Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings

Agreement from me, although I'd avoid double booking. Double booking means that other people are expecting you to attend, they may wait to see if more people join, or need to reschedule if the right audience isn't able to make it. I think it's best to pro-actively reject meetings versus only showing up for one.

As engineer, I just continue working on other tasks in every single meeting. For me that multitasking works, and I don't have meeting fatigue at all. Then again, I'm not the main decision maker most of the time.

If you are in a leadership position this is kind of a nightmare. If you are just an IC you're bolder than I. tbh my morning standup could be reduced to a sentence.

As a manager, I encourage my team to just say "no" where ever possible. I also always push to halve the times of meetings I'm in (and typically that works well).

- We have 10 min standup every day

- We have 30 min sprint planning every week

- We have 30 min retro every week

Beyond that we will talk as necessary between people. In reality pushing back is pretty effective at determining if a meeting is important. If they don't move it for you, you didn't need to be there.

To add to that, if you default to the position that any meeting is pointless, you'll find yourself continually frustrated and likely wrong at times. Talk to your manager about time management and let them know where you think your time is best served. They may agree and give you the cover you need to duck out, they might revamp some meetings to be more effective, or they may just give you the context you need to have the meeting become more valuable to you personally.

It can also be useful to, perhaps, engage in either a passive or active interrogation of what the value and purpose of a meeting is in the eyes of others.

I agree there are some useless meetings. I would, however, classify more meetings as unproductive but important. That represents a different problem and necesitates a different solution but seems to beguile engineers. Does an unproductive meeting need to be cancelled or fixed?

Finally, I have experienced meetings where one person who believes the meeting is useless and just runs it off the rails. The meetings can BECOME useless because of that person's behavior. Others may see it as valuable for alignment, clarification, ideation, many other reasons even if you don't. In my experience, the people who are willing to act on a belief a meeting is useless more frequently misunderstand what the goal of a particular meeting is, misunderstand the role of meetings in engineering/technical work, or just are generally premaddona assholes.

Declaring a meeting useless for everyone is rarely a productive solution. The idea that technical work is primarily and individualized activity is about as outdated as waterfall project management.

You can constructively engage in a conversation of 'what is the purpose of this meeting in the short and in the long term' without talking about the cost. If we reduce everything to that metric of observability then coders should be paid in lines of code written not thinking done.

I think sometimes people may forget that in a lot of cases a person may be put on a meeting invite as a courtesy to inform them a topic is being discussed. This is a form non-repudiation such that the person being invited cant complain later they were left out of any decision making.

Agreed. I posted this exact thing in a comment the other day and it got downvoted. If you get an invitation to a party, you don't just automatically accept, you would (or should) question whether you will enjoy this party. A meeting should be the same, except it's not about enjoyment but about worth. What are you expected to contribute to the meeting? What will you gain by attending? If this isn't clear, ask for clarification. If it's still not clear, decline the invitation.

> I'm double-booked for meetings all day, so I'm constantly making judgment calls about which one (or neither) is more important. It's not a big deal, and you don't need an app for it.

It seems like your job is more meeting-centric than the average engineering job. I'd hate to juggle meetings daily instead of working on the same problem for hours uninterrupted.

This doesn’t really work when power dynamics are in play. If you’re a junior or just have less experience than the person calling the meeting I can guarantee it’s causing some type of negative view of you by someone. You do that enough times and you’ll find yourself on a PIP, and eventually on the job market.

This is why meetings in general are net negative. There’s little need for scheduled meetings. Just do one stand up per week, ad hoc calls when needed, but mostly just let people work.

> We're all grown-ups at work

I want to work where you work.

Here's the one simple trick they don't want you to know about:

email the organizer, making sure to CC everyone, asking for the meeting's agenda.

i've seen similar techniques used before where meeting cost has been calculated. it's kinda geek-cool, but it's also pretty passive aggressive, a little petty (not only are you wrong for calling the meeting, but hey, everyone look how wasteful it is) and dare i say, toxic.

sometimes it can be hard to break out of routines and have frank conversations, and it's certainly easier to complain behind closed doors, ignore or otherwise be passive aggressive... but all that does is create a toxic environment where fear, speculation and rumor rule the day. i think the correct answer is to pull the organizer aside and provide direct feedback on the utility of the meeting... 9/10 times, they will listen and respond in a positive manner.

As someone who has done this, I can tell that it's not easy to justify. In my previous company, there were two teams, one in India and the other in US, working on a project. Each team had a scrum master and a daily morning scrum call. The India team was expected to attend the US team's scrum call as well. This made no sense to me as I already provided updates in the Indian scrum call. So I made it clear that we should either cancel the Indian scrum call or we should not attend the US one. But I was a relatively junior developer and senior engineers were complying despite disagreeing with the arrangement. So, the US scrum master escalated it as far as he could take it. I did not back down and defended my position with senior management as well. It was a fun filled week though. Every day the US scrum master would think of a new silly reason to escalate my absense and I would have to counter it. Eventually, the practice of attending both scrum calls was dropped.

This seems like the last place that that view would be considered controversial.

> if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go.

Or, even better, normalize showing up to a meeting, and if you feel like it is useless/irrelevant to you after 10 minutes, just stand up and leave. You never know ahead of time if the meeting would be useless for you or not (ok, in a lot of cases you do, but more often than not it isn't super-decisive). But after 10 minutes, it becomes a bit more obvious whether you would benefit from staying or not.

