Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

doi.apa.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 284 posts

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#91

Post by xyzzy123 »

pyrale wrote: post #58
kodah wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: I'm a lead engineer on a team with six products. I keep my camera off in meetings. I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. I'm also usually not the active speaker in meetings. Why stare into a camera when what my yearly bonuses are calculated on is work/team output? I've found most meetings I get into are either: - Developers who can't figure something out from documentation and a…

> and are too impatient to be helped over Slack. Slack is not a panacea. Sometimes, you need to share a screen and have a fluid discussion, which Slack does not provide. All-slack communication is definitely not great. It is ok for some communications that can be asynchronous and don't need a support, but that's definitely a small subset of the work communications needed for an engineering context.

Check out slack huddles, they actually work fairly well now.

Was not a fan initially but have grown to like the fairly fluid transition to fully sync comms (for the kind of interaction where I used to go to a co-worker's desk before we were full remote).

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#92

Post by varjag »

boglurker wrote: post #8

I haven't turned my camera on in meetings for over 8 months, I don't think anyone really cares that much, and I find some people like it because they feel less pressure to keep their own cameras on as a result. That's been my experience at least, I'm sure some people have bosses that require it for whatever reason which might make that not an option for everyone.

I'm regularly in meetings where people are on camera and where everyone has them off. It's clear the degree of people not following the discussion when the cameras are off is much more substantial.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#93

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lucumo wrote: post #25

> following a day of virtual meetings I've done full days of real meetings. Those were exhausting and very draining. I'm surprised that anybody would expect anything different from virtual meetings. I have noticed that it's harder to feel people as fully human when they're little 2D movies. Even moreso when they're disembodied voices. It's less so when I've met the people IRL. I'm guessing I can then link their image…

I just can't keep focus on online meetings, everything said just quickly washes over me. IRL meetings are a bit more engaging, but if they become more presentation-style, I just fall asleep (either in the sense of "I'm not paying attention" or "zzzz").

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#94

Post by Jenk »

piva00 wrote: post #47
jacobmischka wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely rude in my opinion when people simply don't turn their cameras on in virtual meetings. Unfortunately, no one at my workplace except me does.

Rude? Have you considered the other side? I'm extremely fatigued by having the camera on, I feel surveilled and every movement I do in front of it is calculated by my unconscious mind. It takes a real toll on my productivity having to have the camera on for a string of meetings. I feel it's extremely rude to dismiss others' experiences with the damn camera on for a virtual meeting. What is up that you need someone el…

do you just melt when in the office?

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#95

Post by epanchin »

klodolph wrote: post #82
jacquesm wrote: post #73

We are pretty small and have a 'camera on' policy for our one one hour meeting on Friday every week, and if you don't want to have your camera on you are asked not to participate, and an eight hour interview day every Tuesday. The only exception is for observers present during the meeting (for instance: customer representatives that do not have anything to contribute but are just there to listen and make their own no…

> If you can't be bothered to have your camera on in meetings then you probably shouldn't be in that meeting in the first place. I don't understand how this could possibly be justified. We used to have conference calls all the time, they did seem to work so we kept having them... it's just that everyone has cameras now. I don't understand why some people feel the need to harass people to turn their cameras on. Is the…

In my experience, conference calls never managed to replace travel, but in many cases video calls have done so. Even my consultant friends who travelled extensively now use video.

In that respect, conference calls did not work, and cameras are important.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#96

Post by onion2k »

sz4kerto wrote: post #53
kodah wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: I'm a lead engineer on a team with six products. I keep my camera off in meetings. I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. I'm also usually not the active speaker in meetings. Why stare into a camera when what my yearly bonuses are calculated on is work/team output? I've found most meetings I get into are either: - Developers who can't figure something out from documentation and a…

> I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. > I'm also responsible for delivering code and 50-75% of my day is meetings. There's an organisational issue here.

Not necessarily. "delivering code" is not the same as "writing code" after all. It's very likely that half the meetings are with product, and higher ups, to discuss what the dev team can deliver, and the other half are with the dev team to discuss what they're going to deliver.

