Show HN: Background.webcam – Train new hires remotely in real-time

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.

For once, engagement plumets, people are easily distracted, doing something else, etc. They ask you to repeat more often, and network/sound problems plus the indirection you get to communicate kill the rythme of the training.

The whole communication is harder. You can't use humour as much, because it's way risker if you can't feel the room. You can't pass behind them to check on what they are doing, so you have to pull feedback constantly, which people are poor at giving. Sharing screen expose the most shy participants, and you can't read facial expression since most don't turn the webcam on, so you can't really know how they feel.

I'd say they learn half less, in the same amount of time. It will probably also stick less. And they also clearly enjoy it less, in general.

At first you'd think it's better for introverts, but if you have a good teacher, it's way better for an introvert to have a benevolent warm person calmy and discretly comes by your side to give you a hint than to have to share your mistakes on screen in front of everybody after being called out in the mic.

Twice already I had people this year, almost giving up mid way. Took me all my compassion and kindness to cross the virtual barrier and reassure them. It never happened to me in 10 years. They felt too much pressure, they felt they slowed people down, they felt exposed, they feld they couldn't find a solution and that I couldn't really help them because of the distance between us.

I'm getting good at remote training, and the sessions are running mostly smoothly.

But I still hate it. Such a waste of human potential.

You can do more training though, so I guess we trade quality for quantity.

Today I'm training people in Africa, from Europe. The connexion is aweful, participants are being asked by colleagues to interrupt their training to solve work issues, and MS Teams has been a train wreck. Thank God they are good coders, and they exercices are quick to check, because they are 7 of them, and they each need to share their screen with their own particular bug.

So sure, it's better to be able to train them at all than not to, given that their company would probably not pay me to fly there (I would have come, I worked a lot in Africa).

But damn, it's low quality.

Give them a direction in a form a text(docs and code)\video resources and a few chants in Team (or whatever you are using) where they can ask question about the processes, code, repos, infrastructure etc.

Give them a direction in a form of a set of tasks from a few easier ones to moderate.

Give them 2-3 complex tasks they should be done with in 2-3 months time (3 months is a standard probation period here)

Be ready to help them own, answer their questions and sometimes check in on them if they are silent for loner than expected.

That's all that is needed if a person is older than 16.

>Can this app be the answer for you?

No, that's terrible in my opinion. I'm sitting in my apartment and someone is literally spying on me. The blurred video honestly looks like some sort of censored porn.

And what is the point? I'm a dev. Not a typist or something. Most of my work takes place in my head, not over the keyboard.

>I am researching whether it can be helpful for senior developers, team leaders

Senior devs and team leads have better things to do rather than monitoring their coworkers.

This is like living in a nightmare tbh.