Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

Another reason that we should have less managers and instead elevate engineers into dual engineer/executive positions.

Very few of the meetings are about “deciding things”, rather they are about aligning views. As a manager I see my role as setting up meetings so that the most qualified peoples views properly influences the right stake holders. When everyone aligns on what problem to solve and how to solve it there are generally no need to take any decisions, since work gets efficiently done and few issues pops up that are not automatically solved by way of previously achieved alignment.

While using this strategy, what generally drives more meetings are: 1) Managers and other power holders that cares more about their importance and status than the work. 2) The parts of the staff that are dissatisfied and don’t like their work. In many of these cases, they have been obviously neglected/abused by management before and don’t feel trust in the organization.

Non-developers really don’t understand how bad it is to be interrupted when “in the zone”.

I am way more productive if left to check email/slack of my own accord, when an appropriate time presents itself.

Recently, having become a home worker, I’ve found that meetings are quick & to the point, and it’s anti rely because of the group video element. Makes meetings seems worthwhile and productive.

Having the 4x mission critical managers sitting in a cluster & overhearing each other's conversations did wonders for keeping everyone on the same wavelength - without meetings.

[offtopic]

Was a bit of an eye opener how powerful that can be. 40 man team, insane yearly sprint-like pressure for 2.5 months solid. Everything continuously on fire basically...but it's fine as long as the center holds. Also had an interesting effect on team morale - they're a lot happier to charge into battle if they're confident leadership is unified.