My Colleagues Are Right. We Should Keep Cameras Off
There has been a running battle at my employer over the last few years. I think we can now announce that the results are in. After all of this time, my employer is right and the vast majority of employees are wrong.
This is different from usual. Usually both the employers and employees are wrong.
Post-Covid Hybrid Rules
My particular employer decided that after the pandemic workers could WFH in a hybrid way.
They didn’t spend any money giving us monitors, chairs, or equipment to facilitate the transition.
Despite the type of complaints, The Secret Developer has mentioned, we’ve had an interesting time mixing face-to-face and online working.
If my interesting, you mean disastrous.
Segregated Mixer events
I’ve seen our discouraging attitudes practically bring down events.
Let me run you through this. We have a large number of offshore resources (🤢) that we wanted to feel *included* in our away day, along with colleagues who could not make it to the office (the cat got sick, the tortoise moved faster than usual, or whatever reason).
This activity had a target for the group: to stand in a line in height order. Two groups, one at home and one in the office. Let’s…GO!
The team in the office stood motionless for an age. Then we moved into order like pros. That is, not speaking to one another.
I avoided eye contact with all other people. Score!
Frankly, the way we worked felt embarrassing. Yet it’s the offshore—home team that I’m ashamed of.
You see, we have cameras on rule. It’s a rule that nobody follows. One of the best excuses I heard was because a Java developer kept their laptop closed and “I won’t open it for just one meeting” which means that they never turn on their camera.
They’ve got my respect.
The difference here is that to make the event a success we would need cameras on. I don’t know about you, but there is a significant number of colleagues I work with every day who I wouldn’t recognize in the street. This is the opportunity to get to know each other.
Awesome. They won’t know it’s me complaining around town about awful standup meetings to all who will listen.
The result was that none of the home—offshore teamsters put their cameras on. For a second.
As a result they bearly spoke either.
The research
You’d think the armies of poindexters at universities would have looked at this issue, particularly post-2020.
The happy news is that they have. And they agree with us developers. Keep cameras off to stay happy.
To save you having to read the whole study or even this HBR post about it I’ll surmise.
Leaving cameras on is exhausting. Tiring.
And a waste of time.
Especially since (and you may not be surprised to hear this if you’ve been reading this blog for a while) there was no engagement with employees at all.
They didn’t ask what we wanted or thought. Because why would we ask that of our resources?
The source
The source article is here. For a read. The link? Right here, below this text. Here. Here:
Conclusion
Keep your camera off, keep sane. I don’t know about you but I simply keep coding when in meetings, and nobody wants to see me think that hard.