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What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

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Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#41
post #10

At one marketing-overrun startup, the suits were calling two hour meetings every afternoon and then wondering why I wasn't getting any work done. So I installed a cuckoo clock in that meeting room. The CEO loved it; he even helped wind it. I knew I'd succeeded when one of the marketing types looked at the clock and said, "I hate that thing." I don't remember if the meetings got any shorter or less frequent, but they…

The problem with the meeting (hourly rate | billable rate) × members × time cost approach is this: a well-performed meeting is what provides your worth. In this sense, considering a meeting to be a cost based on what you can charge for your time is as ridiculous as a professional sports team considering workouts and training to be costed at the average revenue rate of a game.

The training is what provides the ability to charge for admission and airtime royalties for games. The meeting is what gives you a product or service offering.

The question shouldn't be "how much is this costing us in salaries" but "is this meeting productive, and more productive than the alternative activity which could be performed at this time" -- the opportunity cost basis, in other words. Salary/billable is simply the wrong metric.

To the sports metaphor, the question concerning training would be "is this training improving our skills / ability / capability / teamwork", as compared with alternatives (rest/recovery, marketing, travel, game time).

Where meetings often get derailed is that participants:

• Don't understand one another.

• Have different agendas.

• Are simply incompetent.

Identifying these challenges and addressing them, without bogging all participants down in the process is far more productive than simply showing the cumulative pseudo-cost of the meeting.

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#44
post #37
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love it. A few years ago at a place I was helping out in, one of the devs had built a clock for the conference room that, at the start of a meeting, you punched the number of people in the meeting into. It knew the average company salary (this was a ~15 person software house) and would count up the "money spent" given the number of people in the room and the time on the clock. Very motivating.

Did the clock also total up all the days spent down rabbit-holes resulting in worthless work because there wasn't adequate communication? :) It does remind me though of a guy I once knew (late 90s) who was a senior manager at the national arm of a large, well-known international investment bank. He'd be in a meeting with the CEO and the rest of the senior managers, and the CEO wouldn't let the meeting commence if the…

It's true that there's a balance... maybe some kind of amplification based on the # of people. Nothing frustrates me more than a 20-person meeting with three guys talking (actual all-hands meetings to communicate critical info excepted, of course).

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#45

Glad to see this finally making it on the front page. I'm particularly impressed with the actors' ability to capture the subtle facial expressions and other mannerisms that the various characters tend to make in real life under various situations. Direct YT link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg ============================================================ My favorite bit... PHB: "That's it. Now you've conf…

I agree that this bit is fantastic. Can't count the number of times I've encountered each one of these tropes. The power of positive thinking will allow us to do the impossible and so on.

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#46
post #42

Why is the engineer Asian and male? While it's an amusing skit, it's horribly typecasting. How about a black woman for a change?

Feel free to make your own skit using whatever typecasts you need to make yourself feel better.

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#47
post #31

Moving beyond the exaggeration of the sketch, the irony here is that being the only engineer in a business meeting puts you in an incredibly powerful position - if you see the opportunity and know how to take advantage of it. Learning to interact with non-technical stakeholders and finding ways to deliver solutions perceived as adding value to a business is one of the best ways to make real money in this industry. Fo…

I think your claim requires some elaboration. How about some concrete examples?

I've been on business calls where I've literally been offered a job in front of my boss. This happened to be because I had debugged a vendors' appliance and had the opportunity to say to their CTO something like: "You're product is such a piece of crap because it always crashes randomly, I narrowed it down to X and I had to break into the device and recompile the kernel with these flags to make it stop", turns out many other customers had 'random' crashes as well and they can been trying to pin it down for a few months.

Fundamentally you have a seat at the table, and you're the only person in the room who can actually solve the problem. Since you're an engineer and your brain has already weeded out all the things that won't work because of technical reasons you can quickly zero in on and propose a solution, also you're the 'expert' so you have the opportunity to not say anything and actually hear what everyone else is saying.

To paraphrase the video if you can say something like "I propose we put together a triangle with two red lines and a blue line" and then draw that on the board, you're a hero.

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#48
post #11
post #10

At one marketing-overrun startup, the suits were calling two hour meetings every afternoon and then wondering why I wasn't getting any work done. So I installed a cuckoo clock in that meeting room. The CEO loved it; he even helped wind it. I knew I'd succeeded when one of the marketing types looked at the clock and said, "I hate that thing." I don't remember if the meetings got any shorter or less frequent, but they…

Love it. A few years ago at a place I was helping out in, one of the devs had built a clock for the conference room that, at the start of a meeting, you punched the number of people in the meeting into. It knew the average company salary (this was a ~15 person software house) and would count up the "money spent" given the number of people in the room and the time on the clock. Very motivating.

That reminds me of this website: http://www.expensivemeeting.com/

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#49
post #2

I think the best way I've found to combat these types of meetings and cut through the talk is simply to ask "Why" Find out pretty quickly (generally) what they are actually wanting and nobody needs to print things in transparent ink... (usually)

Don't just ask why. Ask why until you know you've found the root cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

Re: What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]

#50
post #42

Why is the engineer Asian and male? While it's an amusing skit, it's horribly typecasting. How about a black woman for a change?

Feel free to make your own skit using whatever typecasts you need to make yourself feel better.

I'm actually both Asian and male; the protagonist typecast in the skit if you will. The insensitivity and frank hostility exhibited by your remark alone shows how much more work we have to do in order to make the tech sector more hospitable and diverse.
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