Pointless Work Meetings 'Really a Form of Therapy' (bbc.com) 109
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Meetings at work should be seen as a form of "therapy" rather than about decision-making, say researchers. Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden say meetings provide an outlet for people at work to show off their status or to express frustration. Professor Patrik Hall says they are becoming increasingly frequent -- as more managerial and "strategy" jobs generate more meetings. But he says despite there being more meetings "few decisions are made." Prof Hall has investigated an apparent contradiction in how people can have a low opinion of work meetings, yet their numbers keep increasing.
The political scientist says the rise in meetings reflects changes in the workforce -- with fewer people doing and making things and an increase in those involved in "meetings-intense" roles such as strategists, advisers, consultants and managers. "People don't do concrete things any more," he says. Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not that clear." [...] Meetings can "arouse feelings of meaninglessness," he says. But he argues that is often missing their point. Once in a meeting -- particularly long ones -- their function can become "almost therapeutic." Prof Hall goes on to suggest booking rooms for shorter periods, as he says meetings will expand to fill whatever time is given to them. He also says that "equality" of participants is important, otherwise a "power struggle" will emerge when the meetings are dominated by different levels of status.
The political scientist says the rise in meetings reflects changes in the workforce -- with fewer people doing and making things and an increase in those involved in "meetings-intense" roles such as strategists, advisers, consultants and managers. "People don't do concrete things any more," he says. Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not that clear." [...] Meetings can "arouse feelings of meaninglessness," he says. But he argues that is often missing their point. Once in a meeting -- particularly long ones -- their function can become "almost therapeutic." Prof Hall goes on to suggest booking rooms for shorter periods, as he says meetings will expand to fill whatever time is given to them. He also says that "equality" of participants is important, otherwise a "power struggle" will emerge when the meetings are dominated by different levels of status.
A form of Therapy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Those meetings make me NEED therapy.
Actually, I like them. Once I figure out a meeting is not necessary to my job, I just don't go. Then while everybody is in the mind numbing meeting and it's quiet in the office, I can get some work done without the continual interruption. So, I guess, Yes, they are a form of therapy for me. You all go away and leave me alone for awhile.
Therapy to make the PHB feel like they know (Score:2)
Therapy to make the PHB feel like they know what is really going on.
Re: (Score:1)
https://dilbert.com/strip/2003... [dilbert.com]
Re:A form of Therapy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I got an app that counts up billable time by dollars instead of minutes. It made me appreciate meetings much more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So you're the one to blame for red being ground and black +12V.
Re: (Score:2)
Then while everybody is in the mind numbing meeting and it's quiet in the office, I can get some work done without the continual interruption.
Same here, but I just spend the time goofing off.
Am I proud of it? Well yeah, kinda. The truth is that I just don't give a shit anymore.
If you divide my pay by the actual hours I work, my hourly rate is really pretty fucking impressive.
Re: (Score:2)
"Yes, they are a form of therapy for me. You all go away and leave me alone for awhile. "
I've observed that this is the most productive side-effect of meetings. Senior techs can actually get some deep work done.
Nonsense (Score:3)
Meetings mostly have a purpose. To communicate or review progress, the monthly operations review for example. I would be fascinated to hear what all these pointless meetings are all about. I must have spent a lifetime overworking when I could have been in pointless meetings.
Re: (Score:3)
The importance of a meeting is inversely proportional to the number of participants.
Re: (Score:3)
You have obviously never been in a meeting where the only result of the meeting was to agree to another meeting. People often use meetings to grandstand or as a substitute for actual decision making.
There was one place I worked where the company was in trouble and we had daily meetings. Nothing was ever accomplished in these meetings because no one wanted to stick their neck out and say something unpopular. In the end it was just a waste of half an hour a day.
Re: (Score:3)
You have obviously never been in a meeting where the only result of the meeting was to agree to another meeting. People often use meetings to grandstand or as a substitute for actual decision making.
I've been in those. Whoever was running the meeting wasn't organized. There is always someone willing to hijack a meeting if you let them.
Meetings cause older workers to retire (Score:2)
I'd give you a funny mod if I ever got a mod point to give. I'm quite disappointed that this juicy topic hasn't produced a flood of humor.
