no thanks, yet another privacy violating app.
Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
31–40 of 40 posts
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#32If you just want to train your new hires: - prepare good documentation - be on a call with them when you have to explain stuff verbally - be available in text chat to answer their questions No need to be always on call like this. I can only imagine this being used as yet another control tool for paranoic managers who want to make sure employees are always "working" at the desk.
> prepare good documentation
It is difficult enough to overcome the curse of knowledge when writing documentation that a better path is to open up a pair-programming setup and co-write your documentation with an intern or new-joiner.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#33If you just want to train your new hires: - prepare good documentation - be on a call with them when you have to explain stuff verbally - be available in text chat to answer their questions No need to be always on call like this. I can only imagine this being used as yet another control tool for paranoic managers who want to make sure employees are always "working" at the desk.
>- prepare good documentation That's already out of the question in most companies I worked for that weren't established in a field like automotive, robotics, medical, aerospace. All web dev companies I know have their documentation in slack chats and in the heads of the senior devs with longer tenure who setup the greenfield, as their main incentive is to concentrate their efforts to ship-ship-ship to get features/s…
I've been in places like that, it's like you build a brand new front-end but in the background you know - or experience - that within five years it'll be replaced with something new and shiny.
I came into the one company replacing a Flash application. We used BackboneJS first, then realized Angular was a better fit for larger applications, then a few years later when the whole company was basically using Angular, some guy came in from Google and Decided that they should be using Polymer instead. Once they nearly had everything ready for Polymer 2, Polymer 3 and lit-element came out which, of course, was completely different.
I mean we spent time there fixing a performance issue because unlike real UI frameworks, Polymer had no real concept of routing; in effect it worked like tabbed web interfaces, leaving things open but hidden as the user navigates away.
It was a multi-million embarrassment. I spent 2.5 years there in total in the Backbone and Angular project, and they decided fuck you, we'll do it different because we have a new UI style now so obviously every application has to be rebuilt from scratch.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#34If you just want to train your new hires: - prepare good documentation - be on a call with them when you have to explain stuff verbally - be available in text chat to answer their questions No need to be always on call like this. I can only imagine this being used as yet another control tool for paranoic managers who want to make sure employees are always "working" at the desk.
> prepare good documentation It is difficult enough to overcome the curse of knowledge when writing documentation that a better path is to open up a pair-programming setup and co-write your documentation with an intern or new-joiner.
I used to argue this too...but too many will use it as an argument to shirk documentation tasks onto people who quite literally can't do the job because the person with the relevant knowledge feels too important to bother teaching anyone.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> prepare good documentation It is difficult enough to overcome the curse of knowledge when writing documentation that a better path is to open up a pair-programming setup and co-write your documentation with an intern or new-joiner.
I used to argue this too...but too many will use it as an argument to shirk documentation tasks onto people who quite literally can't do the job because the person with the relevant knowledge feels too important to bother teaching anyone.
I have seen that failure mode as well. I cannot emphasise enough that it needs to be like pair-programming. Without the more senior person there, the more junior person will struggle to know how to get started and need to ask so many initially-ill-formed questions that it will be very slow going.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#36There are enough responses on this thread that sound like "only a psychopath or an artist could have come up with this." or "It sounds like prison! Gosh" or "This is like living in a nightmare tbh." that if anyone does find this helpful, they're going to have a hard time mustering the courage to admit it. This is especially if true of the sort of more junior people who might struggle to know when to ask for help vs when to avoid interrupting someone.
I would advise reaching out to https://www.focusmate.com/, whose users would likely also find this product useful.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#37I completely agree with the problem built and I built an mvp of a very similar solution (auto-blur, consent to un-blur, etc).
I tried to use it and HATED it. Even though I was the only one in the room, the constant “green webcam indicator light” was distracting and unsettling.
For making remote/hybrid communication better, I’ve switched my focus to making loom.com like experiences easier.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#38Training remotely is not like a remote work meeting or peer coding. It's terrible IMO. Half of my money, I make with dev, the other half, with training teams. Since Covid, most training are requested to be remote, even now that I can travel again. Companies have tasted the flavor of trip expense savings, and see only the numbers. But as a teacher, I can tell you those trainings are a far cry from the in-person one. F…
What do you think would make the remote training experience better? It sounds like one on one conversation as part of the training rather than needing to talk to the whole group. That can be accomplished through chat, but it could be people don’t use that when others are verbally communicating.
First, you need excellent network and hardware conditions, which you can control on your side, but not on their.
Of course, better software to worktogether, but that's a given. Bugs, misconfiguration, latency and ergonomics add up a lot.
But I think until you get a fantastic VR experience, it will still be subpart.
The human aspect of the training is hugely important, otherwise, a trainer has no added value over a youtube video. In fact, the video would be better, since you can pause.
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#39If there's a confirmation to "unblur" (e.g. "pick up") and your can't see people when you're "blurred" (e.g. "not on the call") then this works exactly like regular Zoom/Meet. It just has strictly less privacy because you show a blurred video instead of no video. Why not use something like Discord, where you can hear people in the background, and toggle your mic/output with a single button? The idea of a presence ind…
I disagree, I think this is an marginal improvement over zoom. With this, you can’t see others on the call without both people turning on their web cam. Zoom allows people to keep their camera off and see the rest of the group. I think this is more like a feature than a company at this point though.
That's only true if you don't have a camera cover (or anything on your desk you can use as cover). Pretty quickly someone is going to go "I'm sick I look awful, I'm keeping my camera cover on" and that's just like Zoom. Though I agree there's a stronger incentive to have camera on (is that a good thing? Does that help creating "a sense of privacy"?)
Re: Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time
#40Thank you very much for all your replies! I appreciate that!