We secretly love meetings (2010)
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Holy cow! Are people really sharing personal or political topics in work meetings?! I’ve worked with people for more than a decade whom I meet with nearly every day in stand ups and other meetings and I know nothing about their political, religious, personal beliefs and life. I would never share that kind of stuff in a business setting. It is completely inappropriate.
Separately, we have a company rule of no meeting Fridays. By far and away this is my favorite day of the week.
Within reason I’d even expect to. Even the Finns I work with mention this and that in passing.
Don't be that annoying activist bothering your coworkers and making people feel uncomfortable with incoherent political rants.
-- edit @ cutemonster --
> GP mentions how to create a more trusting and closely bonded team
Yes my counter is that you aren't bonding, you're most likely isolating others.
You can rarely change someone's core religious or political beliefs, especially with the weak arguments of today. The workplace is not a place to try to do so.
Talk politics with your friends, not with your coworkers, they are too nice to say they don't want to hear it.
-- edit @ blowski --
> Quite a lot of overgeneralisation there
I'm not generalizing, I'm saying if you're amongst friends and know they're okay with talking politics go ahead.
If you're amongst coworkers and don't know then shut your mouth so we can all work in peace.
> In some cultures your comment woud be 100% true, but in others, your refusal to discuss such topics would look aloof.
Oh, which cultures? That's kind of my point though, don't force people to talk politics. They shouldn't have to worry about their refusal to discuss a topic or looking "aloof".
and you reply "annoying activist bothering your coworkers"?
Choose to work in a culture you like, rather than trying to impose a culture you like on one you don't.
It really isn’t that hard.
Go ahead, but don't be surprised if you cause rifts. Glassdoor is a click away and anonymous, no need to bring money into personal conversations and compare dick sizes.
-- edit @rexpop --
> I am not sure "good vibes" is a healthy super-ordinate goal among adults.
You don't think good vibes is a healthy goal?
I would strive for good vibes in the workplace. Your coworkers would appreciate a peaceful work environment.
Your political or religious debate is not that important, wait for the bar with your friends.
Ok, elaborate why not
*by money, i mean things you bought with your money or what you're doing with your money. salaries, depending on who you're around, was also easy conversation.
Imagine having grown up in poverty, having self-taught and bootstrapped your way into your white-collar job to have a better life than your parents; and then your coworker turns out to be a trust-fund baby who's doing this for fun. Things can get awkward quickly.
If the idea that this could be a problem has never even occurred to you, that's probably because you've been working for companies that have tightly constrained the socioeconomic class range of their hires so that everyone is around the same. This is most of what HR departments mean by "culture fit."
Now, I might attribute some of their attitudes to how they grew up, but it wouldn't affect my ability to deal with them on a day to day basis.
In my experience, discussing sensitive topics at work tends to bring out the people with the loudest and least nuanced opinions, and leaves everyone else feeling uncomfortable.
There's a constant drumbeat of forced intimacy and incessant prying into your personal life. "What did you do this weekend?" "Tell two truths and a lie!" "What'd you think of the $SPORT game?" "Where are you going for vacation?" "Are you thinking about moving, getting married, having kids?" "Don't forget to vote!" "Don't forget to donate!"
Combine that with the endless oversharing that's used as a mock-facade for true psychological safety, and the net result is very little time spent on actual work. I know way too much about which engineers are on which antidepressants, who's having weddings/babies/whatever, how they're voting, and what race/gender/etc they identify with... but simple conversations about schema-design or even code-review still veer into awkward, passive-aggressive intensity within a matter of minutes.
It's honestly absolutely exhausting. I do my best to duck out for the few minutes (or 20 minutes) of the meeting that gets frittered away on it. But it's inescapable, sooner or later. I've learned to have some bland nonsense ready to answer this sort of thing.
> "Don't forget to donate!"
Sure, I get what you're saying about those.
And this one is prying in just about any context, work or not:
> "Are you thinking about getting married, having kids?"
But these?
> "What did you do this weekend?"
> "What'd you think of the $SPORT game?"
> "Where are you going for vacation?"
> "Don't forget to vote!"
Those are just normal ways of making conversation! 99% of the time if someone's asking you this, they're not trying to get inside your brain and invade your privacy... they're just trying to talk to you. Honest question: do you prefer to have zero social interaction with your coworkers?
