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Promotions? What are those.
Every title I have gained has been out of necessity of needing someone to work on stack "X".
It usually goes something like:
Dev: I quit
Management: oh shit, we need another dev 🤔oh @C0D4 can do it until we find a replacement.
@C0D4: fuck, I don't know anything about this stack.
Management: we didn't find a replacement, this thing is yours now, here's a pay bump for your efforts.
@C0D4: I swear they'll regret all these projects being managed by a single dev 1 day.7 -
Show up on time.
Be prepared.
Have a list of things that need to be covered if you're leading the meeting.
Stay on track, don't let people start talking out of one tangent, I tend to suggest people discuss it afterwards or email about it.
Take the meeting seriously, otherwise other people will not.
Know how to talk a language everyone understands. Sometimes people with key info just aren't very technical.
Following Ely's golden rules for meetings, my meetings are rarely longer than 20 minutes.5 -
1) Schedule an hour for the meeting.
2) Tell attendees that any excess time will be for SSBB throwdowns. Fastest meeting ever.
Oh, you asked about being productive?
Making both Adam from frontend and Karen from HR cry at the same time is productive enough for me. 😊4 -
1. Remove chairs and tables.
2. Limit everyone to two minutes speech time.
3. When everybody got used to stand-up meetings, get down and plank.
Everybody will have a very strong interest in a quick and productive end to any plank-down meeting. 😁4 -
Put a counter based on the number and average salaries of the attendants on screen. The meeting won't be more productive but the management will see how much money they are wasting with all the unnecessary meetings.3
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Point out everyone else's bullshit. Some people will tell you you are mean or you lack soft skills or that they can no longer work with you and you should go to see a therapist, but oh well, you are an engineer not their mom. You are just being rational.5
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1. Going off topic is rewarded with a lap around the office building
2. Second time, two laps
3. Disqualified, try again next week1 -
- Make it engaging, and avoid too much bullshit.
- Everyone should get to air their concerns, regardless of your position, everyone should have a say of the matters being discussed.
And for the love of god, compress it, don't make it unnecessary long. It's not fun to attend something that takes an hour of your working time, because time is precious and you lose time to fix shit.1 -
Avoid face to face meetings, have con calls
Avoid con calls, have email chains
Avoid email chains, do one on one mails
Avoid mails, text
Ignore texts -
Dis-incentive them with a visible cost or better yet by total man hours.
https://bloomberg.com/news/...1 -
- have/share an agenda as soon as possible
- each talking point should identify a problem. Make a list of strategic questions answers to which would make it perfectly clear what and by whom has to be done to resolve them.
- plan meeting duration according to the list of questions. Make sure you meeting room reservation gives you enough time
- take notes
- be prepared for a need for another meeting(s), if during that meeting it comes clear that:
> more/other people need to be engaged
> some things are not clear and need more investigation before going further
> you have run out of time
> there are other problems tgat need to be worked out and it might cobsume too much time to do this in a current meeting
- do not turn the meeting into a chat. It's counter-productive, tiring to the listeners and a waste of time
- do not try to cover many topics. The less, the better. Unless they are very tightly coupled.
- do not invite people you do not need or there is a very slim chance you will need.
- only schedule meetings when the situation needs to be DISCUSSED among multiple parties
- that being said, do not schedule meetings when it's more convenient to communicate otherwise, like email, chat, etc.
- after the meeting make a summary and send it our to all the participants. They might reply and clarify if you have misunderstood smth or missed some important point.
- during the meeting assign tasks to each other. Verbally. Make notes. After the meeting reflect them in jira, rally, wtv.
- while assigning tasks nake sure the assignees have no blockers to work on them and make sure they understand what, when and how should be done. Some tasks might be dependedt on each other, work the sequence out.
- while assigning tasks ask "for ETAs. They might be as silly as 1-hour-to-2-weeks, but they still let you know what to expect.
- offer your assistance to the task assignees if they need any while working on their tasks
- work on your language, grammar, syntax, etc. Reading texts with typos/mistakes is repelling
- be a leader, an authority everyone is looking up to. Not a boss.
