Some people have multiple ones.
AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
91–100 of 405 posts
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#92I 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…
Having had been on both sides of this coin, I agree a lot of managers mis-manage meetings. But then there's those engineers who don't show up to meetings and then a month later come to you with a "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features" and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.
I had an engineer once show up to the re-scheduled "lets get the engineers ideas meeting before the yearly plan ships" meeting that we scheduled so they could be there who then proceeded to spent 15 minutes complaining how they didn't get any input before finally asking what the meeting was for, and finding out they had 45 minutes remaining to give feedback (they had skipped the meeting the previous day, and I wanted to make sure they gave their impact). (I tried to interject earlier but was asked "please let me talk" so I did).
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#93I feel this is a symptom of poor meetings, where they are used for information exchange (which I think should come before the meeting) instead of collaboration and problem solving. You could save your time and a bunch of AI-generated notes you'll never read with the simple rule of "no agenda, no attenda". Remote has allowed us to adopt meeting policies that would never exist in-person: giant, long, back-to-back sessi…
> no agenda, no attenda I've been using this mentality for the last three years. Some responds with hostility and some see the benefits, but most are just indifferent to it sadly. I've also been observing people just throw in a short sentence or some AI generated shit list which is then not followed during the meeting. But those who take this seriously usually have pretty darn good meetings (e.g not book the full hou…
How do you deal with daily standups? or 3x a week standups?
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#94You don't even need AI. Just a bot that waits until the end of the meeting and then says, "Nothing from me. Thanks everyone."
Why wait until the end? Jus have it wait for the first three second lull after everyone joins.
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#95The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most mee…
> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills.
That's not entirely it. Some people just won't say something unless put in a setting where they are explicity asked for it. I've had meetings where I ask for a status, and someone says they are stuck on X, and they've been stuck on X for two days.
And I'll ask why they didn't just ask for help. They weren't comfortable asking for help. They were only ok stating the problem when asked specifically for status.
So it also creates that environment were some people are more likely to share.
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#96The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most mee…
The last sentence is it - most people can't communicate much less write well, hell, I don't write well, but I hope my ideas are at least clearly communicated.
When you can't write well, you "resort" to using a lot of body language and facial nuances in face-to-face communication, which works acceptably. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate well on zoom.
This "writing well" as a form of good communication is needed, but while in school, those same people who cannot write well also likely were complaining about learning how to write essays and such. Over time, this sort of lack of learning has resulted in poor written communication into adulthood i reckon.
And with the advent of LLM and all these chatGPT-esque bots writing for them, esp. in school, the level of literacy skill is only going to continue to drop!
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#97The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most mee…
> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills. That's not entirely it. Some people just won't say something unless put in a setting where they are explicity asked for it. I've had meetings where I ask for a status, and someone says they are stuck on X, and they've been stuck on X for two days. And I'll ask why they didn't just ask for help. They weren't comfortable asking for help. They were on…
It's usually possible for the person running a small project to ask everyone for status and know what everyone's going to say in the meeting before the meeting.
Then the meeting is pointless. But not all projects allow for that.
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#98I'm going to buck the trend I see in this thread and say that the AI notetaker we've used has been helpful. After the meeting it sends a list of action items and meeting highlights that links to the timestamp in the meeting where we were talking about it in case we need to refer back. I've found it nice to have.
Would you mind sharing what AI note taking app do you use?
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sometimes, when I need to pee, I say "I need to pee". I find this complex, advanced strategy works pretty well.
Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings
#100The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most mee…
There's this huge difference in quality between execs who work in writing and execs who NEVER write _anything_ down, which is surprisingly common. In my experience it correlates closely with toxic behaviour and I don't know why it's common for senior management in many orgs to allow people to operate in this style.