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Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

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Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#51

Post by barbazoo »

saubeidl wrote: post #15
isaacimagine wrote: post #8

At MIT, lectures must follow MIT time; all lectures are expected to start 5 minutes after the hour, and end 5 minutes before. Funnily this means each lecture is about one microcentury long. Exams are the one exception, they start on the dot. https://oge.mit.edu/mit-time/

At most European universities, it is practice to start lectures cum tempore , i.e. with time , meaning 15 minutes after formal calendar time. It'll say 10:00 c.t. on the event, meaning it actually starts at 10:15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quarter_(class_timing...

Odd. Over the course of my education I went to 3 different universities in the EU. Classes/lectures/labs, they all started at the advertised time and I’ve never encountered a concept of “c.t” or “s.t”. Not a formal one anyway. People “talked” about the “academic 15 minutes” but like it was a thing of the past.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#52

Post by kibwen »

metalliqaz wrote: post #20
exhilaration wrote: post #3

The solution to the "50 minute meetings always stretch to an hour" problem is to start them at, say, 9:10am so there's a clean mental stop at 10am. If you schedule them for 9am of course nobody will stop at 9:50am.

Unfortunately that isn't the solution. As the article correctly notes, meetings continue, regardless of the wall clock, until the next group of people come and kick you out. This is a universal truth in office buildings.

> meetings continue, regardless of the wall clock, until the next group of people come and kick you out.

The meeting itself might continue, but as an individual, once the meeting passes the scheduled finish time, you stand up and say "sorry, I've got another meeting to get to". The worse your company's excessive meeting culture is, the better this works.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#54

Post by barbazoo »

morkalork wrote: post #13

>Everybody in a meeting should give input or they shouldn’t be in the meeting. This is wierd and terrible, what does it mean, no interns and juniors get to attend engineering meetings? Tagging along to those meetings is how they learn and it's not expected that they have input at every one, sometimes it's just a question or two.

They’re talking in the context of C level meetings. Not many juniors there.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#55

Post by AStonesThrow »

kibwen wrote: post #52
metalliqaz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that isn't the solution. As the article correctly notes, meetings continue, regardless of the wall clock, until the next group of people come and kick you out. This is a universal truth in office buildings.

> meetings continue, regardless of the wall clock, until the next group of people come and kick you out. The meeting itself might continue, but as an individual, once the meeting passes the scheduled finish time, you stand up and say "sorry, I've got another meeting to get to". The worse your company's excessive meeting culture is, the better this works.

I always felt this was wholly ineffective coming from someone who wasn’t contributing or necessary to any given meeting, but it’s important to establish and hold boundaries like this.

Even more points when a participant speaks up at the very beginning, to announce, “I’ve got a hard-stop at 9:50, so I’ll need to leave at that point no matter what.” Then the responsibility for wrap-up is placed squarely on leadership.

Unfortunately I’ve also found that a poorly-run meeting won't get around to the wrap-up on time, and so leaving early may only hurt that participant, by missing something important.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#56

Post by yegle »

exhilaration wrote: post #3

The solution to the "50 minute meetings always stretch to an hour" problem is to start them at, say, 9:10am so there's a clean mental stop at 10am. If you schedule them for 9am of course nobody will stop at 9:50am.

Our team collectively decided all meetings should start 5 min late and end at the half hour boundary (we do 55min instead of 50min).

This can be easily enforced because other neighboring teams would knock the door at the half hour mark and you can't really blame them or be grumpy about it.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#57

Post by apercu »

barbazoo wrote: post #36
steveBK123 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works great except 95% of the places I've been with bad meeting culture, it comes from the top. Long winded execs enjoying open ended meetings without any structure to constrain them. Which is to say, the kind of shops with micromanaging management who keep themselves busy with meetings with their own team.

In my experience, most folks appreciate a gentle hint to stick to the agenda. I don’t hang out with “execs” though.

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

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#58

Post by malfist »

realitysballs wrote: post #2

10 minute standup , woof

That's exactly how I run my standups.

Everyone answers 3 questions:

* Do I need something?

* What is my _top_ priority for the day?

* Am I blocked?

The answers for the first and third question should always be "No" because you should have raised them before standup, but it's a relief valve if you didn't.

What is your top priority should be short and focused. If you let people talk about what they did or didn't do yesterday it becomes a slog with people justifying their progress or non-progress. Ultimately it doesn't matter. Focusing on the top priority he's focus people on their main task for the day.

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#59

Post by apercu »

flerchin wrote: post #16
exhilaration wrote: post #3

The solution to the "50 minute meetings always stretch to an hour" problem is to start them at, say, 9:10am so there's a clean mental stop at 10am. If you schedule them for 9am of course nobody will stop at 9:50am.

Heh some people are on time, some people are late. It's seemingly a culture thing, and neither side understands the other. You say "of course nobody will stop at 9:50am" and that is exactly what I would do.

> 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?

Re: Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room

#60

Post by madcaptenor »

saubeidl wrote: post #34
esnard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else is confused, a microcentury is apparently around 52.6 minutes long.

Microcentury sounds like somebody didn't reduce their fractions. I propose centiyear.

It's one ten-thousandth of a year but there's not a prefix for that.
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