Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it | Hacker News Reader

Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it

theregister.com

44 pointsrntn49 comments

Unfortunately, guidelines for effective meetings are rarely part of formal education or job training. Somewhere I saw a concise list of requirements that was something like:

1) Send out written agenda ahead of time

2) Every meeting should have some decision that is made

3) Everyone invited to the meeting should speak

4) Notes should be taken

The framing of these rules really hide the ball and lend themselves to cargo culting.

Have a written agenda before the meeting BECAUSE you know exactly what it’s about when you are scheduling it and you want each participant to know their part. Don’t type up a thoughtless list the day before.

A decision should be made at the end BECAUSE the point of the meeting was to make that decision. Don’t add decision points where you didn’t appropriately set the stage.

Everyone invited should speak BECAUSE you should only come to the meeting if you are contributing. Don’t invite an irrelevant person and solicit their opinion.

Notes should be taken BECAUSE you are in a narrowly focused, important decision making moment and you want a record of how a choice was made. Don’t hold a worthless meeting and assign a note taker to capture useless information.

There are two types of meetings: ones where you come up with a decision/plan of action, and ones in which you pass down information. Make sure you know which type it is first. Your list then applies to the first type.

Even for the "pass down information" kind, running the meeting like a reverse classroom is more efficient. Read the new content outside of the meeting, discuss/process/problem-solve/etc in the meeting.

https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/active-colla...

My personal rule of thumb is, every single participant should have prepared for the meeting for at least the amount of time the meeting is booked for. If this isn't true, you have either an ineffective meeting or wrong/too many people in the room.

bingo. sometimes I need to brief people or be briefed by people.

in theory email or slack or whatever could do this, but people don't read emails, don't read them in a timely fashion, and are not always available for quick clarifications or questions.

for every one of you that's "this could be an email" there will be 3 of you that won't read it.

I've been looking for something like this for a long time. Thank you for sharing! I especially like point number 2. It reduces the amount of meetings I have SIGNIFICANTLY.

The n.2 usually doesn't work like that.

We're talking about a meeting that wasn't a recurring event, so at least the person setting it up had an intention of getting something out of it. If there's no output, it's more productive to understand why it failed than to stick to or try to enforce a random guideline.

Perhaps there's just too many conflicting interests and someone has to take the lead. Perhaps nobody actually knew what was going on and the whole meeting was spent getting up to speed (funnily enough, prepared agendas often won't help for fundamental misunderstandings). Perhaps there was no output to expect in the first place and the person setting up the meeting lost their way.

You'll improve/reduce meetings by looking back at these failed attempts and act on the findings. If your team can't do that, they won't be in a position to properly understand and follow a guideline either IMHO.

That rule does have a lot of potential for abuse if not used right. A common way is "the decision is that we need to have another meeting about this later".

While most meetings tend to be rather useless, I can't help but feel like the character in this story was likely a pain to work with. Of course, we're only getting one side of the story, so maybe I'm reading too much into it and my personal experiences with people like that probably change my perception quite a bit.

But that one-sidedness also makes stories like this as useless as the meetings it's complaining about. Without the full details, there's not much to even learn here except that a lot of meetings are a waste of time, which isn't exactly profound.

Yes I agree. Of course it's impossible to tell from the story but given the choice of "this story is totally true" and "actually he's an awkward character to deal with and doesn't know it or doesn't want to admit it"... well I've known more of those people than I have managers this bad, so I wouldn't place that bet.

Don't doubt for a minute this happened. As a serial offender in the "does this meeting matter" whine, I have to acknowledge sometimes, talking is worthwhile. My problem is when people see their secret superpower as meetings.

I must admit a colleague of over 30 years and I agree there is a malicious compliance path in meetings: take them over and wrest the agenda to conform to your desire.

"malicious compliance path in meetings: take them over and wrest the agenda to conform to your desire."

We used to have an IT director who had mastered the art of stealing meetings. He contributed nothing during the meeting but in the end with an authoritative voice he summarized what was said and who would do what. And the meeting was his without ever contributing anything.

Not sure if I’d call that “stealing meetings”, I find it incredibly useful to rephrase what’s been decided on and who will do the next steps because that can easily get lost in the meeting,

An IT director who listens to the people under them and lets them work? That sounds great. There is nothing worse than someone who isn’t involved enough to know/need to know about something that slows down meetings asking everyone to explain what they mean.

