Comment by grvdrm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grvdrm | Hacker News Reader

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> There wasn't a SINGLE ONE that would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING when the culture does not align to the ideals this presentation outlines.

Exactly. Love the deck. Like you, agree with many things.

My similar suggestions (but a little looser):

1. Long meetings need agendas. But don't expect perfection. You can get away with no agenda in a short (30 or less) meeting.

2. Very large meetings need a DRIVER (person). I hate a big meeting when someone says something like "so who wants to bring something up" - no no no. I don't want free-form conversation in a large meeting. I want someone to drive the hell out of the meeting. Keep people in check!

Most important:

3. Do what you can to discover the underlying motivation of the meeting organizer and solve their motivation some other way. Recently sat through a disastrous JIRA-focused meeting. Talking about tickets, their purpose, their descriptions, etc. But I knew the person needed the data for executive-team reporting. So I offered to help fill in gaps (without a call) to improve their reporting. I saved myself future time, he got better reporting - a win.

Constant and outright decline behavior will probably backfire.

Wow, I might need to steal that idea for bypassing Jira discussions. I hate Jira with all my might.

Please do. It works!

I don't think most folks are both interested and trying to sit in mindless meetings (like my JIRA example).

That JIRA example is particularly annoying. It's a product team (with an external consultant) using JIRA to track progress. But like anything with a reporting component, people are now optimizing toward what's reported - not toward real work. Success in a week (or sprint) is number of tickets closed not whether anything actually happened.

I declined several of these JIRA update meetings. At least two invites popped onto my calendar as agenda-less hour-long blocks.

Then I joined one, asked all the questions around purpose, and suggested what I would do to help with less overall effort and a reduction in pesky meeting invites.

Why do you hate Jira?

> I hate a big meeting when someone says something like "so who wants to bring something up" - no no no.

This makes the meeting end really quick when nobody has anything to discuss right? For some people the only way you are ever going to get them to bring something up is by asking in a meeting.

That no one has anything almost never happens.

I support the idea of bringing something to table. Instead maybe ask for simple 1-sentence ideas over email (or chat/etc.) in advance and then you use those as the driver of the meeting.

the slowest talking person always brings up the dumbest thing that for some reason half the room suddenly cares deeply about

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