Small company, 0 hours of meetings. We resolve everything over Github issues, email, Slack, or in person conversations.
Where do you draw the line between "in person conversations" and meetings?
Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#32I feel pretty lucky, meetings are rare for me, just shoot an IM. "I'm working on XYZ, almost done. What do you want me to work on next?" or "Hey Bob are you done with that test environment" etc. I might go have one-on-ones maybe once or twice a week if it's too long/complex a conversation for IM. And those don't usually take long, maybe 15 minutes?
That said I'm a mid-level dev and I know the more senior devs & boss are in meetings more often working out how things will work with other departments and such.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#3360-70% of my time as PM.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#34Big company, about 2-3 hours per week. I'm in a mostly-releng role. Two team status meetings per week, one status meeting for another project, where I'm the liaison for build+release.
In a previous role at the same company, my meeting load varied between maybe 1 and 8 hours, depending on how many things involving other teams I was working on and how controversial the design decisions for that project were.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#35I have two one on one meetings each week which together wind up being one to two hours a week. The CEO of my company's philosophy is that having more than two engineers meet together is usually a waste of time. This is for a small company of ~40 people.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#36> How much of your time is spent in meetings?
Does time spent on HN count?
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#37Lots of arbitary answers : "n hrs are about right"! Why?
I run 3 teams, I delegate obsessively (a my team leads are smarter than me and know what they are doing better than I do) however I thing people, bosses, team, politics, now and next. Every week you MUST meet with your boss, your direct reports, you must meet with your peers and you must have a meeting about the current work and a meeting about the next work. You also need a to be doing some political meeting - random folks who want to talk to you and do things with you/for you/get you to do things.
Team/peers - you will do 2hrs to share everything (min), DR's is an hour each, I have 3 (and a half but that's another story) boss will be 1/2-1hr (as he/she will be at their wits end) big boss will be 1/2 hr (so 2 hrs bosses), politics is 3 hrs. Now is 1/2 hr if all is good.. but there are a lot of nows, so put 2 1/2 hrs min against that, if all is not good budget 5 hrs. Next is 30 mins (at the beginning of a cycle) to 5 hrs (at the end of a cycle.
Tot it up... 13 -> 20 ish.
They all have a specific purpose for me; they keep me employed and they keep the pipeline alive. Being less selfish; they keep those who depend on my engagement happy and they make sure that my company gets the value center that it invests in in the shape of my team. I deliver on the investment, build capability and a work stream.
Most of all I do not piss anyone off by being unavailable or unfriendly - for a manager work is a social activity; if you don't like it you need to look for another dev gig.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#38I'm in government, and I spend 5-7hrs/week in various meetings
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#39I was a developer at a big corp (financial services industry) until leaving earlier this year. It steadily grew over four years from around one hour a week to five hours a week (~13%) of meetings. My first few weeks had a lot more meetings (trainings), and my last couple weeks had a lot more meetings (knowledge transfer).
Because I became an expert in some areas, I was routinely invited to meetings to give my input (which further reinforced opinions). Furthermore, I realized a lot of non-technical people are not good about responding to emails. If I needed something from a product manager, chances were better that I could get it faster by setting up a 30 minute meeting for the following day. If I needed something from a senior engineer, email was best, of course.
Honestly, given the role I had and the largish size of the company, I never felt like it was too many meetings.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time is spent in meetings?
#40Big company, about 2-3 hours per week. I'm in a mostly-releng role. Two team status meetings per week, one status meeting for another project, where I'm the liaison for build+release. In a previous role at the same company, my meeting load varied between maybe 1 and 8 hours, depending on how many things involving other teams I was working on and how controversial the design decisions for that project were.
What's a releng role?