Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room • Hacker News Board

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#171

Post by cyberax » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

buzer wrote: post #101

gwd wrote: post #85

> When 2:50 rolled around and your meeting was supposed to end, do you think people actually ended the meeting? Noooooo. Absolutely not! At U of M, they solved this problem by having classes officially start 10 minutes after the time they were advertised as. That is, a class listed as being 10-11am was actually 10:10-11am; nobody showed up until 10:10. Sure, technically it's the same thing, but there's a pretty massi…

In Finland the universities (and I believe in many other European universities have/had this as well) there was "academic quarter" which meant that if something was scheduled for 10am it would actually start at 10:15am. IIRC if they used precise time (10:00) then it would actually start at that time. I've heard it dates back to when people didn't have easy access to precise time. It would allow students to hear the h…

A bit different in Russia and Ukraine, there's a notion of "academic hour" which is 45 minutes. Same idea though.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#172

Post by jghn » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

tilne wrote: post #87

jghn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people who are habitually late view prompt people as rude for being on time? As someone who tries to be prompt to a fault, I can see that yes there are people who get annoyed at promptness. It's not that you're a bad person for being prompt. Rather you're a bad person if you start without them or otherwise push back on their lateness.

I think to some extent some of the pushback is the prompt folks not understanding that sometimes lateness isn’t something they can control (e.g., meeting with important set of stakeholders that you can’t duck out on early ran late)

Yes. And even as someone who tries to live by the ethos "if you're on time, you're late", I wind up late sometimes. It stresses me out, but hey sometimes shit happens.

But there are people where shit seems to happen more than for others. Late once in a blue moon? No worries. Repeat offender? That's a you problem.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#173

Post by fitsumbelay » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

this was genuinely fun to read. thanks to the author/OP

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#174

Post by mandevil » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

A scoutmaster of mine had a theory. Everyone has their own different version of what "9:30" means- to some it's 9:25, to others 9:45. But there is only one 9:32. So he would use weird times like that, we're meeting at 6:07 today.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#175

Post by suzzer99 » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #85

> When 2:50 rolled around and your meeting was supposed to end, do you think people actually ended the meeting? Noooooo. Absolutely not! At U of M, they solved this problem by having classes officially start 10 minutes after the time they were advertised as. That is, a class listed as being 10-11am was actually 10:10-11am; nobody showed up until 10:10. Sure, technically it's the same thing, but there's a pretty massi…

Yeah that seems like such an obvious solution to this problem.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#176

Post by Groxx » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

buzer wrote: post #101

gwd wrote: post #85

> When 2:50 rolled around and your meeting was supposed to end, do you think people actually ended the meeting? Noooooo. Absolutely not! At U of M, they solved this problem by having classes officially start 10 minutes after the time they were advertised as. That is, a class listed as being 10-11am was actually 10:10-11am; nobody showed up until 10:10. Sure, technically it's the same thing, but there's a pretty massi…

In Finland the universities (and I believe in many other European universities have/had this as well) there was "academic quarter" which meant that if something was scheduled for 10am it would actually start at 10:15am. IIRC if they used precise time (10:00) then it would actually start at that time. I've heard it dates back to when people didn't have easy access to precise time. It would allow students to hear the h…

It also allows you to have "1 hour" classes that are at 10am and 11am, and you aren't forced to leave early or arrive late. A 5m gap isn't enough for huge numbers of classes in many campuses.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#177

Post by burningChrome » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #91

apercu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Execs that have responsibilities appreciate sticking to agendas. But there are a lot of Elon Musks in the world.

Didn't Elon Musk have in his companies that thing of if you have no value to add or receive from a meeting, you can leave it?

This goes way back further then Musk. I remember working at a large corporation in early 2000 before the first dot com crash that had severe meeting issues. At one point, I was having two or three hour long meetings during the week on what another meeting later in the week was supposed to cover.

The CEO of the company got caught fooling around with a co-worker and abruptly resigned. The new CEO came in and found out what a mess meetings had become and issued the same proclamation - if a meeting isn't productive and produce some actionable items, then it shouldn't be scheduled. If you're not 100% required in a meeting, don't go. If you're in a meeting and feel its a waste of time, then leave.

Just those simple rules got rid of half of my meetings and the several teams I was on suddenly were cranking through sprints, building some amazing apps and products and killing our delivery times. The entire company suddenly was cooking along. It was a real eye opener how you can really bog a Fortune 500 company down just by clogging people's time up with useless meetings.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#178

Post by jghn » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

buildsjets wrote: post #80

apercu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neither side understands the other. Being late is viewed as rude or lacking respect for others by a lot of people. Do people who are habitually late view prompt people as rude for being on time?

I view people who show up too early as rude, as do many others.

The beautiful thing about being an early bird is you don't need to "show up too early". You just hang out until you're exactly on time and then show up. There is no analogue for the late person.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#179

Post by bombcar » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

You need meeting rooms like those expensive public toilets. At the allotted time the doors open and it ejects you along with a loud buzzer.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#180

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, May 15, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

khedoros1 wrote: post #126

ctkhn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in 90 minute standups, the 10 minute standup pedants would be my heroes.

With my current team lead, 90-minute standups aren't common, but they've happened. 30 minutes is "short", and most take 45 minutes. The previous lead kept things to about 10-15 minutes. The new guy has apparently never in his life said "OK, let's discuss this after standup".

Any and every team member should be empowered to do this.