Yes, "camera isn't working" should be the easiest problem for the company to solve! "OK, we're overnighting a laptop with a working webcam to your address in our HR system. Please use that known working camera tomorrow."
Cameras shouldn't be required. Learn to vet your employees.
At this point I do more digging/reviews and I either agree with your point and work with the PM to get them to be more concise, or I disagree with you and you’re released from the team for having values that don’t align with ours.
Either way my problem gets fixed because I had people put their cameras on and communicate like grown ups.
Then raise those issues like an adult, rather than passive-aggressively tuning out.
> Do you spend far too much working time at meetings? Do you try to make important decisions in groups of more than 10 people? Do you have more than, let’s say, 15 co-workers under your direct management? Do you receive daily reports which you don’t read on the day you get them? Do you have days when you don’t have time to ring back the person who’s been looking for you to discuss an important matter? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then you yourself are part of the problem, because you’re no longer on your guard against ever-increasing bureaucracy.
Unless you're some kind of modern-day ornamental hermit, writing code is unlikely to be the end goal; more likely you're getting paid to produce something useful, something for which communicating and understanding the problem is often far more important than actual coding.
> If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty.
This does not sound like a healthy working relationship, although I'm not sure the problem's on their end.
> There is an unspoken feeling of being forced to attend every meeting assigned to you just in case something feels useful.
Well, nut up and get over it. Either attend or don't, but don't half-ass it. The surest recipe for pointless meetings that go on for too long is meetings where half the participants are coding instead of paying attention.
Then it's time to move on. This is not a way mature adults should be handling such a situation.
A passive-aggressive reaction isn't mature either though, so maybe this is mutual and your company and you are actually perfectly in tune.
Agendas. They’re worth the 10 or 15 minutes you’ll spend writing it.
My biggest pet peeve is meetings that come out of Zoom chats “Let’s chat about that later in the week” and the subject of the meeting is “Continue Discussion from Zoom”. Awesome.
Only the minutes count as the results of the meeting. Works only in large, bureaucratic, political companies.
If you think you're not needed in a meeting, or the content isn't relevant, or someone else should be there instead, pretend you're an adult human and raise the issue. But if you're going to be in the meeting, pay attention. It's astounding to me that this could be a controversial statement.
Likewise if it's a problem my camera is off except in certain meetings (with clients or whatever) then bring it up to me. To this day that has yet to happen. Shockingly, work gets done, I listen to the important points of the meeting and talk when needed, and I don't have to let someone look at me while I'm not looking at them. It sounds like you have a problem communicating without a face to look at. If it helps, you can tape faces to the screen or request people put an avatar/photo of themselves up for you to talk at.
> > If I think you're wasting our time then you are, unless you convince me otherwise.
That's not a differing opinion, that's petulant and childish.
Your coworkers deserve the benefit of the doubt when they say you're needed for something.
And if you can't, find a job that treats you like an adult.
Lots of open source software have been developed in the last 40 years with what we call now "fully remote team" without any need for webcams. Why it's suddenly becomes mandatory for some people that develop software ?
"Sorry, boss, this latest laptop didn't work just like the last 10 you sent that I definitely didn't sell on ebay"
Selling or not returning company equipment is a crime and will land you in prison. If you don't have appropriate reach in a given jurisdiction to use the police force there you probably shouldn't be hiring there anyway.
San Francisco?
I can understand interviews, but once a person is part of the team and team members have met with him often enough (with the camera on) to recognize his voice, what is the point of having the camera on?
> I know some people don't like this, but it improves communication and team cohesion in a noticeable way.
This is one of those things for which there is no True Method. Yes, a lot of people have better team dynamics with the camera on. And yes, a lot of people have worse team dynamics with it on. Mandating one way or the other is suboptimal.
The only exception is one on one work meetings, like pairing, where both of you are going to be looking at code or something and the video serves no purpose.
Funny question, as it should be asked the other way round. People have been having remote audio only meetings for quite long - videoconferencing was very costly until recently.
In my company, it's a rare exception that people turn the camera on during meetings. When COVID hit and everyone switched to remote, I can't think of a single person in any of the meetings I've attended (including 1:1) who wanted the camera on - with the exception of introductions when people were new to the team.
It's not at all surprising as prior to COVID we had meetings with people located in other offices all the time (as well as some remote workers) - it was almost always audio only.
Human social interaction is deeply dependent on facial communication.
It's a broad statement, and not clear how applicable it is for work purposes and for which category of work.
Also, while it has its positives, it also as clearly has its negatives. Most miscommunication is due to misreading of visual cues. I can say it certainly is nice to be able to talk to people and not have them register any frown I may have, when the frown is unrelated to them. Not having to modulate my facial expressions frees up my brain to focus on the content of the meeting.
