Because of the video optimization. You can see it in action, on others' images. Much better, these days. I probably don't really need to do it, anymore, but it's habit.
It rewards staying still.
I got used to that, back in the 1990s, when we would ISDN to Japan.
I've literally, been videoconferencing, longer than some folks around here, have been alive.
I would have hated attending lectures at school on zoom. My focus isn’t great on video content.
However work is a completely different context. First, the ability to meet quickly and resolve issues synchronously is generally better on zoom than trying to get everyone into a room, especially in any modern company with more than one location. Everyone being on zoom rather than a floating head on the screen watching the back of everyone’s head is vastly worse than everyone on zoom. Second, the meetings don’t degenerate into social hour but typically stay on point. Third, I can look things up and read materials as the meeting goes without sitting staring at my computer or phone during a meeting that’s degenerating into a social hour.
Zoom fatigue as it’s called it probably nothing more than trying to retain dry content with distractions - definitely in front of the computer there’s a lot of stuff to distract from the talking head and the talking head isn’t that compelling. In person they dominate your mental and social world by construction. But in meetings that’s not necessary not necessarily optimal for best decision making. And if you don’t need to be there and the content is boring and pointless you can zone out.
What makes Zoom unique or different from simply using a computer doing other work for an equivalent amount of time? Or from being in meetings for an equivalent amount of time?
Here's the actual study cited, minus the "news" regurgitation, suggestive language, and interpretation:
The number one differentiator for me is whether we are forced to use cameras or not. I never turn one on unless specifically asked. And even then, I tend to turn it off anyway after some time of possible.
If it's turned off, then I don't have to put with this crap that most people do, that is meetings for the sake of meetings. On the other hand, the actual meetings where we meet with one or two colleagues and we work on blockers etc. are extremely useful, engaging, and instead of fatigue I feel satisfaction. (Maybe because instead of my face, I show my screen).
The solution is simple enough that even the people researching such topics should understand - let people focus on getting things done instead of holding them in meetings all.day.long.
When I see things like this I do wonder: what are the meetings that people are in that they wish they weren't? Are there many meetings you are in that you can provide no value to, and from which you gain no value? What are they, and does no-one listen to you saying you shouldn't be there? Genuinely curious about examples, or whether it's managers not listening to you or something – not trying to undermine your point.
In organisations where meetings are abundant the causes are sometimes systemic. Poor communication, superficial employees that instead of trying to understand rely on others to explain, poor planning, a desire to show productivity by those that would otherwise serve little to no purpose, misunderstood agile processes, poor requirements gathering, and the list goes.
In some organisations the use of meetings is so ridiculous that day two after a ceo sends an email corporate wide asking for a reduction in meetings, meetings are organised to discuss how to reduce meetings and as a result there are meetings to follow up on meetings where reducing meetings has been discussed.
Sometimes I wonder if people that cause meetings arent the people we keep reading about that have no inner voice and simply need to talk to someone, anyone, to compensate.
I see this a lot and the real problem is that when engineers are complaining that they're in meetings all day what they mean is that it feels like they're in meetings all day, and the managers (who are actually in meetings all day) don't appreciate how one hour-long distraction can destroy a day's worth of productivity for an engineer. the worst meetings aren't the ones where you don't need to be there since you could just skip or join mute and keep working, the worst meetings are where detailed status updates are requested from you and you have to report on what you've completed and why it took longer than expected (as usual per hofstadter's law) which will have required you to page all that context back in displacing your current focus and due to the nature of the meeting frustrates you enough that recovering focus afterwards is difficult.
status meetings were called out as an engineering management antipattern 40 years ago yet they remain utterly rampant.
What good managers do is bother to actually read the group chats and give a fuck about the details. Re-read what they don't understand until they do and only then reach out with a short and scheduled meeting and maybe just a few DMs. Then they get to work coordinating the effort for the next sprint and make sure everyone is on schedule. Far too many managers these days are just kicking back and checking boxes or dictating absurdly oversimplified plans from afar.
A good manager becomes a student and servant of their own team. Anyone who doesn't want to do this needs to find another place to work. Just because we work from home doesn't mean we don't work.
