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How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

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Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#111

Post by diracs_stache »

DesiLurker wrote: post #88
wenc wrote: post #54

Paul Graham wrote an article about the difference between a Maker’s schedule vs a Manager’s schedule. [1] Powerful people are on a manager’s schedule. Meetings are a unit of work for a manager, and they freely schedule meetings because there’s very little cost to them. The advantage of this schedule is you can have speculative meetings that potentially open up new opportunities. This is very costly on a Maker’s sched…

personally as a senior engineer & tech-lead in many past jobs I am very bothered by fragmentation of my time. I NEED a block of time to get serious work done especially if its not fully defined yet (i.e.. not like go code this function but more like add a service component). I have not yet read PG's blog on that but its something similar to what I track as in devtime-fragmentation-index. I wish there was a calendar p…

> they need constant Q&A

Wants daily 20-30 minute stand-up/tag-up

Constantly bombards DMs since understanding is weak/research skills are poor

Pull engineers into fringe meetings "Just in case" (can't multi-task since full attention is needed to prevent any harm being done)

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#112

Post by robocat »

Aurornis wrote: post #94
whoknowsidont wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are some who believe that meetings never accomplish anything. No there aren't. If you are consistently getting push backs on meetings within your org it's not that the teams or IC's believe that meetings are useless (what a silly thing to say) it's a sign that they don't have faith in the organization structure to concretely do anything with the information or provide valuable input. If you try to setup a meet…

> No there aren't. Reading other comments in this thread will reveal a lot of them. :) I've worked remote and across time zones for a while. I've encountered a few too many engineers who think any form of meeting or even communication is an unnecessary burden. They just want a queue of perfectly defined tickets to pull from and nobody to bother them until it's done at whatever pace they feel like working that week. S…

> unreasonably upset

I suspect some people have a conditioned pathological response to meetings - µPTSD.

Watch a bit of the GitLab Meeting Similator video and who could retain their sanity if they must participate: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rOqgRiNMVqg Watch the lady in the bottom panel struggle to look appropriately interested (or am I just projecting?).

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#113

Post by dave333 »

Most successful org I was involved with was a tiny startup that had daily 15 minute max face to face stand up meetings right after lunch with 3 items on the agenda: Wins, Blockers, Next Steps. Detailed status was done with a weekly email that got archived in a visible project history.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#114

Post by diracs_stache »

tekla wrote: post #61

Stop equating engineers with web developers. Some engineers go to meetings because coordinating complex projects is hard. I really didn't like 6 hour meetings, but when you have a expensive engine project, you have to. Why is this industry filled with children? If you are sure you don't need to be in a meeting, decline. Why do these children need blog posts to be a bare minimum adult?

I'm guessing you're in in automotive or aerospace based off the engine piece. I agree, but I would presume a day long meeting leading up to a wind-tunnel test for example would have a full agenda of presentations based off simulations performed, set-up/teardown overview, scheme of testing to be performed, facility status, emergencies, data acquisition, etc. For this all the relevant teams would expect to have significant engagement and contributions. I think this is different from what people complain about. I work in satellite ops and we suffer from those types of issues (unnecessary stand-ups, status reports that could be an email etc.) despite the need to sober up and have runs where it's a lot closer to the former than the latter.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#116

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

vlod wrote: post #107
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big reason for people having tons of unread emails is a poor signal-to-noise ratio of incoming email. When there are multiple useless mailing lists, notifications sent in email, emails where all the important information is in the subject line, etc, and a tiny fraction of actually important emails that require a response, it's much easier to lose track of what's going on. It's even easier to lose track if there are…

>When there are multiple useless mailing lists, notifications sent in email Never understood why people don't use filters to move these email into their own folders (or label them) and get them out of the inbox. It's really not that hard. Sure, it's a bit of pain to set up (initially), but not handling it at all is just a sign you're part of the problem.

I have filters set up. But that's treating the symptom; it requires constant maintenance of the filters because people keep adding more lists, or some manager decides to change the name of the list because they re-branded some internal team name, or whatever. It's just noise. It's work to deal with it. Reducing the noise at the source is better than trying to filter it, and filtering it is better than ignoring the entire system, but the end result when it gets bad is that many users ignore the entire system.

It's a lot like phone calls: 90% of incoming calls I get are spam. I no longer answer calls that aren't in my contacts list, I add businesses I interact with to my contact list if I want to get their calls. Everything else goes to voicemail, and my voicemail is "Due to a high volume of automated calls, all numbers not on my contacts list are voicemail only. Please leave a message." Filtered! But also makes the phone pretty useless for initial immediate interaction.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#117

Post by geor9e »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #116
vlod wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When there are multiple useless mailing lists, notifications sent in email Never understood why people don't use filters to move these email into their own folders (or label them) and get them out of the inbox. It's really not that hard. Sure, it's a bit of pain to set up (initially), but not handling it at all is just a sign you're part of the problem.

I have filters set up. But that's treating the symptom; it requires constant maintenance of the filters because people keep adding more lists, or some manager decides to change the name of the list because they re-branded some internal team name, or whatever. It's just noise. It's work to deal with it. Reducing the noise at the source is better than trying to filter it, and filtering it is better than ignoring the en…

I think you're overblowing the difficulty of creating filters. It's one of those tasks that pays power-law dividends forever. Sure, I initially sat there for 3 hours making the filter list, and every week or two I have to spend 37 seconds adding a filter, but my inbox has zero emails, and the vast majority that hit my inbox are non-noise things I actually want to read or respond to. It certainly beats the daily sense of defeat a 100,000 unread bubble must instill daily. Inbox zero is luxurious and relaxing lifestyle - a plane of existence a lot of us have reached. Imagine no more stress. Join us. PS - I haven't gotten a spam call or text in ~6 months. There are filters for that too (3-layer Google Voice spam filter + Verizon spam filter + Samsung spam filter = nearly perfect filtering, with no false positives in a decade that I've been aware of)
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