I largely blame meetings for my own retirement. I think upper management was not happy with my visibly low opinion of meetings. I'd have been willing to work a few more years, but as I got older it just got too difficult for me to stay awake in meetings. Especially bad when I was one of the presenters. But most of the meetings simply had nothing to do with my own work. Pr
Re: (Score:2)
The best are the meetings that agree to another meeting after spending the entire meeting reviewing what the previous meeting was about.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
They need agendas to be followed and attention to time. Meeting presenters need to be prepared and ready to talk.
When there is a meeting that is discussing new ideas. I tend to do prep work and have my idea fleshed out as much as possible. This makes my idea as the topic of the meeting with the discussion centered around fixing any issues and complications to the design. Thus getting real work done.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is most meetings are poorly run.
They need agendas to be followed and attention to time.
Indeed. I've fortunately worked myself into a position where I can say no to a lot of meetings. The #1 reason I say no is because they lack an agenda and a competent moderator.
I almost always go to meetings run by IT, because they plan and run them like a sprint. The agenda is out a week before the meeting, the necessary participants are identified and listed on the agenda, the agenda has a rough time for each item, and there's a backlog of topics ordered by importance if we have extra time. The guy who runs them smiles the whole time but is a fascist dictator for the agenda. 1 minute over the estimated time and he's already adding the topic as the first item for the next meeting so we can move on. 2 minutes over and he's already at "Ok, we need to table this discussion at this time and move on."
Those meetings are so incredibly productive that I actually feel guilty missing them, even if I only have 5 minutes of my stuff on the agenda. At the worst I've got a great window into how my stuff fits into the rest of IT's workload, and where their pain points are. That's really helpful when it comes to advocating for what I need, and trying to creatively figure out how to get them the capacity to handle it. Due to these meetings I have solved other department's problems just to free up IT to work on mine.
I often refuse meetings with an outside vendor because they email a list of topics consisting of 3 bullet points the day before, random people seem to be in charge, and it's 90% shit that's either pointless ramble or could have been an email followed up with 10% "we need you to make a decision on the spot". My answer to that is that I'll get back to them, and I'll need more information. If you want a decision from me, send me that shit a week ago and I'll make sure the right people have been consulted and our position is clear.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is most meetings are poorly run. They need agendas to be followed and attention to time. Meeting presenters need to be prepared and ready to talk.
Amen to that. You have to stand down the people that want to impress everyone with their wonderfulness, or just have the attitude "If I can only talk forever, I'll change everyone's mind."
Re: (Score:2)
And many meetings could be answered by a mail exchange instead since some are called for already solved problems.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I have often called meetings myself because there was a need to share knowledge...
It's too bad that you don't realize that you're the problem, and you're the one calling shitty meetings for no reason.
If you're not documenting your knowledge, you're being irresponsible. You're denying anyone not at that meeting the knowledge. If you die, it dies with you. What you're doing is trying to stay important and relevant by hoarding knowledge, to the detriment of the business and those around you.
If that knowledge is important, document it. Put it in your CMS. Add those notes to the work plan, sp
Re: Nonsense (Score:2)
Regular status meeting are the absolute worst. They have zero value unless you are too illiterate for an email status update.
Re: (Score:1)
I agree, yet I can certainly conceive that there are companies where meetings consist of venting and status display. That does not strike me as "therapy", just straight up dysfunction.
On the other hand, I've seen people complain about too many meetings, even in a healty and productive work environment. In this particular case, these are senior technical people who now have legitimate elements of program management in their workload. But since they do not self-identify as program managers, they feel this is
Re: (Score:2)
Meetings mostly have a purpose. To communicate or review progress, the monthly operations review for example. I would be fascinated to hear what all these pointless meetings are all about. I must have spent a lifetime overworking when I could have been in pointless meetings.
Sounds like you've had a good middle manager / scrum master who realizes that at the end of the day the workers need to get work done. Half of Agile's process is really to say this sprint's scope and priorities are now frozen, whatever problem you have take it to the next time box unless it's a hair-on-fire emergency and a very minimal daily stand-up to keep managers with ADD that need constant updates happy. Right now per week I have two vertical meetings (smaller and broader group), two area meetings (bro
Re: (Score:2)
"Story points are really about as close to treating technical people are brick layers as we've gottent, and my god are some people really into that."
Yup -- along with all the benefits you get with Agile, DevOps, etc...you get a massive amount of data that crappy managers can use against you or the team as a whole. I work in a company that "does Agile" but mainly uses it to figure out how much of the work can be sent offshore and how much to charge the rent-a-coders from the big offshore outsourcing houses.