Edit: Also, it's bonkers to me that you think that this "has become" a thing. People have been making idle conversation at work since the dawn of civilization.
First off: you're right about there being a spectrum here, and some things do fall under the banner of plain ol' smalltalk.
I think what's gotten to me is how relentless it is lately. Back in the olden days, before the pandemic, whether you were meeting in a large group or small, remotely or in-person, everyone would just show up to the meeting and get on with it. The socializing would then happen afterward in small, occasional, in-person settings. You'd go for lunch or coffee or drinks or dinner, and you'd end up talking to the 1 or 3 people next to you and having an actual conversation.
Nowadays, it feels like the socializing is much more broad and shallow. And it's constant. It feels like nearly every meeting starts with several minutes of this sort of desperate veneer of friendliness. You have to constantly be upbeat and chipper and "on" as you click your way from one virtual meeting room to another, repeating the same bland story about your weekend several times a day.
TL;DR: You're right it's always been a thing, but I do think something has shifted in our post-pandemic world. Now, it feels much more like an ever-present demand for constant emotional labor, rather than actual social interaction.
Those questions help orient everyone to the call. It's very much like when I call a friend and don't launch into what I need right after their 'Hello', I first ask them how they are doing. This lets them get their headspace into our conversation.
In person meetings have lots of physical clues to orient people so there's less chit chat needed. Remote though is more challenging. Everyone who just signed on was moving in different directions and speeds, and a couple minutes of 'hey, how's it going' gets people synced for the ensuing conversation.
And I say this as someone who prefers to do everything over Slack and avoid all meetings.
Edit - I’ve also seen a few engineers you might describe as socially awkward/anxious come out of their shells in such environments. I’ve found introverts who wouldn’t usually contribute much to meetings contribute far more once they feel the team likes them personally.
I agree that it is, by the explicit standards of corporate management, "completely inappropriate," but I think in the interest of a stable society, this is a standard we're obligated to violate.
in a democratic society that's to be expected and a good thing, I'm not exactly sure why anyone would have a discussion if they already share their views.
Here in Germany politics is generally present in workplaces and nobody finds that odd because it's not like the place where you spend half of your day ought to be a civil society free zone. Covid workplace mandates and rules were highly contentious, where else is a better place to discuss them than at work, where they matter?
Unlike religion or race, there are no legal protections for political views. If you disagree with your boss, you're risking yourself. If you agree with your boss, you might be alienating a future boss. There's no winning.
It's funny, because if were is a ban on sharing unshared views, we could never hold any views at all!
With what time? Or, rather, with what brain/blood glucose? Working 40 hour weeks leaves me with limited faculties during my comparatively brief evenings.
If you're struggling, perhaps it is a sign of chronic fatigue or poor sleep.
(Maybe it's also a bit that I have ADHD, and know that a 15-minute conversation about non-work subjects, that I actually focus on rather than practicing "active listening" toward, would flush 100% of my built-up mental context for what I was doing down the toilet, and so blow an hours-plus hole in my productivity for the day.)
I talk to my coworkers about non-work subjects if we head out for drinks. But at work, I work. Or at most talk about "light subjects" that can fit on top of my mental "stack" without having to pop anything.
Bottle that shit up for 8hrs, do you really need to talk about yourself during all waking hours or can't find other people (even coworkers) to talk to off work?
I am not talking about specific political opinions mind you. This has happened to me in both conservative and very liberal leaning environments. On the former I would have to put so much effort into not saying something about very crude sexual,racial,political,etc... jokes and comments (like managers talking about all the fked up ways they will get their guy trump to win,etc... or else) or for the latter people going on and on about their atheism (I am far from one) explicit sexual stuff, illegal drug use (and they weren't just talking, they were trading and using as well, me knowing this and not speaking up to the law/hr made me culpable just by listening) and this is all in tech don't get me started on other environments. I don't say anything which helps me keep my job miserably and helps my career but also many smart people I wanted to get close to, I couldn't and they would feel alienated because I won't engage with them except I do when it is about stuff I am passionate about: the work!! But they only mention work in passing outside of official channels, I mean I can talk about coding,foss, security 16 hours a day! Haha. But it was terrible if you are not very political, can't just switch jobs and just want to work on stuff you are passionate about and go home. I had to bottle shit up in place of people like you so please be considerate.
