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Comment by kshahkshah | Hacker News Reader

1. Are you a manager? You will be limited in success

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.

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> Block your time so people literally can't schedule you

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.

Hah. I have blocked hours and people will still schedule meetings.

And before you say “Just don’t attend”, I can sometimes use that option. But then other times it becomes all game theory because if they can convince enough other people to attend, you lose politically if people start routing around you on your own project.

Yep, it's a good first line of defense, not a panacea.

At a previous job, we had "no meetings thursdays". It was great for a while, and then product management started scheduling meetings on thursdays "because it's the only time when everyone is free"

Unfortunately, it's not the correct answer.

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.

Bear in mind that as an engineer you don't want meetings, but as a manager your entire job is meetings.

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.

I've heard "Let's not get into the weeds" so many times. Somehow, the time for getting into the weeds never seems to arrive, and things never get done... I've started scheduling follow-ups on the spot. You don't want to discuss this now? Alright, we'll meet again in two hours. It's worked once or twice!

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