Am I the only one in the situation? Almost thinking to change jobs for a smaller tech firm hoping this provides a better control on my calendar... Curious to hear your thoughts.
2. Use something like clockwise to compress meeting times
3. Block your time so people literally can't schedule you
4. Ask for an agenda
5. Actively challenge status update meetings which serve no one. Use tools where you can pull the data. Or ask to have the data pushed to you (email). If this can't be done, work to fix that problem instead.
My biggest piece of advice? Say no to 30 minute meetings. Ask for longer meetings. This is counter intuitive I think, but I feel like 30 meetings give people enough time to get started talking about something and then no ability to finish the discussion. They become filled with "let's circle back" or "let's not get into the weeds" type chatter. No, let's get into the damn weeds and as a result on the same page. For certain things, I demand 2 hour meetings so we can actually hash stuff out.
This is the correct answer. There are probably more people doing this than you'd think, including managers.
Don't push back, that's your manager's job and you will only upset people. If you have a "conflict", though, they will respect that.
Get creative if you have to. Nobody will question your "sprint checkpoint", "brainstorm session", "ticket review board", "architecture planning", etc.
If it's a meeting of 2-3 people they'll just find time when you're not blocked. If the goal is to schedule more meetings back-to-back this might help, but you're not going to avoid any meetings this way.
And if it's a meeting of 5+ people they won't care about your personal schedule, they'll only work around other large meetings, and it's up to you to reschedule your personal events and your one-on-ones.
Since, by definition, a manager has to meet with someone, adding 1 manager subtracts 40 hours collectively from everyone else. And it's not like managers can just meet each other - they seldom have the actual knowledge to actually architect.
A really good manager is mostly just observing, checking in now and then (ideally at the start and end of the day), but then gas a lot of hours to fill. This is harder yo get right in Remote working setups (but not impossible.)
Mostly a good manager will spend most of their time "upstream" - solving problems for the team, making sure they have all the right tools etc. Acting as the gatekeeper to the team's time.
Alas good managers are exceedingly rare, partly because there's no training to be a good manager. So if you have one, well, be nice to him.
And if you -are- a manager, perhaps spend so time reflecting if you are helping or hindering your team. Then schedule a meeting to discuss it ;)
I will say this - good management is hard. You can't be absent. But you can't be too present. And every individual has different needs. The skill to recognise who needs what, and how often, is rare.
If you're a manager, start delegating people to go to those meetings.
One of my personal challenges was definitely that, as an introvert, once meetings hit a certain percentage of my calendar I'm just perpetually exhausted. It's amazing, I could code all day and then sit down and code for 3 hours at night. I basically just don't run out of energy for that. But talking to people? I like it, but it's like running up a hill for me. More than 4 hours of that in a day and I'm ruined, I can't code or do anything until I find a proper way to reset (which often means, until the next day).
I don't think extroverts appreciate what they are asking of introverts when they casually schedule meetings - often thinking it's the most efficient way to exchange about 5 mins worth information in an hour long discussion.
That is quite impressive and probably better than average for an engineer.
If I have a 1 hour meeting at 1pm, I’ll be fried for the rest of the day. It’s a weakness for sure, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it other than work for companies that have minimal meetings. Companies with established meeting cultures will do anything except reduce the number of meetings you need to attend.
Are they regular meetings where you're the representative for your team or function? In other words, the types of meetings that all other tech leads also attend -- whether they're the only tech lead present (weekly team meeting), or lots of other tech leads (department tech lead meeting), or your weekly 1-1 with your manager, or your monthly 1-1 with each other team member? Because these are just part of your job, full stop.
Or are they specific one-off problem-solving meetings with 2-6 people total that actually need your input? Because these are generally part of your job as well, especially as a tech lead. If you find yourself regularly contributing nothing though, you can push back or suggest a non-lead team member instead. But really you should bring this up with your manager because you're surely not the only one having this problem, and saying no to these meetings could negatively impact you if your input really is required and you merely find them inefficient.
The last category is one-off special meetings to explore new ideas, build relationships, get feedback, talk about company culture, learn things, etc. These are where the company wants to have a wide range of people present but your specific absence may not be noted. On the one hand, you can try just not going and it might be totally fine, and if anyone asks just say you were fixing a time-sensitive bug (important: don't respond to these calendar invites, so they don't say "Yes" but they also don't say "No".). On the other hand, if your manager/peers are usually there and they start noticing you never are, you might develop a reputation of not caring about the company, not being a good company citizen, etc. You'll have to decide if it's worth the reputational hit and whether that could affect promotions.
1. Ask the meeting organizer if you're needed and why. You'd be surprised how many times meeting organizers just want to include everyone, and don't actually need you.
2. Ask for an agenda from the meeting organizer beforehand. If there isn't one, skip it. Meetings without an agenda before hand have a low value in general.
3. If you're not necessary for a meeting, consider skipping it and reading the notes afterwards.
4. Ask if the meeting will be recorded, so that you can time shift your viewing of it and watch it at 2x.
5. If someone schedules a meeting with you, ask what the question they're trying to answer is beforehand, and if you can reply to them by email, or ideally send them a document or FAQ to refer to - success! You've managed to remove the need for a meeting.
But the most important are:
1. Just don’t go.
2. Fill your calendar with blocks for Engineering and only be available for meetings at certain times of the day. Make sure your managers knows and you should be good.
Consent matters.