Re: Nonsense (Score:2)
The reason meetings are stressful to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're one of the people who do actual work, meetings often feel like your managers, anxious because they do and understand nothing, want to sit behind you and mash your fingers into a keyboard until work comes out. Paradoxically, the more meetings they have, the less work is output, the more anxious they feel, the more meetings they plan. Your entire day is consumed by meetings and the work only gets done when your managers go away. Which means meetings begin to always only consume my personal time.
The irony is, in many places of work, status is being divided between those who do work, and those who make sure those who work feel stressed and demeaned. Which means it's just about time for tech workers to collectively say no more...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel you. Status meetings are often to enforce the status of the boss, not the employee. People who do actual work often have very good meetings, while people who don't do any work, usually have really bad meetings. Mixing these two will give results from the between.
But you can also try to make the change, assuming you feel secure to do so. When you get invitation to meeting without agenda, decline it and say that you won't accept meetings that don't have an agenda with purpose of every participant clari
Re: (Score:2)
When I was in grade six I was elected chair of the class council. I loved calling council meetings. Made me feel important. Then I realized playing soccer at recess instead of sitting in a meeting was actually more fun, so I stopped.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, front-line employees are promoted as rapidly as they are visible. Meaning, a hard working employee that does the job everyday but is an unknown to the managers, won't be promoted as rapidly as a so-so employee that politics a bit. This isn't as it should be, but...
Maybe think of the meetings as a game of self promotion and cynicism.
Re: (Score:2)
One company I work with does meetings all day and then most employees have to put in 4-6 hrs of work after dinner to actually get their real work done. It's baffling to me. And it's not just the director level positions - it seems like anyone that's not entry level is doing this.
It's a real sign of mismanagement if you can't design a system in which your employees can get their work done in a reasonable time-frame. It's one thing to have the occasional crunch time - that is almost inevitable. It's a whole d
Re: (Score:2)
The core of the problem seems to be your (and every one else's) understanding of "the job". "The job" is to work for 40 hours per week. If this time is taken up in such a fashion that no "work" is completed, then you are misunderstanding what the "work" is. If 40 hours have elapsed, then the "work" is obviously complete.
Re: (Score:2)
"The job" is to work for 40 hours per week.
Have you ever worked at a job? I'm pretty serious here. Because you don't seem to understand how work works.
Re: (Score:2)
He's partly (accidentally) correct, though. As long as the employees work overtime at their own expense to actually be productive, the management doesn't see the consequences of their poor decisions.
Or he's only worked government jobs. There, your butt in the chair for the allotted time is more important than any actual work you produce during that time.
You've identified a need. Solutions? (Score:2)
> meetings often feel like your managers, anxious because they do and understand nothing, want to sit behind you and mash your fingers into a keyboard until work comes out. Paradoxically, the more meetings they have, the less work is output, the more anxious they feel, the more meetings they plan.
It seems like you've identified a need. They are anxious because they don't know what's going on (and their boss is probably asking them what's going on).
What solutions have worked well or might work well? A q
Re: (Score:2)
I suggest a web page with a progress bar with left-to-right moving animations so it always looks like things are happening.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, sometimes, in highly technical fields, they don't need to know unless something changes. Tasks have a a time line, and both the worker and the manager know the deadline. If the manager is unable to contribute constructively to meet the deadline, for whatever reason, than the manager should leave the worker alone. On the other hand , if the worker realises that changed circumstances no longer will allow the deadline to be met, it is upto them to inform the manager.
Calling a meeting for "how are things
Devs need to know what the boss needs to know (Score:2)
I wholeheartedly agree with the second part of what you said, and I see something missing in the first half.
> they don't need to know unless something changes
The thing is, when the client with the $6 million check asks the CIO "how are things going? Are we on track to submit it for certification in time for the election?", it's not okay to reply "you don't need to know". I had a project at work to replace a system that cost $500k/year on a five year contract. Meaning if the replacement wasn't ready in
Re: (Score:2)
The secret is that mechanization actually did reduce required labour to the point where people need to work very little. But our inability to feel useful without someone telling us what to do meant that
Re: (Score:2)
A technical manager benefits greatly by having a subordinate of greater technical skill but lesser seniority and wisdom, acting as a sort of NCO, distilling the upper-echelon objectives into actionable orders.
A good manager spends most of the day prot
Re: The reason meetings are stressful to me... (Score:2)
"it's just about time for tech workers to collectively say no more..."
