Hacker News Reader

Comment by repox | Hacker News Reader

> They also tend to make the stand-ups one hour long.

I'm Head of Development in a midsized SaaS company. Another team's PM went for paternity leave and I stepped in to lean in on any needs.

I discovered that the team of 10 people were using close to an hour a day on stand-up. A culture thing, apparently.

I joined he stand-up a few times, slimmed the scope of the conversation to roughly 10-15 minutes.

This worked for all three months of the PM's paternity leave.

PM returns, is pissed over the change and in less than two days, the stand-up is back to almost an hour a day.

View on HN

It Depends.

I said in another post that I hated all the ceremonies, including standup. And it goes without saying that means long standups.

But, one team I was one, we had long ass standup and it was perfect. It was very dev-driven, we were facing hard problems, and that was our time of the day to really nerd out. The PM would get bored after about 15-20 minutes and then we'd be working out how to deal with the issues that faced us. Sure, it could have happened at any point of the day, but that was our designated time where we were all in the office (this was pre-pandemic)

That seems unproductive. You end up having a room full of people discussing problems that should be solved by one or two people outside of the standup. That's contrary to what a stand up meeting should be. Don't do that.

That's the issue where the PM has so much power. In our company the engineering team dictates their process. They can do however they like as long as they ship the products on time.

Why is the PM still employed?

Hasn’t the team all quit?

Because in real world people play with the hand they are dealt with. Team hasn't quit because there are no better jobs with empowered developers are waiting.

The real question is why is the team putting up with this? They should be complaining about the PM and wasted time every chance they get, at the "retro", team meetings, and 1:1's... Complain, complain, complain.

I don't like long daily meetings, but there is essentially no value in the YTNB meeting either ("yesterday, today, no blockers") meeting either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com