The Secret to Surviving Remote Meetings
One of the current battles at my workplace is whether cameras should be on or off during meetings. Software developers want their cameras off (for obvious reasons). The company wants us to keep the cameras on and us to be engaged during meetings.
Previously I thought our employer made a good call in creating a requirement for cameras to be on. I’ve now concluded that my colleagues are right, and we should fight switching on our webcams with everything we’ve got.
Let me take you through my thinking, and you can decide whether I’m right or wrong.
The Post-Covid Environment
Like many businesses in my country, we sent employees home during the Covid pandemic. Suddenly it became possible for employees to work from home whereas before it was impossible.
It still wasn’t possible to spend anything giving us monitors, chairs or any equipment to facilitate the transition but at least we didn’t need to drag software developers into the office every day! It was a win for the software developers!
Other companies are attempting to push software developers back to work mine is attempting to convince employees to put on their cameras. I’m here to tell you right now it’s having similar success (that is, it has been met with failure).
Why Software Developers Keep Cameras off
The Research
It’s been a couple of years of working at home for many of us. This has given time for data driven decisions to be made about this stuff, and luckily that is exactly what has happened.
According to this work:
Cameras increased fatigue in employees, as well as reducing their voice in meetings. Worse still this fatigue is more fatiguing for women and new employees to the organization.
Why would we want to feel tired when we can be engaged in our code?
Difficulties in Demands
We’ve tried to mandate cameras on in our Agile ceremonies, but that initiative has been an unmitigated failure (as we all turn the cameras off during these).
This is a problem for our company if they demand something happens then this is met with silence and non-compliance. There are no winners in that situation, only losers but certainly the company has lost that battle.
Forced Fun
Often the company wants the development team to allow them to see what staff are actually doing.
This is worse when we have remote in-person hybrid “forced fun” event. I’ve one in mind that is pretty much a disaster.
Let me explain the situation. The company wanted us to compete in a team-building activity. In this case, we needed to stand in a line in height order, but we needed to include those who were not in the room. The solution is an in-person group and a remote group. The in-person group stood motionless for an age, then moved into height order ignoring each other and avoiding eye contact. The remote group sat doing nothing and couldn’t organize the activity since they were not speaking or speaking to each other.
To make this event a success we needed all colleagues to be engaged, and to work together. Cameras on or not, this didn’t happen, and the result of the event was simply embarrassing.
Is it like this at your company? I’m genuinely interested to find out.
Pulling it Together
I’m looking at my own words above. What is happening is that I see my company (and perhaps others) aligning camera use with engagement.
It’s a poor proxy and does not adequately capture why we might want software developers to have their cameras on. Wanting to direct focus on a meeting instead of work might be the goal of a meeting, but also that means developers get their work done.
Which would you want developers to do more?
Conclusion
Cameras on does not matter. What matters is what you do and deliver.
That’s the truth and should be the prism software developers should see world.