Join the Software Workers Union. When we stop working, the Internet stops working.
Agreed - but it's something bigger (Score:4, Interesting)
We're not too far removed from a time when workers would turn up at the factory, or their mid-level corporate job, and physically do something for 8 hours, then go home. The factory worker would do his bit on the assembly line, and the paper-processor would take a basket of work, perform their process on it, and send it on to the next paper-processor.
Increasingly, office jobs have shifted to being all about strategy, planning, "digital transformation", etc. Most of the "work" part of work is automated away or sent offshore. I can definitely see why some people would want to use meetings to fill in the time...they just feel like they should be doing -something-. Not everyone is wired the same way, yet we've told a whole 2 generations of people that the only hope of a fulfilling life in the US and Europe is to go to college, get some generic management degree, and take their place in the corporate world. I can imagine people who have a desire to produce something are having a tough time justifying their life choices. My job is a mix of planning, design and R&D stuff for infrastructure, and I know I'm much happier working in our lab trying something out rather than doing Yet Another PowerPoint or having Yet Another Discussion.
Taking it to an extreme, think of all the management "consultants" and how satisfied they must be with their work. I can't imagine being 24 or 25, fresh out of business school, being dressed up in an identical Accenture suit and sent to give the exact same digital transformation presentation to a bunch of bored executives 50 weeks in a row. That would be a job that requires therapy, even if it pays well. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
You just described Parkinson's law [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
I can definitely see why some people would want to use meetings to fill in the time...they just feel like they should be doing -something-.
While I'm very anti-meeting, every business needs to have spare capacity that they can tap into when shit hits the fan. It's not the worst thing to have down-time, a backlog of "would be nice if.." things to work on, etc. While I disagree that filling that time with meetings is better, being able to cancel non-critical things in order to free up capacity to respond to an emergency is pretty damn important.
My preference to "fill in the time" is to work on the work itself. Document, automate, unit test, plan,
Parkinson's law (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I used to know what Parkinson's law was but I forgot.
Who commissioned the study ? (Score:2)
This sounds like a study that was commissioned by the management of some company to silence the protests of the employees over the pointless meetings.
If anyone protests, (s)he is shown the study and told to go away as the meetings are a favor done by management to the employees.
"Bullshit Jobs" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's explained in David Graeber's book, "Bullshit Jobs". The meetings are, indeed, therapy - but only for the big swingin' dicks.
Just like emperors of old, today's "executives" often have deep personal feelings of insecurity and feel better when surrounded by crowds of yes-employees. The only reason they don't have robed and turbaned lackeys waving ostrich feathers to cool their fevered brows is that they are also terrified of ridicule.
As a low-level employee who wasted many of the best hours of my life in such meetings, I can testify that it was most unwise for anyone but a big cheese to speak. If you were lucky, you would be completely ignored. Otherwise, whatever you said would be written down and added to your HR zapiska for later use against you.
No. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My time and life are finite. I'm not at work to play. I'm at work to get paid
Errr. Same here, but the fact is that as you get older, you start to care less about work and quotas and reports and all that bullshit. I'm nearing the end of my career and now I'm in full "I Don't Care" mode.
Yes, I've definitely hit that stage, and I show up at work primarily to screw off. I still do some work, but my heart isn't in it and I don't care. I'll push whatever pile of overbaked bullshit they want out the door, but I don't give a damn what happens to it or what anyone thinks of it.
and to advance my career so I can get paid more and/or survive the next round of layoffs.
That's where w
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I've definitely hit that stage, and I show up at work primarily to screw off.
You're probably still more productive than a lot of people around you, though.
Re: (Score:2)
You're probably still more productive than a lot of people around you, though.
Sadly, you're correct. The fact is that a fair number of my co-workers genuinely have no idea what they're doing. It's painful to watch. It's like they promoted some busboys to senior management project roles. I'm baffled as to how they ended up where they are.
When a low-level cog like me understands the project better than the SMEs or Business Analysts or Project Managers do, it's time to find a comfy chair and wait for the almost certain implosion of the project.
Don't get me wrong- I like them as people,
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe meetings are just to get people together (Score:2)
The meetings themselves may be useless but they force people to get their ass up and meet other people, get a different perspective on your work, take a step back from your screen, etc...
Nothing that coffee breaks don't achieve but meeting are considered "real work". So instead of scheduling mandatory coffee breaks, you schedule meetings.
