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Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
31–40 of 222 posts
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#32I call BS. Meetings make me lose the will to live & drove me to quitting my job multiple times. If you want to make sure I don''t do anything during the day, put in a meeting in the middle of it. Perhaps it helps people who have pointless jobs that create no value?
I call your BS call :)
There is nothing better than a day with nicely spaced meetings
My current Project on every second wednesday:
10:00-10:30 Daily Standup
11:00-12:00 Architect Jour Fix
12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak
13:00-14:00 Sprint Retro
15:00-16:00 Sprint Planning
Most of the gaps have a reason (conflicting meetings, etc) We use those gaps to "transfer knowledge". That basically means we sit in the cafeteria chatting about work or non-work relatet stuff, planning our weekends, etc.
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#33One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…
> the asynchronous “always on, always connected” style Nit: I've always heard this called synchronous , since in this style work is performed immediately, rather than queued up to wait for execution at a scheduled time.
correct. Asynchronous is something like email
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#34[deleted]
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've found that, with the exception of daily stand-ups, all meetings must have a bullet point agenda and notes should be sent out for each meeting with risks, action items, issues and ownership of those items. If both of those things are lacking, I doubt how useful the meeting will be or was.
Not only do those things make meetings more productive, they increase the overhead to calling a meeting. We don't often celebrate making things harder to do, but adding friction to something that's happening too often can help bring it back into balance. That's especially true for things with large "multipliers". An unscripted meeting might take one hour for the person calling it, but eat 10 hours of other people's t…
Adding a barrier of entry to something generally improves the quality of whatever it is.
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#36Since this is Swedish study, I just want to point out that Swedish organizational culture is very meeting and consensus oriented.
Nordic cultures may seem very similar, but their organizational cultures are different even within the same company. Others are often frustrated about Swedes and their endless meetings. Finns in the meeting are 'OK. lets do this.' and Swedes reply 'But Jan-Erik has not shared his point of view yet.'
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#37The problem I experience with meetings is that often times the information presented is only tangentially related to you. I hate it when I’m in a meeting and it ends up a conversation between two people. It’s stressful if you have an expectation to get something done but also an expectation to sit in a meeting you realize really doesn’t pertain to you.
I guess it depends how big your team is and how big the company is.
Working on a small team at my current company I don't have this issue at all. I remember when working at IBM that was my main gripe.
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#38Makes me think of Ray Dalio on transparency and 'meaningful work'. I agree that people want to vent and be heard but as others have noted meetings turn into a way for management to reinscribe control and turn complaints back on the complainant (Learned helplessness,etc)
If we need meetings to define our job then that is pretty unclear management. If you dont see how your role pertains to the overall goals of the org and need meetings to figure this out then there is a general disfunction.
Meaningful work and the ability to give and receive feedback. Less meetings.
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#39One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…
Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'
#40There's some truth to this, but holy smokes, another meeting is not the cure. There is value in "venting" at work. A few years ago I built a software tool that pings people at the end of the week asking how their week went. Some of the quietest people in the company had the most to say when they were behind a screen. In fact, some people literally called it therapeutic. It turns out that writing things down can serve…
Perhaps you are being overly dismissive of the "extroverts" needs in the situations you are describing... Some might just "complain", but others feel safer being vocal in a group of people. You mention understanding that some of the quietest people have the most to say behind a screen, well, I imagine there is a non-insignificant group of people who feel much safer talking it out within a group where there isn't a wr…
I am an extrovert and have found value in discussion with others. The issue is that this tends to be aimless and there's zero structure, which wastes a ridiculous amount of time.
I'd much rather complete an async update and then follow-up with an in-person meeting to talk about the things that were documented beforehand.
It's a much more efficient approach and you get better insights too.