You're probably not wrong, but a 99% sensible plan can still be catastrophically bad. The complex knot of decisions to be made in the 1% may completely invalidate whatever the AI already told the higher-ups. This happens even now when humans painstakingly plan something out (usually because someone is abusing their "soft skills" to buy time or keep others from worrying).
I think humans are still miles ahead in being able to spot a lie that will derail a project. If you force people to work under an equally incompetent AI middle manager, prepare to see them quit in a mass exodus for somewhere that doesn't. Nobody (except naive college grads) is going to risk getting fired or having their career ruined by an over-glorified cost-cutting measure that prioritizes the convenience of the rest of the business over the quality of the work being done.
In my experience, working from home is similar to many of the other skills we hone in our careers.
Yes, the tools you use will impact performance and quality of life. Invest in these. But also, getting better at video calls helps with performance and quality of life.
I have found that when we treat video calls as real time conversations, we get frustrated with latency and the lack of proper audio mixing.
However, if I and the people I video conference with obey certain protocols: 1 person speaks at a time, raise your hand to speak next, etc, many of the frustrations that cause fatigue go away.
It still isn't a replacement for the real time, able to talk over each other style that we might prefer, but at least it's productive and less of a drag.
I'll note that when we adhere to these protocols, we find not only are we less fatigued, but the quality of communication sky rockets. I think this is a result of everyone having more room to think and being forced to prepare your thoughts rather than reacting with whichever thought comes first.
Regarding the "they're just trying to get us back in the office" debate - I'm hopeful that genZ will come fully immunized against zoom fatigue and it'll be less of an issue.
Also -- HIDE THE VIEW OF YOUR OWN FACE! This is a significant factor in "zoom fatigue" experienced by many. Looking at yourself in the mirror during high-stakes professional interactions is a footgun.
I find it pretty interesting that many of these studies happened in 2021-2022, which is after everyone has been infected with covid at least once. Then to not put any correlation to biological cognitive dysfunction, fatigue, or other challenges given most people still work remotely.
Speaking of Zoom. Are there any mics or webcam/mic combos that have really good directional noise cancellation to only pick up sound from the person in front of them? I'd like to stop using Bluetooth earbuds (best solution I've found), but need only my voice to be picked up.
I use a Rode Videomic NTG and it does a pretty good job. It still picks up a little bit of the room echo but I've noticed that zoom does a better job of noise canceling when I use this mic compared to others.
We really need to stop talking about (just) remote and start talking about async.
That's the game changer: everything should be written and recorded, people should favour writing in issue threads or chats over having a meeting and keeping meetings for the essential sessions.
Zoom fatigue is not a real thing. At least not for most people enduring normal, useless calls. For us, the zoom calls means that we do productive work while keeping an ear out for topics where we are needed.
Sure some, like my wife, have to pay attention 100% of the time. But most of the people working with her? No way
I’ve noticed that video chats are great when they complement detailed asynchronous communication, e.g., RFC-style doc or a produced video. The best video conference work meetings tend to be: read a doc for 10 mins and then everyone launches into a Q&A. Discussions are usually vastly better; questions are detailed and focused, more people engage, etc.
When companies just try to take, say, a round-robin update meeting and move it online, it’s usually a waste of time. Or a 50 minute presentation where someone’s just winging it with a PowerPoint.
I wouldn’t even bother an online course where they just setup a web camera in class and follow a lecture.
It’s like videoconferencing has gotten so cheap and easy, it allows for sloppy planning and presentation. I dropped several classes in college because the lecturer didn’t bother even learning how to present with a mic, speak clearly, etc.
Companies should just ask for quick anonymous feedback after meetings just to set up an improvement loop.
I wish there was a study on being in a noisy environment for years. In hwich you can't control the lighting or the ergonomy of every peripheral you have. A study on a person's stress levels after being forced to concentrate in a large 11-person room in which everyone is on the phone, all the time.
Or to spend hours in traffic forced to wait and breathe bad air.
Or to have only cafeteria food for lunch for years on end.
that is taking a toll on your health, not working from home.
Pointing out that video meetings are bad doesn't mean that remote work is bad. I'm sure remote workers would be happy to excise this unnecessary practice.
