Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

If I was in the room, I'd be relieved. I always found that meetings at large companies dragged on unless there was a forcing factor (like a doorknock) that got someone to bring it to an end.

View on HN

i was at a startup where meetings were stifling. i had code to write, but i was stuck in HOURS long meetings half the week while marketing and sales types droned on and on about stuff that was meaningless unless we had a product to sell. uh, guys? we have code to write

walking back from lunch with my cow-orkers one day, i realized we were passing a clock store. i went inside and bought a not-too-expensive cuckoo clock and installed it on the wall of our single large conference room

it would make whirring noises every 15 minutes. a few clicking sounds before the hour, and then CUCKOO, CUCKOO as many times as necessary. the marketing and sales folks did NOT like it, but:

- meetings got shorter and there were fewer of them

- the CEO of the company loved that clock. if i forgot to wind it, he or our admin did :-)

This is a dadhacker post, including (especially) the "cow-orker".

Are you just reposting or are you the real dadhacker?

Because if you are, I was reading your blog since I was like 14. Sad it's down now. But absolutely great stuff that helped prepare me for today's industry :)

i'm dadhacker, yes

i may bring the site back, but it's not a priority, and i'm not sure i can write much at the moment without getting into trouble :-)

The meeting room cuckoo clock is pure brilliance.

(+ nice catch @verall)

I love this. Not only the reminders that time's a wastin', but also the unattractive aesthetic, making the meeting space a less pleasant place to linger, and maybe even taking people down a notch from their very important people meetings. The bird calling "cuckoo" could even be commentary on the discussion.

Seems like someone's ego is out of check; these tend to happen when someone needs to "hold court" or otherwise wants to feel important.

In general, your management should take care of this.

Otherwise, if they are unwilling, it requires becoming slightly antagonistic once the meeting runs long. In my case, as soon as someone mentioned another meeting I just interrupted abruptly and said, "We do not need another meeting." The groans of agreement got the point across.

Otherwise, if that doesn't work, you can do something like, "Everyone but [person droning on] needs to leave the room, now." Once everyone leaves, point out that "these long meetings are killing team productivity, morale, and are completely unneeded. Stop wasting the engineering team's time. We don't need to be here."

There's something beautifully old-school about using a literal cuckoo clock as a productivity tool

I've been stuck in meetings like that. I'd just walk out saying, "you know where to find me if my input required."

I noticed years ago that I start to tune out of any meeting that lasts longer than 45 minutes. So whenever I was the one running a meeting, I would always timebox it to 45 minutes. Never could tell if anyone appreciated or resented that. But it worked for me.

Now that I work 100% remote, I have more flexibility to mentally ignore the bits of all meetings that don't apply to me and can instead fill the time writing comments on HN.

Even remotely I try to get the team to keep meetings short and sweet. If it has to go over 45 minutes I’d book two separate meetings with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Nothing worse than meetings that drag on, where everyone starts to lose focus, and where one or two vocal participants sidetrack it into a 1:1 conversation. Just get shit wrapped up and have your other conversations without demanding the time of people who don’t need to be involved.

I found myself more on the side of the meeting crashers, even though the article paints them as the villains. I've been in vastly more hour long meetings that were longer than necessary than ones that were too short.

In meeting-heavy orgs it is really annoying to have meetings led by people who regularly run up to or beyond the final minute of the time slot. Those extra few minutes practically never produce anything worthwhile enough to compensate for the rushing between meetings and having to choose between being more late to the next one or taking care of a quick bathroom/water/snack break.

I don't mind if a meeting is an hour, but I'm genuinely a bit peeved every time I'm in a 50 minute meeting that just automatically rolls over. If you want to do an hour, book an hour.

(All I actually do about this is be the person who pops up in meeting-chat at XX:51 with a "time-check: we've gone over".)

Suggestion: Have an agenda, have rules to religiously follow the agendas and help each other follow the agenda. Once completed, meeting over.

I started replying "No agenda, no attenda" after being in a few too many meetings where things dragged on, or where I clearly was not needed. Didn't matter if I was telling this to someone at the same level as me, or someone at the head of the department: the humor in the wording lessens the sting of the implied "stop being disorganized" message. I made it clear that if there was not a clear agenda in the meeting invite, I would not be attending.

Following this with "What outcome should we expect at the end of this meeting? If there are next steps, what would we like them to be?" helps cut to the chase, and in my experience, things got better across the board. Sure, there were one or two folks who still struggled to create agendas for meetings - but it wasn't long before they were updating their LinkedIn profiles. Accountability can do that sometimes.

