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

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

#201

Post by DharmaPolice »

VSerge wrote: post #192
0xEF wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree since I can also just not listen/pay any attention to what is vocally delivered in the meeting, which I find to be an abhorrent waste of my time in the first place. If the directive is in writing such as an email I (or the person who issued it) can't point to that and say "you did not read this" which shifts the onus entirely on the person receiving the directive. About a year ago, I nearly quit my…

Fair point in your case, but my experience across companies and industries is that people just don't read. It's true in any customer facing experience where tutorials etc are routinely unread and ignored, it's true for execs who are always short on time and want the exec summary in order no to read a whole memo (however misguided this may be in certain instances), it's true for seasoned professionals who prioritize a…

This matches my experience, with email in particular every organisation I've worked for it's been normalised that it's OK to not read every email, particularly if it's long or detailed. Clearly if the CEO emails you alone about something important that doesn't hold but for the vast majority of emails it was seen as acceptable to not read them and to even openly admit that. I remember being phoned by a department head once asking what an email was about - they weren't going to read it until I explained why they should.

It's a side effect of the information noise we're all subjected to, if we all received 6 messages a day we'd probably read them all but as we often get hundreds (thousands if you're getting automated messages) it's "OK" to miss a few.

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

#202

Post by jay_kyburz »

falcor84 wrote: post #193
jedberg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills. That's not entirely it. Some people just won't say something unless put in a setting where they are explicity asked for it. I've had meetings where I ask for a status, and someone says they are stuck on X, and they've been stuck on X for two days. And I'll ask why they didn't just ask for help. They weren't comfortable asking for help. They were on…

I predict that in "20 minutes in the future" we'll see the industry moving to AI based scrum-assistants with a scheduled daily trigger, that will reach out to each dev to have a check-in conversation and then automatically synthesize the input from everyone and update the project manager (possibly AI-based itself) with insight about how things are progressing and recommendations.

The AI is watching your screen and check-ins, it doesn't need to ask you, it knows what you are working on.

It will tell you how much time you spent working on tickets, and how long to spent working on the perfect reply for hacker news.

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

#203

Post by briangriffinfan »

apwell23 wrote: post #19
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…

> it's more likely that they're being judged on their attendance of BS meetings Some middle manager types in my company track emoji reactions to their messages in slack. I got written up for it, no joke. That was easy to automate though.

That reminds me of when I worked at Kroger.

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

#204

Post by coldtea »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #202
falcor84 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict that in "20 minutes in the future" we'll see the industry moving to AI based scrum-assistants with a scheduled daily trigger, that will reach out to each dev to have a check-in conversation and then automatically synthesize the input from everyone and update the project manager (possibly AI-based itself) with insight about how things are progressing and recommendations.

The AI is watching your screen and check-ins, it doesn't need to ask you, it knows what you are working on. It will tell you how much time you spent working on tickets, and how long to spent working on the perfect reply for hacker news.

By that point one would be wise to find another job, because an IT gig wont be any different than a glorified McJob (if it's not eliminated entirely)

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

#205

Post by dickersnoodle »

chii wrote: post #96
hobs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence is it - most people can't communicate much less write well, hell, I don't write well, but I hope my ideas are at least clearly communicated.

When you can't write well, you "resort" to using a lot of body language and facial nuances in face-to-face communication, which works acceptably. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate well on zoom. This "writing well" as a form of good communication is needed, but while in school, those same people who cannot write well also likely were complaining about learning how to write essays and such. Over time, this sort of…

Don't forget the number of people who think they write well but don't. These type of people tend to litter their communications with ghastly MBA-speak, passive voice and super-tired business cliches instead of just writing in plain language.

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

#206

Post by coldtea »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #174
dgb23 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. This might not scale well to larger teams, but we simply write a short message in a dedicated channel each day. It contains a short status and a few bullet points to plan the next day. Slack makes this conventient because you can write a top level message and then use the reply feature to add more details.

As you said, async doesn’t go well with scale, and async comms is OK if statuses are all you’re gonna write there. But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether. Anyway, I’ve come to really dislike async comms. If something is being communicated to you over async, it’s something not impo…

>But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether

All of that can happen just fine in a real-time team chat as well - and give people the chance to provide actual context and links, and also check back at the actual discussion later.

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

#207

Post by dickersnoodle »

lynx97 wrote: post #106
meroes wrote: post #65

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 mee…

[flagged]

This didn't start with COVID. Remember that scene in "Office Space" where the big boss had that banner up that said "Is this good for the company?" and everyone was nodding like they'd just been given the secret to life? Yeah, I've seen those kind of things in real life.

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

#208

Post by dickersnoodle »

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.

You missed the part of the process where the results of the meeting were summarized and made available so said engineers can look up the results and see what decisions were made.

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

#209

Post by izacus »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #174
dgb23 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. This might not scale well to larger teams, but we simply write a short message in a dedicated channel each day. It contains a short status and a few bullet points to plan the next day. Slack makes this conventient because you can write a top level message and then use the reply feature to add more details.

As you said, async doesn’t go well with scale, and async comms is OK if statuses are all you’re gonna write there. But in meetings you get to have back-and-forth, and while you can also have that in async, you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read. Which they might not do altogether. Anyway, I’ve come to really dislike async comms. If something is being communicated to you over async, it’s something not impo…

Essentially the old "This meeting could be an email. Yeah, but would you actually read the damn email?" thing.

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

#210

Post by coldtea »

scott_w wrote: post #194
dgb23 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. This might not scale well to larger teams, but we simply write a short message in a dedicated channel each day. It contains a short status and a few bullet points to plan the next day. Slack makes this conventient because you can write a top level message and then use the reply feature to add more details.

> But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. In practice, this is harder because people don't speak up unless prodded. And on Slack, I spend a lot of time and effort prodding people for that update, whereas a stand-up takes 15 minutes, tops. Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack.

>Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack

If a second "please respond, I need the answer now" Slack message is not enough, you have bigger problems

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