151–160 of 222 posts
That made me think, that meetings were about making people feel that their work was meaningful when it wasn't. Basically, if you do meaningful work, you don't need meetings, but if its the other way around, meetings make total sense.
I question what my life has come to. Why such a pointless spinning of my wheels must keep me separated from those I care about, and force me into contact with co-worker who I know for a fact will never love me?
This is torture, and the antithesis of therapy. It directly damages me, to persist in a tension inducing work environment.
One 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…
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.
I 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…
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Managers should group all dev meetings into one meeting day so that your devs can actually get their work done the rest of the week without interruptions. You can book all your manager to manager meetings on other days because as a manager the interruptions won't break your cadence.
One other thing that can help a lot is to have structured calls and ways for people to flag things for mandatory discussion. If I am on a call that starts going sideways, having some established process where I can say something like "Hey guys, can we take a look at ?" can very quickly right the ship. What this does is effectively remind everyone that we are here to do a job with certain degree of professionalism and diligence. Everyone also has a vested interest in getting to the bucket of review items, because these are usually the topics creating the most stress day-to-day, and talking through them with the team is an excellent means to relieve much of that stress.
I once talked to a manager about how meeting seemed like a waste of time, he said he loved meetings because it meant people were working together and getting things done. That made me think, that meetings were about making people feel that their work was meaningful when it wasn't. Basically, if you do meaningful work, you don't need meetings, but if its the other way around, meetings make total sense.
None of this is to say you are wrong though.
I 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?
It helps to remember that I'm paid the same to attend a meeting as to do work.
The 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.
Once upon a time, this was the point of circulating 'minutes' or a summary after meetings. Outside of some special cases (e.g. the Federal Reserve), they're specifically meant to reflect conclusions , not the full course of discussion. Back-and-forth that reaches an answer isn't needed, and a debate that ends unresolved would just read as a summary of the positions. That way, you can invite the people who need to spe…
One 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…