These employees are salaried. They are not paid in 500ms increments.
Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
61–70 of 146 posts
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#62There is also a "smart assistant" rescheduling service by the same name[1] that I used to great effect at my last employer
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#63This always seems to be such a controversial view here, but if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go. We're all grown-ups at work, and are ultimately responsible for our own productivity. Be prepared to articulate exactly why you feel some other use of your time is more appropriate, in case someone asks, but nobody is holding a gun to your head t…
This doesn’t really work when power dynamics are in play. If you’re a junior or just have less experience than the person calling the meeting I can guarantee it’s causing some type of negative view of you by someone. You do that enough times and you’ll find yourself on a PIP, and eventually on the job market. This is why meetings in general are net negative. There’s little need for scheduled meetings. Just do one sta…
If you're an inexperienced junior developer, you probably should not assume you know better than everyone else what meetings are useful.
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#64Programmers often think the technical aspect of the work is the most important. I’ve met many developers wannabe entrepreneurs who were convinced they had to spend as much time perfecting their app as possible instead of talking to prospective customers. We all know that doesn’t end well. What I realized over my relatively long IT career is that maybe developers just don’t get why meetings are necessary. Not saying a…
I think we should make a distinction here.
Client, prospect and customer meetings are absolutely necessary and you should prioritize those no matter what.
Internal time wasting meetings are the pinnacle of the art of not working and should be avoided at all costs.
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#65You could always use bufferi.ng
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#66This always seems to be such a controversial view here, but if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go. We're all grown-ups at work, and are ultimately responsible for our own productivity. Be prepared to articulate exactly why you feel some other use of your time is more appropriate, in case someone asks, but nobody is holding a gun to your head t…
> We're all grown-ups at work I want to work where you work.
Then just change jobs, duh. I mean, if you’re in a company where you can’t say “Look, it’s better if I skip this discussion to ship a feature”, odds are you’re wasting more time than you imagined.
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#67It's pretty crazy how expensive a simple sprint planning meeting really is if you have 5+ engineers.
That's not the point of this. You would use this for something like poor management (quite common) that had "stand-up"s on Zoom every day or couple of days that were dragging out and had too many participants listening to irrelevant updates.
Exactly!
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreement from me, although I'd avoid double booking. Double booking means that other people are expecting you to attend, they may wait to see if more people join, or need to reschedule if the right audience isn't able to make it. I think it's best to pro-actively reject meetings versus only showing up for one.
Depends. If your schedule has a lot of flux (meetings being cancelled ad-hoc, etc.) then it can be useful to accept everything but notify the host that you probably won't be there unless something changes. That way if something does change you at least still have it on your calendar (I use Outlook, maybe other calendar/meeting apps handle this better).
Google Calendar has a Maybe option that solves it simply enough.
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#69Programmers often think the technical aspect of the work is the most important. I’ve met many developers wannabe entrepreneurs who were convinced they had to spend as much time perfecting their app as possible instead of talking to prospective customers. We all know that doesn’t end well. What I realized over my relatively long IT career is that maybe developers just don’t get why meetings are necessary. Not saying a…
I think we should make a distinction here. Client, prospect and customer meetings are absolutely necessary and you should prioritize those no matter what. Internal time wasting meetings are the pinnacle of the art of not working and should be avoided at all costs.
> Internal time wasting meetings are the pinnacle of the art of not working and should be avoided at all costs.
I’m yet to experience a 100% black-and-white phenomenon in the Universe. We’re all not equal in how we see the work and how we process the information. That’s why we need to compromise and try to underhand why meetings are scheduled.
Ok, suppose programmers are 100% exempt from the internal meetings. Engineering managers and product owners then go ahead and just make every single decision there is. How’s that? The meetings are often used for people to sync on the progress and issues. Moreover, technical people can give their input and help non-technical ones to better understand the limitations, issues, etc.
Re: Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
#70Good luck. There are some people in organizations whose entire job is to schedule and attend meetings. No matter how you say it to those kinds of people, expressing that meetings are keeping you from getting engineer-related work done will be viewed extremely negatively. I’ve been in IT decades and still don’t know what the best answer is.
Our CEO requires every meeting to have an agenda sent out the day before which goes over the background for the meeting, any metrics/dashboards everyone should be familiar with, and what should be discussed in the meeting.
If the person who schedules the meeting does this, it opens up a conversation where you can say "I read what you sent out - everything looks good and I don't think I'm needed for this meeting".