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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

#301

Post by maccard »

marcosdumay wrote: post #262
maccard wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With async text communication channels you'll post when an issue shows up You clearly work with excellent teams who don’t need this then. My experience is that a large number of people, even competent people will not post when an issue shows up and will wait for however long until an update is asked of them and then say they couldn’t do it because they’re blocked.

That's caused by daily meetings, not a reason to have them.

I didn’t mention they’ll wait til the next daily update. They’ll wait until someone messages them on slack or pings them on jira/linear or the sprint planning

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

#302

Post by dirkc »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #290
dirkc wrote: post #264

Each time I'm in a meeting with an AI note taker I am very tempted to prank the AI / person sending the AI. Maybe I should create a AI meeting mayhem bot that plays out some ridiculous scenario for the note taking AI to transcribe. I can already hear the panicked phone call asking if Alice okay and how on earth could her whole house get swallowed by a sink hole without the wifi cutting out :P

Like with Image AI and noise images that can be engineered to be recognized as an actual object. I'm interested if there is also audio that is noisy/ not really noticable humans that will disrupt the AI.

I was thinking of using AI generated voice to play out some dialog, but adversarial audio could also be interesting - ie some in-audible sound for humans but that gets transcribed by the AI note taker

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

#303

Post by bumby »

dangus wrote: post #272
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man people who talk like you must work in absolutely miserable companies. Meetings at my workplace are to the point, never longer than they need to be, and while yeah I weasel out of as many as I feel I can, I don't send an AI notetaker nor do I need it summarized. We meet for a topic, we discuss that topic, usually bullshit for a little in and around the topic, and then we get back to work. I would say most of our h…

The truth is that people who talk like that aren’t management material. “I noped out of the management track” = “nobody was considering me for the management track”

>“nobody was considering me for the management track”

I don’t know if this holds any more than saying “the only people who get into management are those that couldn’t hack it in the technical side”. There are many people who get recruited for certain management tracks and turn it down so they can put more focus on technical problems.

IMO at the end of the day, every job is about solving problems and it’s up to you to choose the track that aligns with the problems you want to work on. Some want to focus on people and administration, others want to focus on technical problems. A problem arises when orgs only have one route to promotion (eg, you must get into management if you want to be promoted).

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

#304

Post by varispeed »

varispeed wrote: post #240
jon-wood wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the years I've moved away from thinking of the daily standup as being a way to update everyone on what we're doing. The value in it is having a daily time when everyone on the team sees each other's faces and has a brief conversation. Sometimes it'll be a quick hello, other times we'll talk for half an hour about nothing in particular, but that's valuable on a remote team where it's all to easy to forget that ev…

People are real whether or not you see their faces or chat daily. Framing daily standups as "humanising" can end up dehumanising those who find enforced face time and small talk uncomfortable or exhausting - especially neurodivergent team members. Inclusivity means recognising that not everyone bonds the same way.

Surprised by the downvotes, honestly. Inclusivity isn't about asking everyone to conform to neurotypical norms - it's about creating space for different ways of working and communicating. If even mentioning that feels unwelcome, that says something worth reflecting on.

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

#305

Post by 9283409232 »

bmalehorn wrote: post #98
9283409232 wrote: post #57

I'm going to buck the trend I see in this thread and say that the AI notetaker we've used has been helpful. After the meeting it sends a list of action items and meeting highlights that links to the timestamp in the meeting where we were talking about it in case we need to refer back. I've found it nice to have.

Would you mind sharing what AI note taking app do you use?

Fathom if I recall correctly.

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

#306

Post by lghh »

brador wrote: post #213
mft_ wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, it could be. But why would I want 5+ small 5 minute interruptions when I could have a single 20 minute interruption? Assuming all interruptions have a minimum of a 5+ minute context-switching time, the 20 minute meeting is 25 minutes whereas the 55 ends up being 510=50 minutes.

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

#307

Post by ajmurmann »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #236
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…

No, meetings are low information density because people are too lazy to plan an agenda and assign homework to a meeting beforehand, so that the meeting can focus on solutioning and actually delivering value. I noped out of management track to focus on being a top level IC because I could informally do the actually valuable "management" stuff in that role anyhow (documentation, planning, mentoring, client consultation…

In my experience the biggest issue with homework beforehand is that a substantial portion of the attendees won't do the homework. Frequently it's the people who you most needed to have done the homework. Now you need to rehash it for them anyways and everyone who did the homework has their time wasted. That's one area where the Amazon Silent Read shines. The other way I found it very useful is that people leave comments on the areas that need discussion and now you can spend the rest of the meeting just on those points. Would be great to have left the notes before the meeting but that's where reality sabotages things.

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

#309

Post by jader201 »

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 funny, because I actually prefer writing to make up for my poor meeting skills.

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

#310

Post by Aurornis »

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…

> The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time.

I've been in my share of useless meetings.

However, I've been fortunate enough to be able to cut down the useless meetings at most of my jobs (with one exception, which was awful).

The problem now is that the AI note takers are turning even the good meetings into useless exercises. It's obvious that the AI note taker participants have no intention of participating during the meeting. Then 3 hours later you start getting follow-up questions that they should have asked in the meeting.

Everyone knows "This meeting could have been an e-mail" but fewer people recognize when "This 50-response e-mail conversation spanning 3 days could have been solved in the 30 minute meeting"

The root problem is people trying to transform their own work into async at the expense of forcing everyone else to accommodate them.

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