receives visual information suggesting one sound but auditory information suggesting another, the visual information often takes priority over what was heard in decoding the speech.

(As someone hearing impaired, this is, pardon the pun, blindingly obvious to me. Sometimes, whether I can understand the words of a talking head on TV depends entirely on whether I look at them or not. But hearing people rely on lipreading too. From what I've read, usually far more than they're aware.)

Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#36

Post by avl999 »

If you are in a small meeting where you are an active participant (daily standup, sprint planning/retrospective, design meetings and basically any activity that involves your direct team) then it is only polite to have your camera on. That said asking people to turn on their camera is also impolite and not something I would argue for.

If you are in an all hands type of meeting or some other very large meeting where you are just listening passively (while doing other work in the background) then it is okay to have the camera turned off.

I always have my camera on for the former type of meetings but only occasionally for the later. That seems to be an unwritten convention based on what I've observed... at-least at the company where I work.

Re: Ask HN: If you're in a 100% remote role, should you turn your camera on?

#38

Post by gaws »

avl999 wrote: post #36

If you are in a small meeting where you are an active participant (daily standup, sprint planning/retrospective, design meetings and basically any activity that involves your direct team) then it is only polite to have your camera on. That said asking people to turn on their camera is also impolite and not something I would argue for. If you are in an all hands type of meeting or some other very large meeting where y…

> That said asking people to turn on their camera is also impolite and not something I would argue for.

What's the best way to decline if someone requests you turn your camera?

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