Working at 100% is counter-productive. You need to clear your mind for time to time, meetings ensure that. Personally, I prefer the coffee machine and plain old slacking of
Re: (Score:2)
Then they should be optional. Not everyone finds socializing relaxing. There are people who find socializing is a bigger effort than just working. Maybe they would just like to play a game, or go for a run to clear their mind.
How to handle meetings... (Score:3)
as someone who does the work.
I've worked at a number of companies over the years, and found that there are organisations which know how to have meetings, and those who do not.
When you are in an organisation which does not know how to run a meeting... you're lucky to get an average of two hours a day of useful work done. Your days get gradually taken over by meetings with no clear purpose, attended by people who have been invited for no clear reason. Typically the person with the least information talks the most, and after wasting an hour (or two) no useful outcome is reached. This is where projects go to die. Any successful projects are usually due to someone getting sufficiently annoyed and skunk-works-ing the project, presenting it as a fait acompli. Alternatively, by someone on the project team sacrificing them selves to the meetings to shield the rest of their team.
When you're in an organisation which knows how to run meetings, then you get stuff done. Meetings are limited, and when they happen they have a clear purpose; typically either to share information, or to agree on a decision. There is this marvelous thing called an agenda, which gets circulated in advance to all attendees, along with what the desired outputs of the meeting are, and any preparation you need to do before attending. This lets people decide whether they need to attend or not. The person who has the information to share is the one to do the talking. The more important you are, the more of your time is spent listening to gather information to make the required decisions.
So, to fulfill the promise in this posts title:
That is what I've figured out so far. If you've got ideas on how to survive in meeting land, please post them; I'm always looking to learn.
Re: (Score:2)
Very well said. I'll expand on one point:
Make sure meetings have an Agenda, clearly listing the topics you need to discuss.
I nail people on this all of the time.
"Why did you decline my meeting invitation?"
"I didn't see anything on the agenda that impacted me or that I could provide any feedback on."
"I haven't sent the agenda yet!"
"If you don't have an agenda, why are you having a meeting? How could you possibly know who to invite if you don't know the topics?"
"I know the topics, that's why I invited people to the meeting!"
"Then why couldn't you write them down in an agenda, so we'd know
I miss my modem (Score:2)
And my pager.
Whenever a real time waster was coming up, I'd program a cron job to dial my pager with a factory telephone number and append a "911". Pager would go off ten minutes into the meeting. Boss would say, "What's up?"
"It's the shop. I guess there's some sort of crisis. I'd better get over there right away."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
tl;dr.
Can you send me a calendar invite?
Re: (Score:2)
tl;dr.
Can you send me a calendar invite?
*laughs*
*sobs*
It's sad because it's true.
Do it right! (Score:2)
Falsely implying freedom of action? (Score:2)
This seems to falsely imply, that people who schedule meetings do so because they want it. Rather than because they have to, for some stupid or sensible reason.
And the whole rest seems to be speculation build upon that invalid premise.
Also, facing something that gives you bad memories/feelings without some resilience factors to give you the comfort and strength to process it with a clear head, is not therapy, but retraumatization.
IMHO, the core cause is very very simple, but a popluar thing to ignore: Organ
I spend my life in meetings... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a little conflicted about this. Seems like the author is trying to justify time spent in meetings which serve little purpose at first glance. I would say that is besides the purpose, and justifies busy work. They do not have enough real work to do, so need the meetings to feel useful and not bored.
I have very little respect for this. Maybe that is because I pretty much spend all my day (more than 8 hours) in a continuous block of meetings, and every bit of time is precious. Now sure some of them are inefficient and could be better managed, and yes a 20 minute discussion often expands to fill the fully scheduled 30 min block of time (more and more however we are saying letâ(TM)s end early and get some time back). But I would say the totally useless meetings where I go âoewhy the hell am I hereâ are pretty infrequent, and even there I can just fire up my laptop and tune things out, keeping an ear open.
Some context: The title does not matter, but I am a manager-of-managers and do virtually no hands-on work anymore; I have about 50 people plus 10 to 15 contractors rolling up to me. It takes a lot of coordination and planning to keep our projects aligned together with interdependencies figured out and tracked, and with activities outside of my area but within my larger group, etc. A lot of time is spent in mundane but critical activities like budget planning, resource allocation, HR matters (people conflicts, etc), 1:1 check-ins with my directs (who themselves are line managers).
