[idiotsecant]

Can people really tell anything about your living situation from your teams call background, though? Just aim your camera at a neutral wall and you're good to go. You could be living in a giant palace or a inner city slum and nobody would know the difference.

[CoffeeOnWrite]

Heh, a neutral wall in my 600 sq ft place? I have such limited layout options to put my desk, that would be an additional challenging constraint.

Virtual backgrounds are popular in my workspace, and I think a more general solution to the issue. I'm not a huge fan of virtual backgrounds, they make things even more artificial, anyhow I would use them occasionally but for the fact that Google Meet does not support them in Firefox.

[nicoburns]

A simple blur can be a good compromise if you want to hide your room. Although personally I just make sure it's tidy and allow people to see it.

[gkop]

Yep, simple blur seems most classy, thanks for mentioning that as it wasn't directly implied by "virtual background". To be clear, Google Meet does not support a simple blur on Firefox. (I could use a virtual camera, but as I mentioned in another comment.. I don't care enough)

[iso1631]

If you're concerned just get a roll up picture or greenscreen for your background

[ghaff]

Yeah, I have my office pretty well arranged as a "set" but I do have some very utilitarian metal file cabinets behind me. I was mulling making furniture changes but ended up just draping a fabric hanging over the cabinets from a curtain rod. Take about 30 seconds if I need to get into the cabinets for some reason.

I care less about meetings but I also shoot some video so needed some sort of decent setting anyway.

[spoonjim]

The marker of low socioeconomic status in a remote environment is disruptions to your video call. Kids crying, people walking through your background, people yelling, neighborhood dogs barking, etc. is something that doesn't get into your call when you're rich.

[chasd00]

Mostly right except for kids. All up and down the org chart at my firm there’s been interruptions by children haha. Also, sometimes things just happen no matter who you are. There was a US Supreme Court hearing over video chat and someone on the call flushed a toilet.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/05/06/politics/toilet-flush-sup...

[spoonjim]

Sure, but the richer you are the less it happens, because you have staff to take care of kids, etc. Although I have noticed that kids appear on camera at the most senior and junior levels of the company. If I am working with an low-level assistant to get something done she might have a kid pop on camera and she's super embarrassed about it. If the CFO has his kid wander into the room in an all hands he picks her up and shows her off on camera. You'd like to think that this could normalize it for the assistant but that's of course not how power works.

[fatnoah]

I recently left a large tech company. It was very obvious who was "higher up" in the food chain, as the home offices of Director+ level folks were generally larger and much more nicely decorated. At VP-level, they almost resembled super-villain lairs.

[chasd00]

Yes, at my firm one has a very extensive library behind them complete with ladders and everything.