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Comment by mypastself | Hacker News Reader

If I’m understanding correctly, the playing field is “levelled” in favor of people who tend to be late for meetings because of poor time management.

Additionally, “masculine hegemons” can no longer use their arm-waving skills to win arguments.

Hard-hitting journalism from The Guardian, as usual.

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I don't think you understand correctly.

You are not understanding correctly, no - you have presented a rather colourful and uncharitable interpretation of the totally reasonable point being made.

I’m not a woman so the point isn’t quite the same, but I can absolutely observe the effect of online meetings generally reducing the temptation of certain people to dominate the conversation.

Men moving their arms. Sounds like some hard hitting sexism to me.

No one said it was "hard hitting sexism" whatever that is.

If we were having this conversation in real life, I bet I would change your mind if I employed my appendages with sufficient vigor.

I concede I was being hyperbolic and uncharitable. I don’t think the article deserves much better, though.

> If I’m understanding correctly, the playing field is “levelled” in favor of people who tend to be late for meetings because of poor time management.

Could one assume that people who prefer meetings (online or in person) over an online text conversation or email thread have poor written communication and reading comprehension skills?

Certainly. But that’s not the argument the article is making.

I don't think one can assume that. Text chat and email work very well among people who share a technical/domain vocabulary and a mental model of the system/problem. But when that premise is not present, actual meetings are much more productive.

A look behind the curtain is often revealing. Ill never forget that Huffington Post editor team photo: https://twitter.com/lheron/status/733758898855940098?s=20

They really need to work on their gender diversity.

Yeah, online meetings require different skills to be effective communicators than in real life, so different people in groups may be more effective or visible in their communication.

I don’t do well IRL, but online I can shine.

I'm not sure I see where the article talks about poor time management?

Thats a euphemism for not donating every waking hour to work and for example bringing your kids to school.

That was my admittedly uncharitable interpretation of the article subject’s preference for online meetings. They reported missing a lot of in-person meetings because of parental responsibilities, and the article suggests they are therefore unfairly disadvantaged.

If anything, it seems to me like they have a fairly reasonable employer and working environment.

Online makes it waay easier to manage parental responsibilities vs meetings. Mostly because in person variant os comparably absurdly wasteful. It don't block you only during meeting, but both before and after.

Online also makes meetings more effective, people are less likely to go forever and waste everybody time. And, when they go forever, you use their empty blabbing for some chores.

So, yeah, you loose disadvantage at no cost to actual work effectivity.

Oh, I was in no way defending in-person meetings. I do take issue with the article’s implication that its subject’s perpetual tardiness (presumably tolerated by their employer and co-workers) is the result of discriminatory workplace environment.

The article’s lead in story is about time constraints affecting an attendee. I think it’s condescending to refer to that as poor time management though.

A better spin from OP would have been

“… in favor of people whose contributions to society complicate their ability to attend the round the clock marathon of back to back meetings that all seem to suspiciously last for an about hour versus those who have few skills and positive contributions to make to the world at large and worked into a system where the only valuable thing they have to offer is to endlessly discuss things.”

I do agree with OP’s sentiment that the article was pretty shallow and tropish. Not much new or insightful. Almost like a group of editors had a meeting and asked “what should we run today?” And an hourish later, we got this.

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