18
teapot
3y

Ever fuckinn "townhall meeting" at previous workplace. It was such an utter waste of time that even after leaving that place I still rage when thinking about it.

Every 4-6 months they would setup this useless crap of a meeting that drags on for over 1-1.5 hours of execs talking themselves up and trying to convince how great they are. And since they were cheapskates they would send out an email asking everyone to not join from their desks but congregate in the conference rooms to save on the dial-in. The conference rooms didn't have adequate chairs, vantilation or good enough aircon to handle twice/thrice the capacity of people standing in the room.

The marketing exec would go on and on about how great the media visibility is, how many views/likes they had on a linkedin post last month. The sales exec would blabber on about how their team is great and that the customers themselves are lining up and there is no competitor. Straight after the CFO would lecture on how the year is still difficult financially (in disguise justifying the peanuts of pay). The last exec, no matter who that is would specifically raise a point that the previous speakers didn't mention his/her team while thanking others.

This is also not a small company, the total headcount was just over 900 and roughly 500-700 people would be attending these townhalls. Imagine the amount of man hours wasted on that shitshow.

Comments
  • 8
    I once went to a town hall meeting where we were told what we couldn't ask about before we went there ;)

    Then they were upset nobody asked anything.
  • 4
    Sounds a bit like the company I currently work at 🙃.
  • 2
    > "Ever fuckinn townhall meeting"

    Ours are called 'Department Knowledge Sharing' meetings. Every quarter, for 2 to 4 hours.

    COVID has moved them to Teams, so the last one was maybe an hour. Amazing how much time they wasted in PowerPoint.
  • 4
    Oh God, I hate townhall meetings. Upper-level execs bragging about how great the company is doing and now profits have been high but they don't mention that we're still not getting the raises we were promised a year ago.

    There was one last year where they got mad at us for not attending in person because we were over-capacity and desperately trying to meet ridiculous deadlines. Apparently not enough people showed up to fill the auditorium and everyone was tuned in remotely.
  • 1
    I am probably the only one, but town hall meeting is one of the meeting that I always look forward to for the reasons of :

    1. I get to meet people outside of depts that I usually work with

    2. The most important thing is I can get see how the company is going and decide if it's still worth to stay. I was never part of the management team and getting a glimpse of what they usually talk about excites me. There are rumors abound about the company status but I want to know how the management handle communicating them in person to the employees.
  • 1
    Hey we are in bad financial shape, let’s spend $10,500 on an unproductive meeting! Assuming $15/hr (crap pay, as you said) x 700 for 1 hour.
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