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Comment by skeeter2020 | Hacker News Reader

skeeter2020

I feel this is a symptom of poor meetings, where they are used for information exchange (which I think should come before the meeting) instead of collaboration and problem solving. You could save your time and a bunch of AI-generated notes you'll never read with the simple rule of "no agenda, no attenda". Remote has allowed us to adopt meeting policies that would never exist in-person: giant, long, back-to-back sessions with no purpose, plan or opportunity to pee.

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> no agenda, no attenda

I've been using this mentality for the last three years. Some responds with hostility and some see the benefits, but most are just indifferent to it sadly.

I've also been observing people just throw in a short sentence or some AI generated shit list which is then not followed during the meeting.

But those who take this seriously usually have pretty darn good meetings (e.g not book the full hour, force people to stay on topic, shares notes after the meeting etc)

What do you do if you skip such a meeting and a decision you don't like but that you can't weigh in on anymore is taken there?

Lol I've seen this happen, people feeling they're too important to attend meetings and then complaining when something happens in them.

Skipping meetings because they aren't organized the way you like is pretty passive aggressive. I agree with all the criticism about poorly organized meetings, but I think the non prima Donna thing to do is push back on their existence or format, not just skip them. That's part of why a job is a job.

It's not about being a prima Donna. It's about business value. Too many meetings over the years should either be better planned, not taken place at all or could have been an email/chat message.

Business value first

You’re both in agreement that most meetings are unnecessary and that it would be better if meetings had a set agenda.

But the other poster was saying it’s prima donna behavior to skip a meeting without asking the organizer if they can add an agenda first.

Meetings with an agenda are generally better, but that doesn't mean meetings without one can't have any business value. If you skip it, you make sure you at least don't contribute to anything decided in it.

It's "the boy who called important meeting" - if the first 9 meetings in a series provided zero value, you shouldn't be surprised that someone refuses to attend #10.

If it's essential that I attend for such a meeting, the organizer usually reach out.

If not. Then I'll have to either live with the decision or at least give feedback on it.

Nothing is final until you build it (from a developer point of view).

Maybe “make a decision about X” should be on the agenda? I bet he’d show up in that case, if he cared about X.

In this context, I don't see an incentive for meeting organizer to create an agenda. They don't care at all about op's opinion about X.

Yes, but that's too late now. If everybody else did show up and discussed X, it's only going to look bad for you.

That’s where you have stakeholders within a company and you require sign-off for decisions that affect them.

I like my meeting where we don’t have a fixed agenda but anyone can bring something up. If there’s nothing, we just end the meeting.

How do you prevent meetings from meandering and going over time? How do you ensure the correct people are in the meeting when there's no agenda?

How do you deal with daily standups? or 3x a week standups?

>Remote has allowed us to adopt meeting policies that would never exist in-person: giant, long, back-to-back sessions with no purpose, plan or opportunity to pee.

Oh, if only that had been true, but pointless, aimless meetings have been a plague forever. Maybe less so the no-peeing.

But "no agenda, no attenda" only works if you're in a position to refuse. Often attending meetings is seen as part of the job, either formally or in the managers' eyes, so ignoring them without good reason isn't allowed without repercussions.

After working for a company where every meeting had a clear agenda and meeting notes with action items were sent afterwards, I would never want to work in a place that didn't follow the same pattern.

> Remote has allowed us to adopt meeting policies that would never exist in-person: giant, long, back-to-back sessions with no purpose, plan or opportunity to pee.

I'm genuinely confused by this. Those sort of meetings have existed in the entire 20-something years I've been working corporate jobs.

> "no agenda, no attenda"

I love this phrasing of the principle.

It's not a new problem. In a previous job long before remote, we had a 1.5 hour long biweekly meeting named "Team Meeting". No agenda, no goals, never went less than the full alloted time.

Actually we didn’t know how good we had it.

I work at FAANG annd after a certain point in seniority your entire job becomes a solid meeting block. A trend I’ve seen in at least thee companies is that my peers start scheduling fake meetings out of desperation to get 2-3 hours of real work done (Because any calendar gap is immediately filled).

> Remote has allowed us to adopt meeting policies that would never exist in-person: giant, long, back-to-back sessions with no purpose, plan or opportunity to pee.

This is absolutely not new and was as bad if not worse before remote work.

> opportunity to pee

Social pressure is still a thing for some unfortunately. Or maybe memories from school creep in. Just go for a pee.

If I have back-to-back meetings, I'll leave a few minutes early (with apologies) and also apologise to the next meeting if I'm late. If anyone calls me out, I'll apologetically claim "biological imperative". If they don't understand, I tell them that my bowels wait for no one. That is enough to get everyone to move on. No one wants to talk about someone else's bowels.

“Time for a bio break.” I’ve heard that often.

Sometimes, when I need to pee, I say "I need to pee". I find this complex, advanced strategy works pretty well.

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