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AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

washingtonpost.com

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Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#61

Post by fcatalan »

I haven't had an useful meeting in years. All the important collaboration and decision making has happened organically in text chat, which is great because it's all searchable and dated, and I do refer to that a lot. In fact they recently moved my main collaborator from another building into the next desk and we agreed to keep the work stuff in chat as much as possible so it isn't lost. So we chitchat about our kids but still type out our debate about the best version launch date.

Every meeting in person or via Zoom I have been in has been either an useless sales pitch, grandstanding by some manager, brown-nosing by some upstart or some other form of toxic socialization, scheming or conspiracy. I detest all those and avoid them, which is probably why I've become kind of an unpromotable pariah, which is ok, as a promotion would mean attending more of them.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#62

Post by MrJohz »

jbc1 wrote: post #47
pj_mukh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had been on both sides of this coin, I agree a lot of managers mis-manage meetings. But then there's those engineers who don't show up to meetings and then a month later come to you with a "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features" and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

Even if the final nod of agreement happens in real time the actual decision making process for critical product features should involve planning, thinking, research, etc. There should be a strong paper trail such that everyone knows what the decision is going to be prior to the "everyone gets together and declares this is how things are going to be" step. If them missing some meetings means they're in the dark as to…

This might not be quite what the previous poster meant, but in my experience it's often not that the developer missed a meeting and now doesn't know some critical piece of information. Rather, it's often that the developer has some knowledge about the code that changes how something should be implemented. Because they weren't at the meeting, nobody else knew about this, and it's only later, when the developer sits down to write the code, that everyone finds out.

In this case, there's nothing to document from the meeting because the information wasn't shared in the first place. The information could only have been shared if the developer had been in the meeting.

(FWIW, I've rarely seen this from a developer not being in a meeting entirely, but I've seen it a few times where a developer has treated the meeting as a "read-only" event, i.e. expected that other people provide all the requirements and not used their own expertise or experience of the code to push back on decisions.)

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#64

Post by sneak »

jbc1 wrote: post #47
pj_mukh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had been on both sides of this coin, I agree a lot of managers mis-manage meetings. But then there's those engineers who don't show up to meetings and then a month later come to you with a "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features" and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

Even if the final nod of agreement happens in real time the actual decision making process for critical product features should involve planning, thinking, research, etc. There should be a strong paper trail such that everyone knows what the decision is going to be prior to the "everyone gets together and declares this is how things are going to be" step. If them missing some meetings means they're in the dark as to…

Most people in meetings don’t type very fast, and find it easier to talk than to write.

This means that prior to AI transcription/summary bots, there wasn’t much written documentation about the decisions and conclusions from meetings. Now hopefully that will change.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#65

Post by meroes »

The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#66

Post by Aeolun »

pj_mukh wrote: post #16
jawns wrote: post #4

I bet there are a bunch of people in upper management who hear about this phenomenon and think that employees are skipping meetings to slack off (appearing to do work but they're actually playing Mario Kart). In reality, it's more likely that they're being judged on their attendance of BS meetings, but if they attend the BS meetings, they won't be able to make the BS deadlines they're responsible for hitting. So they…

Having had been on both sides of this coin, I agree a lot of managers mis-manage meetings. But then there's those engineers who don't show up to meetings and then a month later come to you with a "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features" and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

> and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

That there was a meeting where that decision was made between 55 minutes of crud doesn’t really mean anything to me though. I’m not wasting an hour of my day every day on the off chance today’s meeting will contain anything of importance.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#67

Post by zdragnar »

pk-protect-ai wrote: post #37
pj_mukh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had been on both sides of this coin, I agree a lot of managers mis-manage meetings. But then there's those engineers who don't show up to meetings and then a month later come to you with a "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features" and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

That's the thing, these meetings are B.S. Engineers need a task, time to think, and write about the solution and its cost. Period. Talking in a room full of people who love to hear their own voices and love to stroke their egos does not actually help engineers do their job. When engineers need to communicate, they communicate with their colleagues. There are tools for such communications that do not require talking a…

Feature development is rarely so cut and dry that you can hand a developer a task and let them run with it.

To get there, you need a confluence of context and expertise from several domains:

- what problem needs to be solved (user story)

- what options are available (interaction design, technical capabilities)

- what the cost of implementing each option is, and the opportunity cost of each level of implementation / each option (technical capability, resource management, sales, user research)

- managing group consensus on the path forward (communication to technical and non-technical audiences)

- break down of any large chunks of work into smaller tasks that can be done and planning the work to be done in series or parallel (resource management, technical capabilities)

Finally, after all of that, you have a task (or several) that can be handed off.

There's really no way to get here without at least some thought into the implementation details, as the business can't make the decision on which options without knowing rough timelines.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#69

Post by nlawalker »

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#70

Post by jbc1 »

sneak wrote: post #64
jbc1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the final nod of agreement happens in real time the actual decision making process for critical product features should involve planning, thinking, research, etc. There should be a strong paper trail such that everyone knows what the decision is going to be prior to the "everyone gets together and declares this is how things are going to be" step. If them missing some meetings means they're in the dark as to…

Most people in meetings don’t type very fast, and find it easier to talk than to write. This means that prior to AI transcription/summary bots, there wasn’t much written documentation about the decisions and conclusions from meetings. Now hopefully that will change.

I wasn't so much saying that there should be plenty of documentation generated during a meeting as saying that there should be plenty of documentation prior to the meeting. That the meeting is based on.
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