8
VaderNT
5y

Hold a meeting that the participants actually want.

The biggest time wasters I had to attend were:
- "generic weekly meet up of people not working together telling what's new on their side" (I don't work with you, I DON'T CARE)
- "management wants updates/wants to talk about doing instead of letting us do" (go read Jira tickets, and ffs stay out of the experts' field... They're experts in it for a reason)
- "no agenda, this is just to get to know each other" (I get to know people on my own terms, stop forcing what can't be forced)
- most Scrum meetings (some people need guidance, I don't! Your Scrum chains actually hinder my productivity! Can we please stop wasting my time and nerves?)

And the best meetings? A couple of coworkers realizing "hey we need to make a decision here, let's book a conference room together" and "hey you know your stuff about xyz, can you teach us what you know?".

Comments
  • 2
    My personal experience with meetings is that if everyone wants that meeting something has gone horribly wrong. Either that meeting is too late to address the matter or people just want to yell at each other.
  • 1
    At my internship, there's a daily project-level meeting with a conference video call.
    15 minutes at most, and it helps everyone know as requirements can be clarified more easily than through text.

    I get that some meetings might be a waste of time for some participants, but then again, you can just look at it as if it was a break. You're getting paid for doing nothing if you don't want to participate in the meeting anyway, although maybe that shouldn't be your attitude towards meetings in general (only really horrible time wasters).
  • 0
    @Pickman hm, not my experience. When it's self-organized between people it's usually great. Horribly gone wrong is when management wants everyone to attend.
  • 0
    @kescherRant I disagree. Forced doing nothing is hell. And you can't even do usual "break stuff" because you get called out for not paying attention.
  • 1
    @VaderNT my experience is just that the flow of information is almost always unidirectional and this means that a party involved gains nothing from the meeting, it's an obligation for him, not a necessity. If it is not you probably split the team wrong or waited too long to have that meeting.
    Of course the flow of information does not exist when people just want to stab each other, but when they do they love to have meetings.
  • 0
    @Pickman
    > flow of information is almost always unidirectional and this means that a party involved gains nothing from the meeting, it's an obligation for him, not a necessity.

    So in other words, it's neither self-organized between the participants nor wanted? I agree those suck.

    > Of course the flow of information does not exist when people just want to stab each other

    I must admit I've not yet had meetings with Klingons. 🤣
  • 0
    @VaderNT define self-organized... I need to know how to deploy my app in your system so I call you and we schedule a meeting. We just organized a meeting. You get NOTHING out of it. It's just annoying for you. But you still do it because it is good for the company even if you would be a lot happier if I figured things out myself.
  • 0
    @Pickman "agreed to by equal peers", as opposed to "enforced by someone above you in the hierarchy", maybe?

    But... where are you going with this anyway? I'm kind of lost.
  • 0
    @VaderNT What I mean is that "agreed upon by equal peers" is entirely compatible with the flow of information being unidirectional.
  • 0
    @Pickman okay, I can agree with that. 🙂
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