The way to avoid those meetings is to write documents instead, but you'd still not be writing code.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#97

Post by ratww »

sz4kerto wrote: post #53
kodah wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: I'm a lead engineer on a team with six products. I keep my camera off in meetings. I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. I'm also usually not the active speaker in meetings. Why stare into a camera when what my yearly bonuses are calculated on is work/team output? I've found most meetings I get into are either: - Developers who can't figure something out from documentation and a…

> I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. > I'm also responsible for delivering code and 50-75% of my day is meetings. There's an organisational issue here.

For the first quote maybe. But for the second ("I'm also responsible for delivering code and 50-75% of my day is meetings"), not really.

Technical Managers and Tech Leads need to participate in meetings but some also need/want to keep their coding skills and codebase knowledge sharp. A compromise is spending only 25%-50% of the time coding.

Some people are good with both and prefer to keep doing it.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#98

Post by Lutger »

kodah wrote: post #44
lucumo wrote: post #25

> following a day of virtual meetings I've done full days of real meetings. Those were exhausting and very draining. I'm surprised that anybody would expect anything different from virtual meetings. I have noticed that it's harder to feel people as fully human when they're little 2D movies. Even moreso when they're disembodied voices. It's less so when I've met the people IRL. I'm guessing I can then link their image…

Some context: I'm a lead engineer on a team with six products. I keep my camera off in meetings. I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. I'm also usually not the active speaker in meetings. Why stare into a camera when what my yearly bonuses are calculated on is work/team output? I've found most meetings I get into are either: - Developers who can't figure something out from documentation and a…

The perceived the need to keep the camera off during a meeting is a good indication there is something wrong with the meeting, not that it's a good thing to keep the camera off.

We had some recurring meetings where people consistently didn't show up. The managers first impulse was to make the meeting mandatory. But the first thought should be: why are people not showing up? Engineers hate being unproductive, it should be a signal that there's something wrong with the meeting if nobody show's up.

Turning the camera off is just a socially acceptable way of not showing up. There are exceptions of course, some being just don't like being seen or have an issue being filmed out of privacy considerations.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#99

Post by sp332 »

awild wrote: post #69
piva00 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rude? Have you considered the other side? I'm extremely fatigued by having the camera on, I feel surveilled and every movement I do in front of it is calculated by my unconscious mind. It takes a real toll on my productivity having to have the camera on for a string of meetings. I feel it's extremely rude to dismiss others' experiences with the damn camera on for a virtual meeting. What is up that you need someone el…

Is this because you observe yourself on screen? I feel very uneasy looking at myself when talking, so I've figured out how to remove my tile and it's suddenly like a normal conversation. There are way less social codes you have to follow when wfh and people tend to not bother as much with enforcing them.

I constantly think about how I'm coming across, whether my hand gestures are visible in frame, if I look like I'm frowning too much, if I'm nodding big enough to be seen, if I seem like I'm not paying attention when I look away from the screen, etc etc

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#100

Post by crubier »

piva00 wrote: post #47
jacobmischka wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely rude in my opinion when people simply don't turn their cameras on in virtual meetings. Unfortunately, no one at my workplace except me does.

Rude? Have you considered the other side? I'm extremely fatigued by having the camera on, I feel surveilled and every movement I do in front of it is calculated by my unconscious mind. It takes a real toll on my productivity having to have the camera on for a string of meetings. I feel it's extremely rude to dismiss others' experiences with the damn camera on for a virtual meeting. What is up that you need someone el…

If other participants having a tiny 200px image of you (among 6 other people) in the corner of their screen is extremely fatiguing to you, how does it work when you go to the office ? Do you get seizures after 15min of in-person meeting ? Panic attacks ? How did you deal with life 5 years ago ?

Going from mostly physical office to mostly work-from-home on zoom is already a massive change that gives a lot of comfort to people. I think refusing literally ANY kind of human interaction apart from sound and written text is waaaay too anti-social.

Interaction is good, interaction is fine, this is where good ideas come from. Don't become a virtual entity. Humans are real.

Post reply on HN