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AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

washingtonpost.com

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Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#81

Post by Spivak »

nlawalker wrote: post #69

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

As well as those standups which are just micro-presentations where each person talks in turn about their respective card but there's no discussion. The teams that moved to async standups where they just post status updates in Slack and amigo only when needed seem happier.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#82

Post by dalemhurley »

nlawalker wrote: post #69

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

At my previous company, one I started, I would try to organise a meeting with only the most essential people and then people would forward the invite as people would be upset they were not invited (normally because it is a prelim meeting to a wider meeting), the meeting would go from 4 people to 15, people would attend the meeting find it was irrelevant to them or too early to them, which is why they were not invited in the first place, and then complain about too many meetings. Ugh.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#83

Post by lazyasciiart »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #78
nlawalker wrote: post #69

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

It's not just historical precedent, it's about creating common knowledge that everybody has received the relevant information

It is historical precedent. Having everyone sit slackjawed through twenty minutes of droning is no more proof that they received the relevant information than emailing them would be - that’s why schools have exams and other assessment on the knowledge they intend to impart.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#84

Post by Spivak »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #78
nlawalker wrote: post #69

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

It's not just historical precedent, it's about creating common knowledge that everybody has received the relevant information

So an email? You could not read the email, but I can just as easily not pay attention.

You have a way better chance of getting people to pay attention to a few paragraph email than that same information stretched to fill an hour.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#85

Post by pk-protect-ai »

zdragnar wrote: post #67
pk-protect-ai wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing, these meetings are B.S. Engineers need a task, time to think, and write about the solution and its cost. Period. Talking in a room full of people who love to hear their own voices and love to stroke their egos does not actually help engineers do their job. When engineers need to communicate, they communicate with their colleagues. There are tools for such communications that do not require talking a…

Feature development is rarely so cut and dry that you can hand a developer a task and let them run with it. To get there, you need a confluence of context and expertise from several domains: - what problem needs to be solved (user story) - what options are available (interaction design, technical capabilities) - what the cost of implementing each option is, and the opportunity cost of each level of implementation / e…

Excellent, this all can be written, thought over and discussed in written form. I do not see how this all requires a meeting.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#86

Post by pk-protect-ai »

woah wrote: post #76
pk-protect-ai wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing, these meetings are B.S. Engineers need a task, time to think, and write about the solution and its cost. Period. Talking in a room full of people who love to hear their own voices and love to stroke their egos does not actually help engineers do their job. When engineers need to communicate, they communicate with their colleagues. There are tools for such communications that do not require talking a…

> Engineers need a task, time to think, and write about the solution and its cost. Period. Talking in a room full of people who love to hear their own voices and love to stroke their egos does not actually help engineers do their job. When engineers need to communicate, they communicate with their colleagues. Seems like when you say "engineers", you mean "people with my exact personality"

You might be right.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#87

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jawns wrote: post #4

I bet there are a bunch of people in upper management who hear about this phenomenon and think that employees are skipping meetings to slack off (appearing to do work but they're actually playing Mario Kart). In reality, it's more likely that they're being judged on their attendance of BS meetings, but if they attend the BS meetings, they won't be able to make the BS deadlines they're responsible for hitting. So they…

> bet there are a bunch of people in upper management who hear about this phenomenon and think that employees are skipping meetings to slack off

Everyone I know in senior leadership sees this as a plus. It’s known that middle managers waste time with performative meetings. Their value add is just seen to outweigh that drag. So if they can perform and employees can work, that’s sort of a win-win for shareholders.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#88

Post by singron »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #78
nlawalker wrote: post #69

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

It's not just historical precedent, it's about creating common knowledge that everybody has received the relevant information

I'm sympathetic to this knowing how few people actually read their emails (and slacks etc.). If you've ever sent out a 30 second survey to your coworkers, you know what I'm talking about. But I also know people don't really pay attention in these meetings either.

I feel async communication could work this way with the right cultural hygiene (e.g. consistent labeling, brevity, novelty, and relevancy), and some places I've worked were better about this than others, but they all tend to suffer from tragedy of the commons. If anyone works somewhere where you and all your coworkers actually count on each other to read emails, please tell me where!

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#89

Post by kstrauser »

phs318u wrote: post #51
mystifyingpoi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> opportunity to pee Social pressure is still a thing for some unfortunately. Or maybe memories from school creep in. Just go for a pee.

If I have back-to-back meetings, I'll leave a few minutes early (with apologies) and also apologise to the next meeting if I'm late. If anyone calls me out, I'll apologetically claim "biological imperative". If they don't understand, I tell them that my bowels wait for no one. That is enough to get everyone to move on. No one wants to talk about someone else's bowels.

“Time for a bio break.” I’ve heard that often.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#90

Post by throwaway290 »

Wow looks like I'm only one who is happy not talking to bots at my job. I go to meetings to ask questions (maybe answer too). I guarantee if I don't care about the topic I won't read your AI notes email even harder than I won't attend or listen in the meeting. But in case of the meeting you could tell I didn't!
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