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Meetings are forcing functions

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Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#81

Post by Hendrikto »

ralferoo wrote: post #56
katzgrau wrote: post #12

There’s a lot of meeting hate here and as a developer, I used to feel the same. But after bootstrapping a SaaS company and at times struggling through cross-team execution, I’ve come around. A short weekly standing meeting, like the one described in the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution, is actually a powerful tool. Without it, maintenance, admin, and firefighting will expand to fill the entire week. The meeting fo…

> A short weekly standing meeting The problem is that management will see that it's useful, and embrace this meeting. It doesn't take long until the meeting is no longer short, switches up to daily, isn't standing because there's too many people and/or everyone is WFH. I think one of the biggest problems in management is that managers are super focused on making their management tasks easier at the expense of their r…

> In general, [managers] prefer a meeting with 20+ or 50+ engineers in one place, each giving 1 minute or longer feedback, because they can do that every day and in an hour, they know what everybody is doing.

Most of the time they don’t even know what everybody is doing, or why, or how. But they like to fool themselves into thinking that, because ??? it given them the warm fuzzies, I guess.

Then they just wasted everybody’s time for absolutely no reason at all.

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#82

Post by Steve16384 »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #29
majorbugger wrote: post #21

As a developer I have absolutely no qualms with the weekly meetings and since we're fully remote, it's actually nice to be in touch with my team mates, even if they talk about the part they're doing right now for a while. What I had issues with in the past is forced daily meeting (on top of other meetings) that just created stress and fatigue for me. Starting my day with a standup was literally the worst way to start…

In contrast, I always advocated for my teams to stand up in the morning as a way to set the agenda for the day and make sure everyone was clear about what they were going to work on, as well as have an opportunity to schedule meetings with each other if needed. After that, we were done and the rest of the day was yours.

> set the agenda for the day

Were 90% of the agendas "working on the same thing as yesterday"? Did no-one know what they were doing that day until they had the daily meeting?

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#84

Post by TimByte »

A recurring meeting is useful but I think the real forcing function is the public review of commitments, not the meeting itself. And the tricky part is keeping it from becoming a substitute for actual work...

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#85

Post by Silamoth »

stronglikedan wrote: post #75
ralferoo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A short weekly standing meeting The problem is that management will see that it's useful, and embrace this meeting. It doesn't take long until the meeting is no longer short, switches up to daily, isn't standing because there's too many people and/or everyone is WFH. I think one of the biggest problems in management is that managers are super focused on making their management tasks easier at the expense of their r…

> management will see that it's useful, and embrace this meeting. Only if you let them. We don't let management attend our weekly. They have nothing to contribute anyway. Just set boundaries.

In a lot (most?) companies, management serves as the bosses over engineers. So good luck telling your boss they’re not allowed in your meeting.

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#86

Post by TimByte »

katzgrau wrote: post #12

There’s a lot of meeting hate here and as a developer, I used to feel the same. But after bootstrapping a SaaS company and at times struggling through cross-team execution, I’ve come around. A short weekly standing meeting, like the one described in the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution, is actually a powerful tool. Without it, maintenance, admin, and firefighting will expand to fill the entire week. The meeting fo…

And I think a lot of "meeting hate" is really "bad meeting hate" which is completely fair

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#87

Post by timssopomo »

Silamoth wrote: post #85
stronglikedan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> management will see that it's useful, and embrace this meeting. Only if you let them. We don't let management attend our weekly. They have nothing to contribute anyway. Just set boundaries.

In a lot (most?) companies, management serves as the bosses over engineers. So good luck telling your boss they’re not allowed in your meeting.

You don't tell them they're not allowed. You ask them what they need from the meeting and how so you can free up the time from their calendar, or what they need to comfortably delegate the responsibility to you.

Managers don't do this stuff for funsies they do it because they don't trust that their team won't go off track because of something they don't know.

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#88

Post by hilariously »

timssopomo wrote: post #87
Silamoth wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot (most?) companies, management serves as the bosses over engineers. So good luck telling your boss they’re not allowed in your meeting.

You don't tell them they're not allowed. You ask them what they need from the meeting and how so you can free up the time from their calendar, or what they need to comfortably delegate the responsibility to you. Managers don't do this stuff for funsies they do it because they don't trust that their team won't go off track because of something they don't know.

A lot of people are talking past each other in this comment section. A good boss definitely doesn't want you spend their time making you do performative work. A bad boss gleefully engages with this as it shows they are big and important.

A good boss will see the inefficiency and work with you to try and manage it so you are not doing a bunch of PM work (wasting your time) while the important stuff happens and clear communication continues.

A bad boss will see that you are not catering to their emotional needs which implies you are a very bad worker and thus you will be keel hauled into every meeting they can invite you to because obviously the more time you've spent talking to them the more efficient you've been during the day, you are a finger on a hand and you should not flex unless the mind controlling you wants to.

I had a bad boss move me across the country as the most important thing so we could have face to face comms, and then would only come into the office once a month or so to talk - but to him that once a month in person conversation was worth upending my entire life so it was marginally easier than a zoom call for him. There's a lot of rich assholes who operate like this.

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#89

Post by hilariously »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #29
majorbugger wrote: post #21

As a developer I have absolutely no qualms with the weekly meetings and since we're fully remote, it's actually nice to be in touch with my team mates, even if they talk about the part they're doing right now for a while. What I had issues with in the past is forced daily meeting (on top of other meetings) that just created stress and fatigue for me. Starting my day with a standup was literally the worst way to start…

In contrast, I always advocated for my teams to stand up in the morning as a way to set the agenda for the day and make sure everyone was clear about what they were going to work on, as well as have an opportunity to schedule meetings with each other if needed. After that, we were done and the rest of the day was yours.

Do that at the end of the day, not the beginning - review the work you've done and the work you are going to do, and then do not waste my mornings where I am productive on meetings - I probably spend less than 10% of my creative effort possible because of this morning meeting crap.

Re: Meetings are forcing functions

#90

Post by gwbas1c »

Just a note regarding meeting hate (that's a common topic in this thread.)

(Something that this article should mention)

People (managers) who advocate for meetings need to keep an eye out for:

1: People scheduling meetings as a form of group procrastination.

2: People scheduling meetings as a form of pontificating or having people listen to their ego trip. (These quite literally feel like someone "holding court.")

3: Confusing meetings for general collaboration on work. 2-3 people working together on a problem is not a meeting. > 3 people collaborating around a table should only happen long enough that everyone gets enough information to break apart into smaller groups so that they can get their job done.

4: Meeting overload: I think there is a "healthy target" of ~1 hour a day of meetings for an IC, slightly more for an engineering leader, and significantly more for a manager.

Meetings become a problem when the ICs are pulled into more than an hour of meetings on a typical day, or an engineering lead being pulled into more meetings than they are comfortable with on a typical day. The managers need to shield them from too many meetings.

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