I tried this once and my manager and skip level explained to me that sometimes it's necessary to make people get together in case anyone wanted to talk about something, not every meeting needs an agenda. Unsurprisingly, I was not a good fit for that team.

That is so terribly inefficient it makes me physically anxious.

This works great except 95% of the places I've been with bad meeting culture, it comes from the top.

Long winded execs enjoying open ended meetings without any structure to constrain them. Which is to say, the kind of shops with micromanaging management who keep themselves busy with meetings with their own team.

In my experience, most folks appreciate a gentle hint to stick to the agenda. I don’t hang out with “execs” though.

Execs that have responsibilities appreciate sticking to agendas. But there are a lot of Elon Musks in the world.

Didn't Elon Musk have in his companies that thing of if you have no value to add or receive from a meeting, you can leave it?

No idea but someone who claims to work harder than just about everyone else while managing to be on social media all day is hilarious.

This goes way back further then Musk. I remember working at a large corporation in early 2000 before the first dot com crash that had severe meeting issues. At one point, I was having two or three hour long meetings during the week on what another meeting later in the week was supposed to cover.

The CEO of the company got caught fooling around with a co-worker and abruptly resigned. The new CEO came in and found out what a mess meetings had become and issued the same proclamation - if a meeting isn't productive and produce some actionable items, then it shouldn't be scheduled. If you're not 100% required in a meeting, don't go. If you're in a meeting and feel its a waste of time, then leave.

Just those simple rules got rid of half of my meetings and the several teams I was on suddenly were cranking through sprints, building some amazing apps and products and killing our delivery times. The entire company suddenly was cooking along. It was a real eye opener how you can really bog a Fortune 500 company down just by clogging people's time up with useless meetings.

How many people do you think skip his meeting?

I’ve seen it come mostly from participants who are more dominant or verbose in the conversation than others, often leading to the meeting being a lengthy back and forth between two people because nobody else can get a word in and the person running or facilitating it isn’t keeping it in check.

Long winded execs enjoying open ended meetings without any structure to constrain them.

I've been through too many of these. They like to sit at the head of the table and bask in the glow of their underlings like they're king for an hour.

Even with an agenda, nobody wants to be the guy that interrupts people to get them back on topic.

I frequently ask people whether they can discuss the diversion later with whoever is interested. It's not just me but part of company culture.

In other contexts I'm notorious for keeping people on the agenda. It's generally appreciated.

I’ve worked at a couple places where someone had the balls to just get up and leave the meeting room at around 70-80 minutes to force a break. If we are going to be stuck in here I’m going to the bathroom and to get more coffee.

Usually by this point the stuffy room and long meeting have people going in circles. Getting up, opening the door, getting the blood moving while one or two groups have a little sidebar, usually causes the rest of the meeting to wrap up fast.

I do this at 60 minutes, even though my meetings are all over zoom these days. "Sorry, I need to step away to get some water. I'll be back in a few minutes."

I just lose track of time like everyone else has. I will follow that person out the door though because they’re right, and once 2 people go the rest will follow. One person is just an asshole. Two is a pattern and three is a movement.

I've been in 90 minute standups, the 10 minute standup pedants would be my heroes.

With my current team lead, 90-minute standups aren't common, but they've happened. 30 minutes is "short", and most take 45 minutes. The previous lead kept things to about 10-15 minutes. The new guy has apparently never in his life said "OK, let's discuss this after standup".

I get why people hate scrum/agile and random standards from above but this is the kind of guy that needs enforcement from his manager. Unfortunately I have never seen that happen and have had to just move on from teams where it gets poisoned like this.

Interject. When things are getting off topic (which is to say, as soon as one person interrupts another person's update with a question) just say "this might be better for post standup", or even just "post standup?" with a questioning inflection.

Most of the people who will mind are exactly the kind of person that you're trying to keep from wasting everyone's time.

Any and every team member should be empowered to do this.

Wow, was it actually 90 minutes of standing?

For me, yes. I was working remote from a surprisingly loud coffee shop so I had to pop out in the back alley. The rest of the team (even those in office) was all connecting on zoom so I doubt it.

Did anyone faint?

I think some of my swe friends might have when I told them about it later.

Oh how many times I ended a meeting over VC by pretending that someone was knocking on the door...

I used to love pomodoro style meetings... it became a test of will and stamina at some point.

This is always because people would rather than twiddle their thumbs in meetings than work - so they drag it out as long as possible. Getting paid for doing nothing is a good deal. Meetings are never necessary, and usually the worst possible way to convey information.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com