The only thing worse is when someone isn’t paying attention but perks up with certain topic/keywords come up. Often asking questions that were just answered had they been listening.

This could be a good thing, depending on context. He was paying attention, but let people do their job. An IT director is a facilitator, they don't need to make ALL the decisions, just high-level ones, there are experts on the team for that.

The director NEEDS to make sure the company's goals are considered first, that the overall strategy is on track, and that everyone has the resources to do their jobs.

so he took notes, summarized the meeting, and ensure that expectations were clarified as to who owns what?

that's what whoever called the meeting should be doing, and if they're not, someone should.

like it's annoying that the boss needs to keep doing that, but I bet things get done...

I should have added that this was the only thing the guy ever did. Otherwise his output was zero or mostly negative.

As the slightly unwilling current receipient of the role of chair for several local organisations and their meetings - a position that some would call 'leadership' and a sign of greatness or whatevs - been there done that... B^>

Meetings can be made to be good, especially if they have a useful purpose. Meetings that are there to stroke someone's ego or exercise personal selfish power are difficult to justify. Focus on the purpose.

> Meetings that are there to stroke someone's ego or exercise personal selfish power are difficult to justify.

If you are confident this is the case then a smart person would realise that complaining about the meeting being a waste of time is both true and likely to have significant blow back on them.

In my experience, if you can't create an agenda, then it's more than likely the meeting is unnecessary.

In my experience meetings should only be:

1) 1 on 1

2) Presentation with questions at the end

3) Roundtable status update (so like 2, but each person taking turns)

4) 4-person maximum whiteboard to decide on a very specific point agreed ahead of time

Status updates rarely require a meeting. If there is a group and they all need to give status updates to each other, a meeting (e.g. a standup) can be an efficient way to do that, but so can a shared document or group email, which have the benefit of being asynchronous.

If a team of people need to give status updates to their manager, that should certainly not be a group meeting. Nothing worse than the "status meeting" where you spend 5 minutes giving your report and then 25 minutes waiting for the meeting to be over.

great list of criteria. I'd also add

5) End the moment there's nothing left to cover.

Those were 4 different types of meetings.

I guess the question is: how do you, say, design a new feature that needs input from more than 4 people?

You write a design, accept valued but nonbinding comments on it, and then deliver a presentation after which you’ll proceed with the project unless someone vetoes.

I’d like to see you try that when trying to improve a flow at, say, a hospital where that involves separate teams of nurses, lab workers, doctors pharmacists and admin staff.

Exactly, also use some kind of design document tool that accepts comments (like Google Docs or Confluence) and try to get people to read and make notes _before_ any meetings.

It’s often useful to meet individually with each person before the presentation too, especially those people who are likely to throw up roadblocks. Ideally everyone is in agreement before the meeting, and the final decision is essentially a formality.

But how do you know what to design?

You intuit it from discussions you've had with users about what they want, and with other developers about what can feasibly be built. If there's some reproducible process to identify good product ideas, I've never seen it in action, and I suspect the software market would look quite a bit different if it existed.

> My problem is when people see their secret superpower as meetings.

Seriously, uptighty good girl/lad does notes in different colors kind of meating people, they do have a secret super power.

Kinda like devs that document their work.

Obviously I hate meatings and docs too. I am too cool for that.

Great, now i'm hugry and off to cook steak.

Oh. Ye sorry about that. I'll use more e and less a next time.

"This meeting could have been an email" is a common refrain from an associate of mine who works as a software dev for a major finance/print shop in the states. If having to use an obscure COBOL variant wasn't bad enough, the management and IT teams are absolutely garbage.

It's a tradeoff. "This meeting could have been an email" has an evil brother named "a meeting could have saved us all these emails".

(I have also seen a merely scheduled meeting doing wonders for reaching consensus over email. The meeting was then canceled as no longer necessary, which I think is the best result.)

The word meeting isn’t specific enough. There’s a taxonomy of meetings, and each should be approached differently

1:1s, we know how these work

Update meeting (Gathering everyone in a room and give updates) - eliminate these, this should not be a meeting. Should be recorded and posted online for people to watch at their leisure, and made available in an archive. If content is must-see (safety announcements, etc.), track viewership and link to job performance.