I have strong views on just about anything and honestly I don't have much to give a shit about outside of work and I think it is the opposite extreme end of "you should only hire people with specific appearance,politics, religion,etc..." when you say "hire anyone despite their politics, religion,race,sex,etc... and let them all talk about their opposing views" you are either activly discriminating against workes in both illegal and immoral grounds or you work in a very toxic and harmful environment where only the few that dominate/lead/manage dictate a heavily biased environment that makes only them comfortable are happy.
Do you not see the wisdom in "don't shit where you eat"? 8 hours to work, 8 hours to pursue personal life and 8 hours to rest. That's what most adults get, you should be able to focus on work during work and personal stuff during personal time plus weekend, you get 72hrs/wk for personal stuff and only 40 typically for work. Especially wfh workers have no excuse, watch cnn or fox with someone when you are not on a zoom call lol or get on reddit or your favorite social medial and vent off. Anywhere but work!
> 8 hours to work, 8 hours to pursue personal life and 8 hours to rest
The 8 hours of personal time are usually spent supporting and enabling the 8 hours of work time. Very little of it is usable for real personal development.
This is why people say shutting down at work is difficult, when most of your real life is work.
I don’t have to pretend for the last 4-6 hours or so, like in many other countries, but 8 actual hours of unhinged freedom before bedtime? Nah.
That was my point exactly, chores and sustenance eat up a lot of the 8hrs of “personal” time.
The key assholery you don't seem to get is that I am not a willing participantin that discussion. You are doing it in violation of my consent. I don't even care if it means you never get to express your views or whatever, talk to the mirror at home I don't care. Or see a therapist about your constant need for external validation or to feel heard by strangers. Don't make it other people's problems. You wouldn't like it if you needed a job and everyone is talking about political shit that is horrible just to listen to but speaking up might cost you a job would you?
How is this shit even legal? Or allowed by HR people???
And for good reason. This is a lesson the younger generation is going to have to learn.
Initially my post was getting upvotes but now it's at 0.
Let ke clarify a bit more, the only reason I didn't speak up and put an end to this at past jobs was because I was being essentially held hostage by these people but if ever I can I will do everything I can to to put an end to this.
Right now I work at a large multinational (not primarily US based) we have people from all over and not even once have I heard politics or religion mentioned even in passing. I have turned down higher paying jobs to stay here. But in my entire adult life working in the US this was the one thing that always made any job unbearably miserable. It's like trying to have a meal in a nasty public toilet.
Oh and people who have time to post on HN and social media will tell you they don't have time outside of work to talk about these things.
Also, it seems possible to me that the author might have been referring to company politics.
Sure! We're a fully remote company and as a result the beginning of every video call is people gossiping about their kids, pets, the weather, and interesting stuff happening in their towns.
Everything you listed there is pretty tame stuff, politics and religion are not discussed in professional settings specifically because it can cause problems that affect people's abilities to work together.
I've found that all of the major new opportunities for my team have come suddenly and involved collaboration with people that I've spent time with even though I wasn't working very actively with them. Suddenly a problem shows up and one of these other people says "hey, I think UncleMeat's team is well suited to help with this" and boom we are off to the races. Those monthly meetings that were half work and half shooting the shit were critical network-building opportunities that eventually paid off.
There simply is not. So we get sent "completely ridiculous" requests or change in design, but what s the alternative ? Only do the right thing and disappear in uselessness ?
If they hate them that much they must be useful else they wouldn't attend the meeting.
Doing this sort of manipulation over email or slack is way more difficult.
So you can easily get a lot of meetings on your calendar and the inertia is not to burst the bubble of other folks status/whatever by questioning the need for their meeting.
Moreover the people who have the most authority to reduce meetings - managers - don’t really directly feel the pain as they’re already in a bunch of meetings. Losing this one meeting would just mean a time slot with another meeting. It’s the heads-down ICs who experiences the downside from a random meeting that interrupts their flow. And sadly they have the least amount of formal authority to challenge the number of meetings.
One of these articles pops up every now and then talking about all these supposed social benefits of meetings, but that fundamentally has not been my experience with meetings.