"They" want us back in the office or to even replace us with AI simply because the only insight they have is from their incompetent middle management and they're only seeing it get worse.
It's almost as if one should understand the business they're running if they want it to succeed. Perhaps they don't and nihilistically bide their time believing their feet will never have to touch the ground as long as they still have money they equally and severely misunderstand.
Lol it's honestly laughable at this point. A couple of zoom calls may suck, but certainly less than commuting to have the same meeting in a stuffy room.
With bad ventilation and no windows. The conference room where I used to work was unbearable with just two persons after 10 minutes.
Every other Friday we had a three hour long meeting with at least half a dozen people. And it was virtual too - we had to stare at a screen and aim a camera at ourselves
Before COVID most of my meetings were video confrence. The difference being that I had to be in a stuffy room with a half dozen other people adding their own particular je ne sais quois to the smell.
I'm not in endless meetings, I'm in a reasonable amount of to-the-point meetings. I hated when all of them were all video calls during the various lockdowns.
I choose to go to the office on most days, because I prefer that. Not everyone prefer all remote all the time, and you people need to stop that everyone else is like you.
Nobody cares if you like to go in to the office and isn't trying to convince you otherwise that everything should be remote. More power to you. My wife prefers a fairly crappy commute as she can't focus at home. That's fine.
However, a lot of us prefer remote and do great in that context and see a lot more ups than downs to working from home. That's also fine, but unlike in-office work, there's a barrage of BS studies and PHB managers and executives that are trying to pull every stunt imaginable to get people to come back to the office. Sure, there is some additional synergy (to use a corporate buzz word) that they've lost, but mainly, they want the control back that they had prior to remote where people couldn't switch jobs as easily for higher pay. They're also freaking out about the corporate real estate losses and it isn't my problem that their investment is now worthless. Claims of people not doing anything from home are kind of worthless as it's the same people in both scenarios. Those that are skating by with the minimum workload were doing the same in their cube.
> A couple of zoom calls may suck, but certainly less than commuting to have the same meeting in a stuffy room.
Maybe I read too much into the comment. Maybe it was just meant as a way of saying "I personally prefer remote work + video conferences to in-person meetings". But I feel like there's a narrative that developers actually uniformly prefer remote work, and that the comment reflected that narrative.
Gotcha and hope my intent was clear as well and didn't come off as snippy.
I'd agree that there is a distribution and some do enjoy going in. I believe most like having the option where they can choose each day. I prefer fully remote, but occasionally I do wish I could go in for the day to socialize a bit more. To each their own.
Threaded discussions are as old as the internet. They're not some new thing where the social norms are still under negotiation. The whole point is to allow conversations to branch off in different directions. They're not private chat rooms between you and the person you replied to.
Your response[0] was to my comment[1]. If you meant to reply to [2], you should have clicked that reply link instead of replying to my comment. I'm not /u/7thaccount. It's an easy and common mistake most people just acknowledge and move on from.
I know how threaded discussions work. I thought it was appropriate to quote the comment I originally responded to for context. You seemed to think I was somehow against the idea of remote work, the context from the comment I originally responded to should make it clear that I am just against the idea that everyone finds remote work better in every way. Does that make sense?
It seems like the Back To Office crowd has the most people wanting to force their preferences on others and the most people with the ability to actually force it. I'm not a cop or your boss. I can't make you do anything.
Can't read it as it's behind a paywall, but unless this is compared against the toll that commuting/working in an uncomfortable environment/extra expenditure/worse diet it's not very helpful. On top of that video conferencing is highly dependent on roll. There's a few people in meetings all day, every day, some on a few meetings a day, and other on a few a week.
Ever since the pandemic I noticed a change in how people communicate online socially. No one wants to text FaceTime or whatever. People are sick of virtual spaces. I think metaverse style solutions truly is the future. Look at lex Friedman podcast with mark the stuff meta is working on is AMAZING too bad it’s being done by meta… hard to trust their products.
I get exhausted. Partly, it’s because I have a standing desk.
I work at it all day, but I’m constantly moving around, like leaning on the desk, walking away for a minute, etc.
In a Zoom meeting, I need to be a “talking head.” Very little movement.