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How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

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Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#71

Post by gwbas1c »

gwill wrote: post #27
gwbas1c wrote: post #11

As a lead I used to tick a few people off by occasionally declining meetings. The result is that I developed a mystique, and when I needed to get peoples' attention, I could get it. As an engineer it's important to feel comfortable occasionally declining BS meetings: it reflects more poorly on the person who can't get people to come to their meetings than on you. (Even though people might appear mad at you.) It's als…

i'll add that there you can avoid making people mad at you by communicating why you’re cancelling. you don't need to be mean, just explain that your contribution wont be valuable and the task your working on has higher priority etc.

> cancelling

I didn't cancel, I declined meetings. There is a very important difference.

> i'll add that there you can avoid making people mad at you by communicating why

I usually gave a reason, but when there was a large invite list, or no notice, I did not.

The one time I "got into trouble" was when I gave a reason: "I am declining this meeting because there is no agenda." My manager told me to just have him intervene instead of declining the meeting.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#73

Post by marcinzm »

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #65

Counterpoint. Engineers created meeting hell. You know what's a bad meeting? Any Scrum meeting or status 'sync'. Meetings are invaluable. Get together frequently to talk about what you're actually trying to build with the stakeholders and you don't need process, you barely even need tickets. But you have to be present, involved and responsive to jump on a quick call. Instead engineers whine about context switching an…

Or you know, the impact of context switching on you and on most other engineers is not the same. But no, that's not possible, everyone is exactly just like you, they're all just whiners.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#74

Post by magicalhippo »

HermitX wrote: post #21

I'm curious about what everyone considers to be a high frequency of meetings. Two 1-hour team meetings per week, along with a daily 15-minute stand-up meeting. Do you think this frequency is high?

We got a 1-2 hour weekly team meeting, and then just project-specific ones, usually with clients or other internal teams. So depending on how many projects are going on at once, that'll be 1-3 meetings per week typically, and they'll often be 15-30min, 1 hr tops.

Some weeks there might be more, some weeks I just have the team meeting. When there are more I try to get them to fall on the same days, so I still have some empty days left.

We tried using a daily standup but didn't find it productive, so we stopped.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#75

Post by geor9e »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
dfxm12 wrote: post #9

I actively fight against meeting hell. If I get a meeting request without a specific agenda (I don't split hairs with the definition of "agenda" or "outcome" like the article though), I ask for one and don't accept it otherwise. If the agenda makes it clear that this can be answered via email, I answer it and decline. If I'm in a meeting that seemed reasonable for me to attend, but I'm not adding/receiving value, or…

> If the agenda makes it clear that this can be answered via email, I answer it and decline. You're one of the good ones. The retort to "This meeting could have been an E-mail" is "But, do you respond to your E-mail?" Sometimes we really do need an answer/decision/action, and not everyone has good E-mail hygiene. I have worked with a non-trivial number of people who don't read their E-mail and/or don't respond to it.…

>not everyone has good E-mail hygiene

This is so true at my workplace, thinking back. The folks with unreplied emails cluttering their inboxes are exactly who get pulled into meetings. It's basically an emergency handholding step to get them to actually do some work. The folks who clearly reach inbox zero once or twice a day, I honestly barely remember their faces because folks don't dare waste their time with meetings.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#76

Post by Kluggy »

ahtihn wrote: post #57
Kluggy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two daily stand-ups (30 minutes) with different teams I’m a part of A weekly status meeting (1 hr) Three weekly status meeting update planning meetings (1 hr each) Sprint planning every other week (2 hr) Demo and retros every other week (2 hr) Eight 1:1 weekly meetings (4 hrs) That’s 12.5 hours per week so far without even counting any real project meeting where we solve anything. I’m generally around 16 hours…

> Eight 1:1 weekly meetings (4 hrs) > I’m not even a lead or anything This does not compute to me, do you have 8 managers? What's the content of these meetings?

We prioritize relationships a ton here and so I meet 1:1 with each of my peers in both teams (3) and each manager of both teams, so that’s 8 people per week.

The entire company has extensive amounts of 1:1s. Were in the mid 40’s of employee count.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#77

Post by acdha »

RajT88 wrote: post #47
ungreased0675 wrote: post #24

There are some who believe that meetings are work. If those people are in charge of an organization, there will be tension with people who have real tasks and deliverables. My preferred approach is not to modify the meetings to make them more efficient, but to go on an extremist crusade against all meetings. Insist on asynchronous communication. Create dashboards with whatever metrics are discussed at status update m…

> Insist on asynchronous communication. Not disagreeing, but you've also got to be mindful of scenarios where there is something which needs to be hashed out and neither party fully owns the thing. If you don't nip it in the bud by getting those people together on a call or in the room together, you can end up with a lot of unnecessary back and forth. Getting people in the room together is particularly effective for…

Yeah, I like the idea of making meetings have some nominal cost - a lot of organizations won’t even blink at letting anyone schedule meetings which cost thousands of dollars per hour but will need three levels of sign-off for a $50 purchase. It feels like there could be a middle ground where you basically get reminded of the cost to the organization.

I’ve seen some people who will fill the week up with Groundhog’s Day-style repeat meetings, and even the basic expectation that they have an agenda, goals, and need to summarize what was decided afterwards increases the cost to them personally enough to make better use of everyone’s time.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#78

Post by BirAdam »

The most productive meetings I have are never the ones scheduled, they’re impromptu between myself and another engineer just chatting. Sometimes, one of us mentions a problem and the other offers an idea that pushes toward the solution. Every other meeting I have is pointless and the “leader” should have just sent an email.

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#79

Post by ryandrake »

geor9e wrote: post #75
ryandrake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the agenda makes it clear that this can be answered via email, I answer it and decline. You're one of the good ones. The retort to "This meeting could have been an E-mail" is "But, do you respond to your E-mail?" Sometimes we really do need an answer/decision/action, and not everyone has good E-mail hygiene. I have worked with a non-trivial number of people who don't read their E-mail and/or don't respond to it.…

>not everyone has good E-mail hygiene This is so true at my workplace, thinking back. The folks with unreplied emails cluttering their inboxes are exactly who get pulled into meetings. It's basically an emergency handholding step to get them to actually do some work. The folks who clearly reach inbox zero once or twice a day, I honestly barely remember their faces because folks don't dare waste their time with meetin…

I remember hauling someone into a meeting because they wouldn't answer a question over E-mail, and after the question was answered, we went on to another topic where he had to present something by sharing his screen. Looked down at the MacOS dock and his E-mail client had one of those red bubbles that shows how many unread E-mails he had, and it was six digits. 241,995 unread E-mails or some ridiculous shit. Like, dude, do you realize how much of a huge problem you are?

Re: How to keep engineers out of meeting hell

#80

Post by ASalazarMX »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #24

There are some who believe that meetings are work. If those people are in charge of an organization, there will be tension with people who have real tasks and deliverables. My preferred approach is not to modify the meetings to make them more efficient, but to go on an extremist crusade against all meetings. Insist on asynchronous communication. Create dashboards with whatever metrics are discussed at status update m…

> There are some who believe that meetings are work.

Meetings are work. Not practical work, but management work, which is very valuable to coordinate and unify efforts.

I agree, though, that there are people who like meetings for meetings's sake, and those waste eveyone's time. In my experience, they're usually executives with little practical background. They use meetings primarily for politics/socialization, and have the power to summon as many meetings as they wish.

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