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Comment by urbandw311er | Hacker News Reader

Personally I find it disrespectful when people don’t pay attention in meetings and decide they’re going to make their own call about what’s important and what isn’t. So I’d probably enforce the “camera on” policy, notice that you’re not paying attention and this means the issue gets discussed.

At this point I do more digging/reviews and I either agree with your point and work with the PM to get them to be more concise, or I disagree with you and you’re released from the team for having values that don’t align with ours.

Either way my problem gets fixed because I had people put their cameras on and communicate like grown ups.

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Personally I find it disrespectful to be pulled into random meetings I have no reason to be in. Or be held up in meetings that are 45 minutes longer than they need to be. "They are paying you" only goes so far. If I wanted to be paid to be in meetings, I would have gotten a business degree.

Right, so the solution here is not to have you in the meeting if you’re not required (and perhaps give individuals some latitude to decide for themselves whether they’re required), but if you are in the meeting you ought to be paying attention.

I'm not your slave. If you have important info, I'll listen. If I think you're wasting our time then you are, unless you convince me otherwise.

This is the kind of attitude and response I would expect from a 9 year old, not a professional adult.

If you think you're not needed in a meeting, or the content isn't relevant, or someone else should be there instead, pretend you're an adult human and raise the issue. But if you're going to be in the meeting, pay attention. It's astounding to me that this could be a controversial statement.

The only thing controversial is you saying someone with a differing opinion is acting like a 9 year old. This is only serving to further reinforce the general feeling that PMs are overall useless, overpowered, and undersupervised.

Likewise if it's a problem my camera is off except in certain meetings (with clients or whatever) then bring it up to me. To this day that has yet to happen. Shockingly, work gets done, I listen to the important points of the meeting and talk when needed, and I don't have to let someone look at me while I'm not looking at them. It sounds like you have a problem communicating without a face to look at. If it helps, you can tape faces to the screen or request people put an avatar/photo of themselves up for you to talk at.

You're arguing a point I haven't made.

> > If I think you're wasting our time then you are, unless you convince me otherwise.

That's not a differing opinion, that's petulant and childish.

Your coworkers deserve the benefit of the doubt when they say you're needed for something.

> Personally I find it disrespectful to be pulled into random meetings I have no reason to be in. Or be held up in meetings that are 45 minutes longer than they need to be.

Then raise those issues like an adult, rather than passive-aggressively tuning out.

Quoting from The Testament of a Dealer:

> Do you spend far too much working time at meetings? Do you try to make important decisions in groups of more than 10 people? Do you have more than, let’s say, 15 co-workers under your direct management? Do you receive daily reports which you don’t read on the day you get them? Do you have days when you don’t have time to ring back the person who’s been looking for you to discuss an important matter? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then you yourself are part of the problem, because you’re no longer on your guard against ever-increasing bureaucracy.

I am paid to write code not sit in 10 meetings a day. If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty. There is an unspoken feeling of being forced to attend every meeting assigned to you just in case something feels useful. You deliberately ignore this to make your (absolutely wrong) point.

> I am paid to write code not sit in 10 meetings a day.

Unless you're some kind of modern-day ornamental hermit, writing code is unlikely to be the end goal; more likely you're getting paid to produce something useful, something for which communicating and understanding the problem is often far more important than actual coding.

> If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty.

This does not sound like a healthy working relationship, although I'm not sure the problem's on their end.

> There is an unspoken feeling of being forced to attend every meeting assigned to you just in case something feels useful.

Well, nut up and get over it. Either attend or don't, but don't half-ass it. The surest recipe for pointless meetings that go on for too long is meetings where half the participants are coding instead of paying attention.

> I am paid to write code not sit in 10 meetings a day. If I raise the issue everyone gets all pouty.

Then it's time to move on. This is not a way mature adults should be handling such a situation.

A passive-aggressive reaction isn't mature either though, so maybe this is mutual and your company and you are actually perfectly in tune.

I wish the good old fashion art of writing an agenda was still practiced. And not an hour before the meeting. Give me at least a day. I’ve clarified many a meeting just by looking at the agenda and communicating with the host that J. Doe has more experience in that area than I do. I’ve also been able to get meetings canceled by reading the agenda and figuring out what the person needed.

Agendas. They’re worth the 10 or 15 minutes you’ll spend writing it.

My biggest pet peeve is meetings that come out of Zoom chats “Let’s chat about that later in the week” and the subject of the meeting is “Continue Discussion from Zoom”. Awesome.

Oldest trick in the book was to write the agenda AND the minutes of the meeting in advance, run the meeting per the minutes, tweaking them on the fly and publishing them as soon as the meeting was done.

Only the minutes count as the results of the meeting. Works only in large, bureaucratic, political companies.

Then say no to the meeting.

And if you can't, find a job that treats you like an adult.

I'm an adult, I can work on something else while listening in and make the decision to shift my focus when it affects my area of responsibility.

Bullshit. Everyone thinks they can multitask, no-one actually can.

I did not claim to multitask. I listen for key words and stop coding.

I think you are not seeing from the other side, many times the information conveyed for a certain duration is not relevant for some members of the team, instead of always saying i dont want to join this meeting entirely its much easy to only listen the parts that are relevant to you. Using a camera and forcing them to look won't help much here, as they won't be paying attention still.

You sound like a great boss to work for lol.

I know, right? Boss who listens to the team and tries to resolve problems, must be awful for people. /s

Seems like a collective punishment for people who are perfectly attentive to the meetings with their camera off.

ICs literally have half their work time taken by meetings here. Nothing would get done if they didn't work at the same time.

People should be able decide if they want to allow a camera in their home. So mandatory “camera on” policy is completely off limits.

You could decide to work an office job?

Maybe that's people which absolutely want to see other people face that should take office jobs ?

Lots of open source software have been developed in the last 40 years with what we call now "fully remote team" without any need for webcams. Why it's suddenly becomes mandatory for some people that develop software ?

I agree that people should be able to decide if they want to allow a camera in their home. But workplaces should also be free to decide if they only want to employ people who are OK having a camera in their home.

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