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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

#211

Post by ralferoo »

grogenaut wrote: post #92
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.

I had an engineer once show up to the re-scheduled "lets get the engineers ideas meeting before the yearly plan ships" meeting that we scheduled so they could be there who then proceeded to spent 15 minutes complaining how they didn't get any input before finally asking what the meeting was for, and finding out they had 45 minutes remaining to give feedback (they had skipped the meeting the previous day, and I wanted…

Why didn't you put "lets get the engineers ideas meeting before the yearly plan ships" as the meeting topic in the invite then? Otherwise you're expecting a whole load of people to turn up for a meeting with no idea what it's for.

If you don't tell people what the meeting is for, you're implicitly saying that they don't need to know the topic until they arrive, and so you're signaling that they're not expected to be giving input and they're just there to listen to something - and in 90% of such meetings, they could be done better by e-mail.

If you wanted feedback from the engineers, giving them a heads-up that this was their opportunity would have given them time to form their ideas into a succinct coherent point rather than an off-the-cuff ramble.

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

#212

Post by coldtea »

kaashif wrote: post #142
coliveira wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think a larger meeting is a remedy for this? Quite the opposite, if you can't get a personal status from a large group, doing the meeting is completely pointless because it demonstrate lack of preparation.

It's not. That's not what I meant or said. I said not all projects allow for getting status ahead of time. This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously. They're just bad at communicating. On a well functioning team I can rely on people just reporting status themselves when something relevant happens and reaching out…

>This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously.

Like, you explicitly ask them in an IM and they don't tell you?

Not telling you on their own, I can understand. If the former happens though, you have bigger problems, that asking on a real-life meeting wont solve.

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

#213

Post by brador »

mft_ wrote: post #166
PeterStuer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are "low information density" because that is not the point of the meeting. Meetings are first and foremost about relationship management. You do not get to management and certainly not climb the management hierarchy if you do not at least implicitly feel this. The actual meeting topic, while it can be relevant, is secondary. You establish and reinforce the pecking order, sense allegiance and subversion, or, fee…

I've led cross-functional teams in multiple organisations (albeit not in tech) and I'd argue it's a bit more complex than that. Regular team meetings can cover multiple needs, e.g.: * Keeping everyone working on a complex project updated on progress * Keeping everyone 'aligned' - (horrible corporate word but) essentially all working together effectively towards the same goals (be they short or long term) * Providing…

This could be an email/slack chain

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

#214

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

poincaredisk wrote: post #191
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>async doesn’t go well with scale, Sync is even worse at scale. I had the pleasure of attending standups in a 20-person team. It was a nightmare where I said two sentences and then wasted the next two hours of my life listening to things I either know or are unrelevant to me. >you’re punishing everyone with having to back-read Great, because skipping three pages of unimportant conversation is faster than skipping 30…

The problem with all processes is that people aren’t interested in sticking with them.

Why is your team 20 people if the majority don’t do anything you’re remotely close to? Someone should have split the team or at least the standup.

Why doesn’t your lead enforce a time limit and script?

It can happen the other way round as well. My team is small but only I ever stick to the script. Every one else talks in detail for 2-3 minutes. Their updates could have been 20sec.

You wouldn’t be complaining if someone actually did something about it.

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

#215

Post by seb1204 »

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.

Is that not already reflected in the ticket status?

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

#216

Post by joshstrange »

I block AI note takers from my meetings. Show up or read the notes taken afterwards (by a human, me). I’m not going to waste my time explaining the mistake your AI note taker made (misheard or misunderstood). I’m not going to deal with a “Why are we doing X when we previously said Y” which could either be the AI misunderstanding or a legit change of decision we made in the meeting (which you would know and would have been able to weigh in on if you had attended).

I’ve tested these tools a number of times, and if you were in the meeting, it’s easy to look at the notes and be impressed but reading the notes as someone who’s not in the meeting does not give the full picture as it often makes major/minor mistakes. If you were in the meeting, it’s easy to overlook or shrug off, but would be entirely confusing if you didn’t attend.

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

#217

Post by seb1204 »

EZ-E wrote: post #190

In my opinion, sending an AI note taker to a meeting basically means that for the attendee, a recap email written by the meeting organizer would be enough - except that in my experience at least, most meeting organizers aren't writing these. Best would be the meeting organizers to leverage their AI attendee to write a draft meeting recap and sending it out after review.

Why have a meeting then in the first place and not write an email?

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

#218

Post by smeej »

coldtea wrote: post #212
kaashif wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. That's not what I meant or said. I said not all projects allow for getting status ahead of time. This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously. They're just bad at communicating. On a well functioning team I can rely on people just reporting status themselves when something relevant happens and reaching out…

> This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously. Like, you explicitly ask them in an IM and they don't tell you? Not telling you on their own, I can understand. If the former happens though, you have bigger problems, that asking on a real-life meeting wont solve.

Seriously. This sounds like, "I can't manage my direct report, so I need to waste the time of everybody else on the team just so the little punk realizes he can't hide forever."

A team meeting should not be the go-to solution for "Bob is bad at communicating"!

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

#219

Post by ljm »

jedberg wrote: post #95
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…

> 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've worked with people who want you to put the effort into writing a document or proposal, or even just answering a question on Slack or on Linear, but will spend zero effort themselves actually reading what you give them.

Instead they'll just wait until the next meeting and basically ask you to give a tl;dr or 'context'. I wasn't sure if it was a case of just having poor literacy or just some bullshit power play on their part.

In the most egregious cases I started to get petty and just read my message aloud, verbatim, while they had it open on the screenshare. Not as if their time is automatically more valuable than mine.

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

#220

Post by smeej »

lqet wrote: post #195
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…

I also used to think that work meetings are low information density. Then I attended our first parent-teacher conference at kindergarten. It was incredible: 2.5 hours of discussions and ridiculous complaints ("why does my child has to put on splash pants on rainy autumn days, putting them on is just such an ordeal !!"), and not a single bit of relevant information was transmitted. Not a single decision was made. I we…

I don't think the existence of "even lower information density" attempts at communication justifies the low density of work meetings, but you're right--trying to communicate anything to more than one person at a time in a child-focused setting is close to impossible.
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