A lot of time is spent managing sideways and upwards, handling the politics and shielding my team from the corporate sh*t. Someone has to deal with it, otherwise it will flow down. Our (very large 70,000 employee multi-national) company has a very consensus driven culture (given the different countries, cultures and people who work here), and often coordination with a lot of stakeholders is required to get things moving, or on track.
I also make time to do (periodic but not frequent) skip level meetings and check in either 1:1 or in groups with people in my team. Could be a chat, discussion about career progression, or once a quarter a particular project team might present an update on their work to me, and do a deep dive allowing me to poke and prod, and learn. Not only does it keep me plugged in with my team, but they appreciate the opportunity to present, and get time with their bosses boss, or higher. I really enjoy these.
Also there is the regular hiring activity, particularly in a growth phase, and OMG does hiring take time. Interviewing, as well as job requisition negotiations, budgets, time with HR, etc. Sometimes with regular attrition, a team might end up reporting directly to me while I search for their new leader, and that increases my workload and meetings.
Often times new, large multi-million dollar initiatives, do not just get kicked off in one meeting, a bunch of meetings, or even half/full/multi-day workshops are required to figure things out, align different groups, plan, etc, and then get it really moving.
And then, while I do not normally micromanage and instead delegate to the team leads who report into me, there is sometimes a crisis, or a project is very behind schedule, or someone else in the company is pissed with one of my teams, or something, and for a few days or weeks I have to dive deeper and engage with a particular project team on a more intense and frequent level until the problem gets sorted out. That adds meetings.
For all these reasons, and more, I spend all my working day in meetings. My situation may be very different from the one presented, but I have no patience for truly useless or waste-of-time meetings. If I find myself in one, I try to excuse myself after some time. I do not entertain future meeting requests from those people. If I found out someone in my org was spending time in meetings like this, that would get focused on pretty quickly, and I would ask their line manager if the person was using their time effectively. We have a lot of work to do with a backlog of tasks, and do not have a lot of bandwidth that is just free.
Re:I spend my life in meetings... (Score:4, Funny)
I'll bet you are the guy that takes the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers.
Re: (Score:1)
So you don't do any actual work? I work on the level where I do actual work. My experience is that managers on higher levels have no idea about what is really going on. Sometimes they panic when there is no need and they invent fixes that actually just make problem worse and won't solve anything. E.g. currently the management is giving us two demands that conflict with each other. This happens, because managers think that they are the same thing, because they have no idea about how the project works.
If mana
Re: (Score:2)
In fairness, when an organization gets large enough, it becomes very hard to have someone who can deal with all the stuff parent pointed out _and_ have technical grasp on everything going on.
This is why you have hierarchies. A developer reports to a team lead, that reports to a functional area lead, that reports to a project lead, that reports to a program lead, that reports to a corporate overlord, and you can just keep going depending on how big you are. Each layer is (supposed) to keep reigns on the laye
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you just have shitty management.
Option C is that program level manager has a thought, asks the project leaders. If the idea is so bad that every developer would have said "that's dumb" chances are it ends right there. Maybe an hour of 5 peoples time is wasted. If not or they don't know, the project leaders ask their functional area leaders. Same thing. It is supposed to filter down until someone either knows enough to say its a good idea, or knows they don't know and asks the opinions of those b
Re: (Score:2)
This is exactly my manager.
He basically goes from one meeting to the next, sometimes literally spends an entire day in the same conference room.. but I know he's not just twiddling his thumbs. Shit is getting done in there. To be honest its the kind of stuff I am glad I get mostly shielded from so I can work on the cool technical stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
I too have spent my time from small startups and now in a huge corporation.
Are meetings on the same level of producing things as those who produce tangible outputs? Of course not.
But to suggest they don't have a purpose is ridiculous. Yes, they often power struggles and complexities and things go around and around.
To put it in context. In my organization, just interfacing between teams is a struggle. You might think we all work for the same company, so everything is good.
But it's not. When I was developer t
An absurd rationalization attempt.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think its normal and necessary for most big corps to have people who don't do any hands on work but instead spend all their time in meetings (ex: see Faizdog's post elsewhere in the thread).
I also think some people want to be that, but aren't... so rather than admit that they instead fill their time with useless meetings. That is, the "Coding? I don't do much technical stuff any more, I'm mostly a manager.. shit I gotta get to the daily standup roll-up review and alignment meeting, talk to you later!" cro
Re: (Score:2)
...I think its normal and necessary for most big corps to have people who don't do any hands on work but instead spend all their time in meetings ...