In my experience, people who seem to need facial communication do exist[1], but it's not a universal thing and likely not the majority. It's annoying when instead of phrasing it as an accommodation they would like to have, they try to make objective sounding statements to support their preference.
[1] I'm guessing that set has a strong intersection with the set of people who used to insist that they be able to travel pre-COVID to meet other team members as "in-person interactions are more effective". They certainly are - for them.
The other is just to make work more fun. Beyond 3-4 people, everyone stays muted, and with no cameras, a lot of the jokes and banter just stops. Dead air is a soul-draining response to jokes (whether good or not) that an individual can only try so many times. This works well during scrum meetings (when it's just the small team anyway).
I say this as very much an introvert: meetings are tiring for me anyway; I'd rather they're not also boring.
That policy has kind of stuck around with our team, and now people rarely turn on their cameras during team meetings. I would prefer to see peoples’ faces, but it seems I'm in the minority, and I’ve given up on trying to advocate for it.
I can also understand how Windows and Mac users might be hesitant to put their full trust in the technology, as it does occasionally glitch and blur out more or less than it should. Virtual Backgrounds also don't really help with poor lighting, or pandemic induced weight gain, etc.
So would say it's not that they didn't understand how virtual backgrounds work - just they were aware of their limitations and decided to err on the side of being lenient toward employees during a stressful period in a lot of peoples' lives.
In my current role all 1:1s, all meetings with clients, and all internal demos are cameras on by policy. I have friends that work places where the rule is camera on all the time unless it's a larger meeting or there's a presentation or something.
I've been a programmer for the last 30 years. I can solve any problem. I've created more than $1B value for companies I worked for in my career. That alone makes everything you said about cameras or strong vetting or online track records simply invalid.
Instead take the time to find out who you're talking to and if they make sense. If you can't, first hire someone who can. And if you're hiring so fast that you can't tell whether you hired the same person as who showed up, then you're hiring too fast. Stop trying to out-grow time.
I agree about the raising alarm bit, that stuff needs to happen very quickly.
That sounds suspicious. I don't know anyone who "can solve any problem". And in order to deliver larger value you need to work in a team. How can you be an effective team member with a fear of video calls?
LOL, maybe because video calls are not part of that?
> I don't know anyone who "can solve any problem"
that's what happens when you hire for "seniors" but pay junior salary: you get juniors occupying senior positions. Not surprised that's all you know - the industry does that a lot.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674503 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002690
So just an FYI. Maybe people are turning their cameras off for a reason.
Couldn’t they just say they use a VPN?
What performance management practices or metrics worked well for you?
I think his concern, along with several others, is that you are seeing a lot of things that aren't there. As I said in another thread, visual cues are a great source of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Being aware that people can't see you can certainly improve your verbal communication skills.
Our company has offices in several countries, and long before the pandemic it was a given (part of new employee training) to not rely on these cues.
If you're operating in the US, it is still multicultural. As a simple example, about 40% of the US is introverted, yet most strongly extroverted people have little understanding of the differences. And they very often misread the facial expressions of introverts.
> I’m not sure why you would pick the lowest common denominator and choose the lower bandwidth, less engaging, less human way of collaborating.
In all these threads, you've failed to understand the low signal to noise ratio that video brings. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but comes with a thousand more falsehoods than words do.
As an example, where I work, meetings are a heck of a lot better than when we used to have them in person at work. The few that insist otherwise are simply unwilling to accept that they have not adapted, and the problems lie with them, and not with the format.
If you have the budget, I highly recommend moving your compensation points up and focusing on top engineers in remote locations. It's much easier to vet people who have an established online track record and you can tap references from well-known companies. Unfortunately this way you will miss out on some great candidates that haven't yet established themselves, so you still have to branch out.
For remote work we require video interviews and cameras on during meetings. We'd make an exception if someone really needed accommodations to keep their camera off for some reason, but otherwise it's cameras on. I know some people don't like this, but it improves communication and team cohesion in a noticeable way. It also immediately highlights fraud like this.
Get your security team involved. You should be tracking where remote employees access your VPN and company services. Don't be afraid to ask about discrepancies and changes. If someone has logged in from one IP or region for the first 4 weeks and then suddenly you're seeing new logins from a different city or country, investigate. I don't care if people travel, but we need to firmly understand the security situation.
Watch out for people with frequent excuses for missing meetings, having to turn their camera off, excuses like "my camera isn't working today", and so on. Send everyone known-good webcams and company laptops.
And as always, performance management is key. Managing remote is harder than managing in person, and I say that as someone who manages remote and loves remote teams. You need strong performance management practices in place and clear ways to measure it. People who aren't getting their work done should show up quickly in your system and warrant additional manager investigation.
But if someone shows up in Zoom who isn't the person you hired, lock it down ASAP. Don't let being "nice" get in the way of handling an urgent security situation. Someone you didn't hire who hasn't agreed to your contracts is in your system, and that's a red alert emergency.