Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered at the company cultures between Google and Microsoft - Gcal supports ending meetings five minutes early while Outlook supports starting five minutes late.

At Microsoft it was obvious how five minutes late was optimal - meetings usually dragged on past their end time anyhow, but never started early so it gave folks time to eg get to their next meeting (in person), coffee, bio break, etc.

Does Google have a culture of meetings ending on the dot with finality? I just don't see that working with human nature of "one last thing" and the urge to spend an extra few minutes to hammer something out.

It's just laughable to me to bother with a "ends five minutes early" option. It just doesn't work - you know you're not cutting into anyone's next meeting by consuming those last five minutes. But you can't know that if you push into the next half hour block - maybe they have a customer call up next that starts on time, so you have to wrap up.

> while Outlook supports starting five minutes late

This contrast is an incorrect assumption. Outlook does allow starting meetings late as well as ending meetings early, with somewhat arbitrary durations. [1] I have definitely seen these options in Outlook settings (on web, since I hate Outlook).

However, I haven’t used it because the teams one works with need to be alerted and reminded of it before it sticks in their minds (if nobody else is using such settings).

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/end-meetings-earl...

Our corporate IT managed to enable that setting for everyone, which made the transition easier. Doesn't stop people from overriding it, alas.

Yes, outlook supports both. At Microsoft though we only ever used "start five late".

> Does Google have a culture of meetings ending on the dot with finality?

Whenever I'm having remote meetings with people using a Google meeting room, right at the hour they'll say "I'm getting kicked out", because the next person is waiting to use the booked meeting room.

The solution I like best is to "pin" issues that would cause the meeting to run long, with select personnel needing to stay late to address the pinned issue but everybody else leaving on time.

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