I think it’s more disrespectful to put a meeting on someone’s calendar without an agenda or explaining it’s purpose.
To do so demonstrates that you believe you’re entitled to their time and that your purpose is more important than anything else they had to do at that time.
If you are expected, then that should be communicated before the meeting is scheduled.
For example, a good manager will…
1) tell you during onboarding what/when/where the expected team ceremonies take place.
2) give you at least a heads up via chat before putting a surprise meeting on your calendar
Discuss with your manager. "I'm being invited to all these meetings and I don't get any value from them. Do I really need to go?" Let him/her figure it out; that's what they're there for.
My pet hypothesis is that most of the "productivity improvements" companies achieved thanks to office / business-side software was really accounting trickery, even if unintentional one. A lot of the distracting bullshit we - and everyone else with an office job - has to do regularly, used to be someone's actual job. The flip side of software making a task so easy everyone could do it themselves, is that... everyone has to do it themselves. What used to be done by specialists is now spread evenly across the company, tacked onto the job description or just plain assumed. I called this an accounting trick, because the salaries no longer paid are legible on the balance sheet, while general productivity drop all across the board is not.
AFAIR, JS looks the way it does, because the business side wanted to ride on the hype Java was generating.
I can imagine a world where you even say "if you have to fire me I understand".
Would people care though? I can even imagine it becoming kind of a running joke.
Would love to hear from someone who attempted this.
You might also defer some meetings to your manager. Another trick I've had some success with is saying, "Sorry. I have a deadline and need to focus on meeting it. Could your record the meeting for me?" Usually they do and I watch the recordings late in the day when I'm tired and don't feel like working anyway.
Aside from that, you can and should insist on an uninterrupted block of time every day. Say four hours in the afternoon. Block it off on your calendar so you can have that focus time you wish you had. The hard part is enforcing it.
I've been in meetings with 20 people, where 17 of them never say a word. In those cases, I'm usually one of the silent ones, doing some real work while barely even paying attention to the meeting. Surprisingly, most people understand that and are okay with it. But it's really a last resort.
Good luck. Being in a meeting heavy environment can be stressful. Learn not to be a slave to it without being a grouch about it and people will respect you for having your priorities straight. You'll respect yourself more, too, for drawing boundaries and getting things done.
2) Start blocking off "me time" on your calendar so people can't monopolize your time.
This is especially bad with multi-person meetings. There’s no slot when everyone’s free, so the organiser picks the least-bad slot. Unfortunately it’s when you had booked out your time.
Now what do you do? Decline? Because you’re unavailable? You know you can make it, and you feel compelled to turn up.
Think about how many of these meeting you really shouldn't be at ever. Even one where you're there 30 minutes a week and it's only useful for you to be there every couple months, it's going to be hard to get out of. My guess is it's realistic for you to be expected to attend these meetings, or at least know what happens in them (how easy that is, if it's even possible, is also a company culture thing you won't be able to change overnight).
If this is really an issue for you, the easiest way to fix it is to leave and to ask about meeting culture in the interview process.
Cynical quip: Ask that you be scaled up to 40+ hours/week in meetings, so you don't feel guilty about never having enough time to do any serious engineering work.
More realistic: Ask if people at your level could be blank-exempted from meetings on Tuesdays & Thursdays - to let you focus on engineering and get serious stuff done at least on those two days.
As a corollary, provide context and and agenda when scheduling meetings.
Any time I set up a meeting, the first thing I do is put the context: what brought me to my calendar to set up this meeting in the first place? Then I put an agenda. What are we going to talk about? It doesn't have to be long or detailed down the minute or anything like that. Just a list of things I want to talk about.
As a result, my meetings tend to be the ones that go under time and have an outcome at the end. People who aren't relevant self-select out, so our discussion doesn't wander, and people come prepared with data and/or opinions. It's much more efficient.
Being a meeting leader is a skill that is learned, but it can be learned.
- Push for written material to be made available the night before the meeting; all participants must read beforehand; meeting canceled if not.
- After meetings send around a summary of what was achieved, who contributed, who found the contributions useful, and (the remainder) whose presence was a waste of company resources.
- If you really can't excuse yourself from meetings where your presence is not helpful / you don't want to be there, then resign and start doing leetcodes in meetings until your last day.
If you are an engineering manager than it is probably expected that you attend meetings most of your time spend and you shouldn't be wired in to write code as is expected from an IC.
If you are an IC, escalate to your manager. However, if those meetings are with your direct team to discuss product roadmap, PR reviews, solution design, sprint planning, epic grooming, etc, then your manager will probably tell you that you should attend those meetings.
Best thing I’ve found is to keep reminding the project people that the meetings will cause deadlines to be missed. At least that puts some blame on someone other than your team. When half of the billed hours end up being meetings it becomes clear.
2nd: be an ass as a moderator. Cut all the small talk, chit chat, warm ups, derailing, or ad hoc brainstorming (usually performed by two people while the rest of the attendees are slowly dying inside).
Perhaps meetings keep the illusion that "work" in companies means doing anything at all.
Evolutionary psychology also could explain?
Basically, people who work on their laptops during meetings are demonstrating that they don't have the confidence to point out to someone that they should not / no longer be in the meeting.
CC each rejected meeting to your management including the cost in scheduling overhead, loss of flow, and actual hours.
If your direct management is inept, go to senior.
If you can't be direct, go somewhere more engineer-oriented or don't ask for help on HN.