As many people have pointed out, a good many meetings could simply be replaced by a decent email. In my experience, the only people who seem to "get" something more than the pure nominal reasons that the meetings were called for are managers who really like talking about themselves.
I worked for a distributed team for a large company [1] in the past, where about 10% of the team was in NYC (where I was located), about 70% of the team was in California, and the remainder were in Singapore. The team leader had the astonishingly brilliant idea to hold meetings at 8:30pm NYC time, because that was the time that "worked best for everyone".
This was bad, but one could argue it was necessary if the meetings were necessary. However, this genius thought it would be a good idea to routinely spend the first fifteen minutes blathering on about his opinions on various tech non-work-related things, or his kids, or some other such nonsense in most other meetings, and the rest of the meeting could be, you guessed it, summarized in an email.
You know what I would "love" a lot more than having intimate conversations with my coworkers? Spending time with my wife, or my friends, or doing nearly anything else.
[1] No doubt that you can find out which large company I'm talking about given my work history, but I politely ask that you don't post it here directly.
"Prefer small meetings over large meetings and prefer one-on-one meetings most of all."
Large meetings will inevitably include some people who don't need to be there, and who are therefore bored and disengaged.
By contrast, if you have meeting of just two people, both people are automatically essential to the meeting -- automatic because the meeting would not happen unless one of those people needed to say or ask something of the other person.
I've had to explicitly set up a recurring weekly meeting 4 weeks in advance to meet a higher-up at least once per week, because otherwise finding 30 minutes of their free time would take ~3 weeks.
I can't imagine my manager would find it very amusing if I had to tell them that I had to delay a bugfix or feature by 3 weeks because I did not schedule my meetings with enough foresight.
(I want to emphasize that I'm talking about this higher-up following a Manager's schedule, not a Maker's schedule [0]. At this point in my career, I was the [suffering] adapter between the two.)
I hate meetings.
Although I have admit it depends on the industry and position a lot. When working as a programmer, I see meetings as an obstacle to getting my work done, period. If you really want something from me, write to me, and when I finish what I'm doing, I'll get back to you.
However, when I'm working in consulting and other fields, meetings are the key. Sometimes it doesn't even matter what you talk about. Sometimes you can spend a lot of time not talking about business at all. Having a lunch together is also good. Having established this kind of relationship makes it easier to do business later. Everything run more smoothly.
I would not mind it so much except it literally takes 15 minutes of them unloading their jumbled stream of consciousness before they get to the point.
I can see a 3-paragraph email easily summarizing meetings but it’s not like people knew the summary going in or else they wouldn’t have had the meeting.
The problem is that you most likely wouldn't read that 3 paragraph email and answer it in timely fashion. So meetings it is.
Also the fact that all those meetings could have been a single email implies that you had no input or raised any objection. That makes me wonder why people are still inviting you to meetings.
13 years ago I started working from home and 11 years ago started my own business. We rarely have meetings or phone calls. We discuss and communicate async via chat and email.
We try to get together for face-to-face time yearly for relationship-sake.
If a difficult topic came up and they were asked for their opinion on something, they would conveniently have to drop for another meeting.
I suspect corporate America is riddled with such people and everyone here has met at least one. If you think you haven't, you're probably not paying close enough attention.
These people definitely secretly love meetings.
This was certainly a fairly different approach.
1. Forming relationships with your colleagues becomes rather tricky. You don't really get to know how your colleagues work/think over text based communication.
2. Work does feel a bit more lonely.
3. I missed talking through problems. Writing about stuff is a different, more filtered way of processing information. I like to do both as part of my problem solving toolkit.
4. It's so efficient - you have all this time to actually do whatever you want...
I've found the opposite: You don't really know how your colleagues work/think until you read something they commit to paper.
> Work does feel a bit more lonely.
Haven't felt that, but it depends on the person I think.
> I missed talking through problems. Writing about stuff is a different, more filtered way of processing information. I like to do both as part of my problem solving toolkit.
I prefer thinking through problems, and bouncing carefully crafted questions at times over email or slack. Maybe over zoom on occasion if it's a particularly messy problem.
At the end of the day, different people have different ways to solve the same problems, which is why I love the remote work revolution so much - it gives more choice, and allows people to seek out companies that better match their work style.
A better title would be "The Kind of People Who Read the Harvard Business Review Secretly Love Meetings".