- avoid saying NOs. Be more of a "do we really need this; can we do this some other way/time; I can't promise anythibg but I'll see what I can do about it" kind of person. -
Start at the scheduled time. Don't, "give everybody a little time to join." You're just enabling shit behavior.
Never, ever ask, "who just joined?" when the join tone sounds on the call. If you need someone on the call, invite them, and address them directly by name. If you need to take roll, then call out names, one at a time. But don't do that either. Just do your meeting.
A meeting has a direct cost of the lost time of everyone on the call. Artificial delays for small talk or petty admin are a total waste of time and money. Keep it simple, on task, and as fast as possible.3 -
I don't think meeting are bad nor good, it's like weapon, it's what we do with them that decide.
also, it's pretty easy to kill someone with it -
I think it helps to have clear objectives/questions to answer, otherwise we get sidetracked. Tell everyone beforehand what the meeting is about, let them prepare.
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I was never promoted - mostly because I never stayed more than 8 months in the same company. I changed jobs so frequently that at some point an HR in a company I applied for asked me about it and thought it was not a good sign.5
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Put the meeting agenda in the meeting invite: after a few meetings of you referring to those notes in a condescending manner, people will get the hint that you want them to familiarize themselves with the agenda before the meeting. It also gives you a nice reference point if you ever get off topic.
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- Limit the number of attendees to those absolutely required
- If you need a person just for a specific topic, split the meeting into multiple meetings in direct sucession and send the person off after his/her topic is finished
- before making a meeting, make sure it really is required. If the meeting consists of a single person talking 90% of the time, write an E-Mail instead -
Coffee. Check.
Spectacles to look like a geek even when you don't need it. Check.
Whiteboard marker even if you don't have a whiteboard. Check.
Jargon on space-time continuum. Check.1 -
Meeting agenda, don't talk outside it. Have separate meetings for items that aren't of interest for everyone attending.4
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Gosh, how I hate meetings at the beginning of the sprint... and at the middle... and in the end! Just fucking give me the requirements!4
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Write email with meeting topics before meeting.
Send summary email to all attendees after meeting.1 -
Don't do meetings?
When I have a 7+ meeting and I'm not presenting, I always have a prod problem.
My politics for meetings copy the need to know politic inside Intelligence service. Not 100% sure I need to be there? I won't be there. -
Making meetings productive ?
Dunno man i can just put a card with: "We dont have the resources for this !" in my place during any meeting and it's going to be awsome . -
Considering what must be told and making the meeting as short as possible
Unless you just wanna talk with someone and maybe drink something, in that case, just meet with no expectation -
Meetings are by definition not productive. I don't mean that sarcastically or cynically; if I'm not at my computer actively coding, debugging, or researching then I am officially off task.
Product management and financial types can have all the meetings they want, and try to involve me as little as possible.2 -
The most efficient meeting you can have is the one that you don't have to go to.
Basically if a meeting is proposed and it's a pure waste of time. Just don't show up, spend time wisely. -
Send the agenda with the invite
Invite only those who can make decisions not those with only opinions
Stick to the agenda
Make the decision at the end of the meeting and stick to it.
Begins and end on time
If the decision can be made without a meeting (like via email) then do so. -
In the last couple of years I've only really had 2 kinds of meetings, weekly stand-up or me explaining something to someone. So they're usually pretty productive.
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If a supervisor conducts an informational conference call that’s on a set schedule, mainly consisting of members from their management team, they should avoid conducting the kindergarten style roll call start off. Especially, if the call consists of 20 or more people.
10+ minute roll calls are horrible to have to sit through, not to mention borderline degrading if the team members involved are management or supervisors. -
1) make a ordered list
2) prepare the props
3) specify a talking order
4) fuck everything because everyone does everything they want anyway
5) get a brutal amount of coffee*
funfact: my longest recent meeting was supposed to go for 30 minutes but we ended up talking about the position of a fucking infobox for 4 1/2 hours
What was your longest recent meeting?
*replace coffee with your favourite "fuck you, I am pretending to be awake" drink
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