I do not disagree. Hence my use of the word "worthless" twice in my message.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, I think I replied to the wrong post, but darned if I can find the post I thought I was replying to..
Those who can DO those who can not Meet (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They're taught to manage their time that way. Managers love to glom onto the latest pop psych stuff, and for a long time the time management gurus kept talking about scheduling your day out in 15-25 minute (or less) increments, setting timers to hold yourself to that schedule, etc. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I am not sure how Slashdot handles links, but here is one that I think you might find interesting.
http://www.paulgraham.com/head... [paulgraham.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Graham has some good essays, that being one of them. You'd probably enjoy Himanen's "The Hacker Ethic" too.
I don't think it's limited to programmers. Newport talks about "craftsmen," which always makes me think of a wood carver or sculptor. Michelangelo said the sculpture is already in the marble, the sculptor just has to see it and remove the extra material. Artists in general, from writers to painters, are famous for locking themselves away to create.
I actually feel sorry for the many people who don't get
Pointless meetings are a disease, not a cure (Score:2)
And there is one kind of meetings worse than those without decisions: I have been witness to lots of meetings where any attempt by an attendee to ask for some decision to be made or at least some point to be discussed in earnest gets deflected by clueless meeting moths who do not want to get into any specific topic, but complain whenever one is brought up that "
Therapy? (Score:2)
More like Purgatory for me.
I like meetings. (Score:1)
Bullshit (Score:1)
He also says that "equality" of participants is important, otherwise a "power struggle" will emerge when the meetings are dominated by different levels of status.
I have news for this "researcher": Business has a heirarchy. This kind of idiocy is becoming prevalent around the Western world with predictable results. I'm looking at you Malmo. How are those bombs going?
Meetings = Therapy (Score:1)
Millennial Approach to Changing Company Structures (Score:2)
When I RFTA, the author says that increased meetings are due to changing company structures with fewer makers are more PHBs (for lack of a better term) then aren't companies, almost by definition, becoming less efficient with more overhead?
This seems to be a real millennial approach to something that should be seen as a problem - instead it seems to be something to be celebrated and give people more time to feel good about themselves.
Rather than doing real work.
\o/ (Score:1)
Two is the best meeting size. A large enough number to provide external input but small enough such that posturing to the group is meaningless.
Meetings are result of Peter Principle (Score:2)
As people handle larger projects or groups, they inevitably encounter a level where they can't quite manage it anymore, or can't do a good job. The result is often an _explosion_ of meetings for that person and those who deal with them. The meetings also centralize communications to the person who gets to attend all the relevant meetings.
I'll admit that one of my favorite techniques to battle this is to take notes, and get the notes into the project plans or documentation, _with the names of the person who
'txn' cigarettes (Score:2)
I wish I could moderate the summary as insightful (Score:2)
I call bullshit (Score:1)
Meetings (Score:2)
Meetings: "The Sensible Alternative To Work"
Idealism 101 (Score:1)
Meetings are like Agile: if organized and manage well, they are helpful, but that rarely happens in practice.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen agile done well, and it's glorious.
I'm a lot less cynical about it these days. There was definitely a time where it was almost universally done poorly and a lot of different things were being tried (many of which turned out to be shitty). These days it feels like the industry has distilled the huge pile of ideas into a smaller subset of what actually seems to work and most companies seem to follow the same "generally works" approach (scrum, etc) using one of several popular toolstacks.
No. (Score:2)
As a scientist somewhere in the middle heirarchy of academia, I strongly disagree with Prof. Hall. I don't know where he is drawing these conclusions from or the nature of his sample (no technical publication is mentioned in TFA).
My experience is thus, at least in Science. People usually know exactly what they are supposed to do locally, say over the next week. It is possible that they lack an overarching vision of their projects, but they certainly know their daily and weekly agenda. A meeting about things
Effective Meetings: (Score:3)
1. Have a specific purpose and are planned in advance.
2. Are carefully managed to follow the plan.
3. Have as few active participants as possible.
4. Are Short and Time boxed when open discussion is allowed.
All they proved is... (Score:2)
All they proved is that Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden are ignorant and have never worked at a real company in their lives.
Kind of (Score:2)
Therapy for *some* people (Score:2)
There are some people who might need therapy and dominate meetings and make them hell for people who actually want to do work. The latter end up needing therapy.
As long as there is free food involved (Score:2)
...I'm good with it!