Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings • Hacker News Board

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#21

Post by deepfriedtech » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 2:40 AM UTC

I loathe meetings and do my best to avoid attending them unless there is a specific technical issue being discussed that falls within my wheelhouse. I especially dislike meetings with non-technical people present. To have to stop the meeting constantly to explain things is annoying, so I ask to be excused unless my area of expertise is involved. A later walk-to-the-local-cafe-for-espresso with my supervisor gives me anything I need to know without the lame questions and hand-holding.

There is a reason I ask to be in the server room with the lights out...

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#22

Post by memnips » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 2:41 AM UTC

Once I connected my calendar I actually had trouble distinguishing my real meetings from the decoy meetings. Impressive and frightening.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#23

Post by lostcolony » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 2:42 AM UTC

I have a recurring "Developer meeting", with some of the other devs every day at 12-1 because I was so tired of having the management types, having filled the rest of their calendars with useless meetings, deciding to schedule me for useless meetings that prevented me from getting lunch (as in, Monday, Tuesday is wide open, then Tuesday morning, bam, meeting invites from 10:30 until 2:30, no breaks).

That, and responding to every meeting with "tentative", so that I'm free to re-evaluate the meeting's priority against real work up until the last possible second, has allowed me to keep my sanity in a culture of time wasting.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#24

Post by deepfriedtech » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 2:48 AM UTC

Ologn wrote: post #20

I used to block off every 9AM-10AM, 4PM-5PM and 1PM-2PM slot as busy slots. If someone really needed to have a meeting at one of those times they could ask me. Because often, those were the only slots the 10 people in the meeting all had open in the immediate future so people would then schedule meetings at those times. I grew tired of 4PM-5PM meetings which extended to 5:30PM, 6PM etc.

I'm one of those people that leave work at 5, even if there is a meeting going. My wife and children are far more important than helping someone make more money.

My boss knows I don't work nights or weekends. I routinely ignore night and weekend emails because when I leave work I'm "unemployed" as it were until the next work day. Once you set the precedent, word gets around. No one asks me for anything other than to do my job. I've been doing this for years.

Besides, I have toddlers at home as well as teenager. My wife is knackered by the time I roll in, so I get home as soon as possible to help out.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#25

Post by smegel » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 3:15 AM UTC

I have a strangely recurring meeting from 11.30AM through 1PM every day - don't you dare try and arrange a meeting in my lunch hour!

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#26

Post by mxuribe » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 3:22 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #11

I do this and also take advantage of the chance to take a conference room for an hour or two, vs. open plan desk with my back to a room full of people. I get probably 5x more done per minute in the conference room.

During a previous job when I had a more manageable workload, I actually enjoyed the open plan desk. The interaction with my peers, co-workers etc. was actually helpful - if not always for productivity - at least for ideas, general sanity checks, etc. And then i got my current job, and the workload is just crazy...so any tiny interruption kills my productivity...So i do similar to what you do: block some time in a conference room, an hour or two at most. I happen to book a conference room on the other side of the building, where most folks don't recognize me. But i always have mixed feelings about it. While maybe i am not getting 5x more done, i'm definitely loads more productive. But to me it seems sad, and says alot about how crappy some jobs can be, when to get anything done, you actually have to work away from your desk and peers. Ah well...

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#27

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 3:23 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #11

I do this and also take advantage of the chance to take a conference room for an hour or two, vs. open plan desk with my back to a room full of people. I get probably 5x more done per minute in the conference room.

I briefly had to work with my back to people; it really is the most distracting situation to be in.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#28

Post by gregpilling » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 3:23 AM UTC

I do this manually already. Doesn't everyone else? My Monday morning meetings are always booked, as are my Friday afternoon meetings.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#29

Post by mturmon » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 3:25 AM UTC

deepfriedtech wrote: post #21

I loathe meetings and do my best to avoid attending them unless there is a specific technical issue being discussed that falls within my wheelhouse. I especially dislike meetings with non-technical people present. To have to stop the meeting constantly to explain things is annoying, so I ask to be excused unless my area of expertise is involved. A later walk-to-the-local-cafe-for-espresso with my supervisor gives me…

I get where you're coming from, but as you probably know, one must be careful not to take it too far. Metaphorically, one of these days, the server room you're shut up in might be outsourced to the cloud, and you weren't at the meeting.

More concretely, by saying "no" to these meetings, a person is advertising that there are some standard capabilities that they don't have (e.g., "not skilled at working with non-technical people" appearing on an evaluation at some point). This will limit the kind of roles that person will be able to fill. What seems like a strength from one angle ("deeply technical") can look like a liability from above.

(Not a down voter, BTW, just have some personal experience with the problem.)

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#30

Post by xirdstl » Wed, Mar 30, 2016, 5:07 AM UTC

I'm fortunate in that I work from home a couple days a week regularly. Generally, people will wait until I'm in the office to schedule meetings, giving me those full glorious days to get things done.