Saw a senior engineer from our sister team do it once, then he explained his logic to me later regarding this. At first i was afraid, thinking "ok, he is a senior engineer, he can do whatever without negative consequences, and I don't think I can afford to do it as an entry level engineer [at the time]".

One day I tried it, and never looked back. No one had any issues with it, and it had made me so much more productive. Then a new manager for my team came along, saw me do it once, and asked me about it, like "why did you do this". I explained to him the exact same reasoning as for why I was doing it. He ended up having zero issues with it after my explanation either, and had even mentioned this approach to other people on the team who were struggling with meeting overload as a recommended approach.

> This always seems to be such a controversial view here, but if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go. We're all grown-ups at work, and are ultimately responsible for our own productivity.

I tried doing this. Was told I need to attend more meetings. So I asked how many? They said, "it depends". "It depends on what?" "On how often we want to meet."

So whatever the hell that means. I think I need to meet every week for some reason. Just to prove 'something'

Thankfully, technology may help us to find a middle ground. For one thing, it's possible to work on one computer while attending a meeting on another. My home office is two computers for this reason. This is useful for those "status update" meetings where each of 12 people gets 5 minutes to update everybody on their tasks.

You can also accept a meeting invite with the proviso that you will participate if you are actually needed.

>Voice a concern if you think a meeting isn't necessary

Correct, I simple ask if I can be excused from the meeting.

Which I find myself doing occasionally, since a lot of people do not bother looking at anyones busy/ free calender and I end up being quadriple booked

Yeah, it’s not a constructive approach. I would not want to work with anyone who pulls stunts like this, no matter how “clever” they are.

Agreed. Passive aggressive approaches like this app should be left to fantasy.

If you have a problem, learn to handle it like a professional adult. Talk it out. Propose alternatives. If you find yourself in a 127-person Zoom call that isn’t relevant to you, just leave and send a note to the meeting organizer that you’re not available for such meetings and ask them to please let you know if anything comes up that is specific to you.

Making a scene by holding up an app and being passive aggressive about the point you’re trying to make is not a productive way to communicate. It likely won’t have the intended effect, either.

> I don't really mind how I spend my working hours.

Must be nice to not have hard deadlines while on salary.

I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but IMO, if you are at work just clocking your 8h, you should consider switching.

Also, if you think you are attending too many useless meetings, it’s your responsibility to let them (or at least your direct report) know. They might not be aware that you aren’t needed.

I think we should make a distinction here.

Client, prospect and customer meetings are absolutely necessary and you should prioritize those no matter what.

Internal time wasting meetings are the pinnacle of the art of not working and should be avoided at all costs.

As someone who worked as a feeelancer and on film sets, as well as in teams: communication is key. But that doesn't mean this communication has to happen in a meeting.

I am not a fan of meetings, but I like a weekly meeting for a project or our department. What I don't like is pointless meetings where things are repeated that are written more concisely in the gitlab issues or in an email everybody should have read.

The point of meetings is to bring all the relevant people onto the same information level and discuss potential issues, however a lot of the more detailed stuff should be consumed beforehand individually.

Or one where they show the cost of sleeping, cuddling on the couch, holding your newborn, getting vaccinated, attending church etc.

Fire those people.

Our CEO requires every meeting to have an agenda sent out the day before which goes over the background for the meeting, any metrics/dashboards everyone should be familiar with, and what should be discussed in the meeting.

If the person who schedules the meeting does this, it opens up a conversation where you can say "I read what you sent out - everything looks good and I don't think I'm needed for this meeting".

I like all hands as they give you a great idea of what is going on at the company, how you fit in and you get to ask questions

How popular is it? Considering working there.

The only thing that really gets to me is when the person leading the meeting shows up 20 minutes late as a show of their power.

Ten people losing twenty minutes sitting there waiting.

This is an awesome feature request. Thank you!

a few of our team meetings people do a small poll with asking questions like this

I call it RDD: Rage Driven Development.

Seriously. Its not like alternatively I can code for 8 straight hours. I treat meetings like breaks for the most part.

Not to mention, depending on the size of the company / org, all hands meetings can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.

I agree, but it's also expensive if you have those same 5+ engineers working on the wrong thing all week. Finding the right balance is hard.

What this clock does not compute, is how much money you leave on the table by reducing your meeting count/time and have your engineers/workers dive straight into the problem without talking enough to each other or with the stakeholders beforehand.

Sometimes it leads the death of many man-month projects, or worse.

That's not the point of this. You would use this for something like poor management (quite common) that had "stand-up"s on Zoom every day or couple of days that were dragging out and had too many participants listening to irrelevant updates.

I don't see this as a technical solution to a social problem. I see this as a technical tool to help with a social solution to a social problem. Specifically, finding a way to communicate the opportunity cost of a meeting, which is a social solution to the social problem, because I don't need this app to do it, but it could help.

You're not wrong, but middle management purposefully ignores cost of time so that they can provide a sense of false value to companies by running meetings. While I understand that meetings do offer a sort of corporate therapy for many of these managers, the company should be aware of the true cost of their work.

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Thinking the net cost of a meeting is just a sum of hourly wages is like complaining the iPhone costs 799 when the parts are 299.

This is HN, what do expect? :)

By design, it is a term of derision.

Not in their interests to do so.