Team planning meetings - do as much upfront beforehand as possible (individual brainstorming, backlog preparation etc) to keep it as short as possible, and be as clear as possible on scope so it can end as soon as possible.

Team decision meetings & strategy meetings - probably the only meetings that need lots of people as many stakeholders will improve a decision. But you need a decision process and it takes focus from everyone not to get distracted or stuck on minor points. You can however, only have one representative of each area to be the voice, which keeps it small

We call all these meetings because English doesn’t give us tools to discuss the distinctions and it’s been limiting the discussion since way before Covid.

The latter two types absolutely need agendas. That will keep them on the rails.

If a meeting is doing the work of two (or more!) of these categories it’s sub-optimal because it requires lots of attendees who only need to be there for one of the types of meeting. Those folks sit exhausted & frustrated for the rest. You’d be better to split it out to multiple meetings with shorter agendas and a more focused group of attendees.

"At my annual assessment a few weeks later, my rating went from 'Outstanding performer' to 'Needs to improve.'"

I used to think meetings were 'useless' too. When I got more experience, I actually like them because there are many things that just can't be explained in a slack message. I've had my share of useless meetings, but there are better ways to give hints that a meeting can be shortened/changed/etc.

"An opportunity eventually arose to mention the long meetings to a more senior manager, who shared Palmer's concerns and promised to look into it."

The person in the story obviously needs to learn more about office politics. I would never complain to my manager's boss about something they did. This is just asking to get fired.

I have always made my managers look good to their boss and it's allowed me to keep my job in many layoffs/restructurings.

<< The person in the story obviously needs to learn more about office politics. I would never complain to my manager's boss about something they did. This is just asking to get fired.

I know what you are saying, because I am not exactly politically gifted and had to learn some of those lessons the hard way. I just wish we did not have to. Surely, there is a better way to organize work than playing a political game.

And while some might want to channel recent Dimon's thoughts on the matter, I would hesitate to rock the boat too much. Management seems confident AI/recession will put them back in driver's seat. You can feel it in some of the angry quotes over the past few months. We were able to stop RTO at our place so far, but I am sure our execs feel bolder now too.

Anyway, Dimon seems to hate pointless meetings too. I think there is some common ground here:D

Meetings like the one described are mainly for managers. It's easy for an IC who doesn't care what other people are doing to feel like it's a waste of time. But if you pay attention, you might find that multiple people have the same problem, know tips for each other, or else become aware of work that overlaps. Sometimes there is none of that and it's just a time for the manager to find out where the budget is going versus some overly technical ticket descriptions. In summary, meetings aren't all about you, junior programmer. If you're bored then try to do something else in that time.

>An opportunity eventually arose to mention the long meetings to a more senior manager, who shared Palmer's concerns and promised to look into it.

One thing I learned about was "chain of command". I was not in the military, but in reality, at least in the US at a large company, "chain of command" always exists when you want to criticize your manager. You should try and find other ways of doing that.

Yes it stinks, but that is the way things are.

I’ve been fired for saying a 1 hour standup was a waste of time.

No you haven't. Nobody would be fired only for that. Maybe that was the final straw.

Yes… I have…

I was working for my university’s assistant dean.

He was using school funds to have us make an Iranian real estate app. Pulled together a team of 5 students working 4 hours a day.

It was all sorts of weird and he was nuts.

One day at standup my laptop speakers weren’t working, so I asked them to wait for me to reboot.

When I got back he said “your computer problems are wasting our time” to which I responded “these hour standups are wasting our time.” He then said “okay, we no longer need your services and I was fired on the spot”

Ah ok well that's a little different to "I think these standups aren't a good use of our time" which is what I thought your comment meant! I agree you shouldn't have been fired for that and I can see why you would be.

parent was undermining the boss constantly and then gets mouthly one last time...

It was likely more than that, or at a bare minimum at least your delivery.

Check out the book ‘Extreme Ownership’ if you have time. There is a lot of good advice in it regarding ‘managing upwards’

We’ve effectively hacked status or update meetings by doing them asynchronously but voice. People monologuing about their issue is fine when you can listen to it at 1.5X or go back to it. Folks thread responses.

If you're trying to make money and have a stable career, your primary goal at work should be to make your manager happy.

If you have a different goal you might as well start your own company or side project since it will be much more effective that way.

Shooting the messenger is a tale as old as time.

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