31–40 of 51 posts
I schedule meetings at 830am on Mondays because I am a monster.
As much as I have afternoon meetings, either first thing in the morning, or after lunch is best. Gives enough time to get stuck into things without disruptions.
> The best time to schedule a meeting is at 11am Monday morning. People want to get meetings done and off the calendar, and this time period has the least potential for conflicting with other meeting invites. > Avoid Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. These are the most popular times to offer, meaning the potential for conflicts is high. In case anyone else was interested in just their answer to the title question.
I always curse people who schedule meetings first thing in the workday, last thing in the workday, or immediately adjacent to lunch time. If the meeting is an hour long, I'll avoid attending an 11am meeting if I possible can.
It's also culturally dependent -- I noticed US-based employees prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make decision on the meeting. EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first discuss the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss / think / make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony before any formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve only ceremonial needs…
This is probably why the vast majority of meetings I've had in my career have been utterly without value -- productive discussions, brainstorming, and decision-making rarely happen in those meetings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European-American dual-national this rings so true. I work in a tiny European tech company and it drives me crazy how challenging it can sometimes be to actually get people in the room simply speaking their mind on any subject. It’s a cultural difference that I think really holds back the pace of innovation.
I always hear conflicting stories like this. On one hand, people claim Americans are often too artificially faux positive, too effusive, too . And that you'll have no problem hearing from Scandinavians / Eastern Europeans / exactly how they feel. Often to the surprise of many Americans, who are not used to such candid direct communication. Obviously life isn't so black and white but I am wondering where these general…
I am a genuinely positive person and my interactions reflect that. But I have learned to to be more dour when interacting with people from other countries (mostly from European nations) because they think I'm being phony.
The thing is... I'm not. Being dour to put them at ease is me being phony, but they'll accept that as being "authentic".
So much bizarreness all around.
It's also culturally dependent -- I noticed US-based employees prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make decision on the meeting. EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first discuss the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss / think / make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony before any formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve only ceremonial needs…
> I noticed US-based employees prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make decision on the meeting. This is probably why the vast majority of meetings I've had in my career have been utterly without value -- productive discussions, brainstorming, and decision-making rarely happen in those meetings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always hear conflicting stories like this. On one hand, people claim Americans are often too artificially faux positive, too effusive, too . And that you'll have no problem hearing from Scandinavians / Eastern Europeans / exactly how they feel. Often to the surprise of many Americans, who are not used to such candid direct communication. Obviously life isn't so black and white but I am wondering where these general…
Being blunt is different from being truthful. We Eastern Europeans are so truthful that we end up not saying anything at all for fear of being too blunt. So what you get is all these 1:1’s where everyone has to make sure that everyone else is on exactly the same page before being open about it in a larger meeting. No space for disagreement or discussion in a larger forum! I can’t speak about other Europeans or their…
I think this is reasonably accurate. It's rather necessary in order to be able to function in a nation where you are interacting with a huge variety of people with a huge variety of sensibilities, from all over the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They just try hard to make the words very polite. So polite, that Europeans take that for positiveness or indirectness. interesting, any good examples?
“I would recommend/suggest/consider changing this code to this.” Read: Fix your shit. Or give me a good reason to not block your PR until hell freezes over and we all need ice skates. Phrasing things like this works well with junior developers. They feel safer having an opinion or asking questions.
My enlightenment was that this meaning is so instinctive to me that I doubt that it would occur to me that it could be misinterpreted.
> The best time to schedule a meeting is at 11am Monday morning. People want to get meetings done and off the calendar, and this time period has the least potential for conflicting with other meeting invites. > Avoid Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. These are the most popular times to offer, meaning the potential for conflicts is high. In case anyone else was interested in just their answer to the title question.
> The best time to schedule a meeting is at 11am Monday morning. I always curse people who schedule meetings first thing in the workday, last thing in the workday, or immediately adjacent to lunch time. If the meeting is an hour long, I'll avoid attending an 11am meeting if I possible can.
And if you want Meetings to be effective 1. Give out a short bullet point agenda for every meeting and 2. Take a break every 45 minutes.
I don't think any meeting should go on that long, period.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I noticed US-based employees prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make decision on the meeting. This is probably why the vast majority of meetings I've had in my career have been utterly without value -- productive discussions, brainstorming, and decision-making rarely happen in those meetings.
Do these meetings have an agenda? Make sure there's an agenda published BEFORE the meeting.