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Comment by kj4211cash | Hacker News Reader

We have a bunch of Amazon transplants who newly arrived at my company and have started doing this. I thought I would love it, because I'm a good writer, a great reader, not great at PowerPoint or meeting gamesmanship, etc. Turns out I kind of hate it. The silent reading time is annoying, especially when you've already read the doc or when most people are on zoom, etc. The intellectual bloodbath doesn't happen at my company. The most senior people are given the floor and they usually spout nonsense because they haven't had time to read the doc, are miles away from the intellectual details, are too busy playing office politics, etc. And then there's just as much meeting gamesmanship as before. I was hoping decision would be more scientific but that just hasn't happened. Maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe we've hired the Amazon rejects. I don't know. Hoping it improves.

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Asking the grandparent:

The what is the idea behind the "ideally have already read the paper, but given 10-20 minutes in silence" part?

The fact that people that have already read it have nothing to do and waste time sitting around bored sounds like an obvious flaw, are we missing something?

I take issue with the “ideally have already read the paper” part. That’s actually not true for most of the attendees. There will be some who have, though, and those will be your co-authors or others who have helped you prepare it before the meeting. And they don’t mind waiting in silence during the reading period, because they have a stake in the outcome.

Also, 20 minutes of respite isn’t necessarily “waste.” Having 20 minutes of time to think deeply on something is often a gift!

Can you really think deeply in 20 min, while on zoom or in a meeting room?

I think this gets to the heart of my complaint. I thought this would increase the water level on our technical discussions. It hasn't. Like I say, could be the documents or people are poor. In any event, I'm one person that believed in this right up until my org implemented it.

We’re talking about the quiet reading period here. If someone has already read the document or participated in its authorship, they get 20-30 minutes of silence to think about whatever they’d like. And yes, those minutes can be a useful respite from an otherwise hectic day.

I have no idea how your org implemented the table read, so I can’t comment on why it may not have been effective there.

Wait, so, there's silent reading time that you hate, AND somehow seniors still manage to claim that they didn't read the thing?

Well they don't say they didn't read the thing. But 10-20 minutes often isn't enough time to truly digest the arguments. And even it were, I'm not sure it would matter. What I've seen is 10-20 minutes of awkward silent time followed by a level of discussion that isn't notably better than meetings before we adopted Amazon ways. Probably we are doing it wrong and/or have the wrong people in the room.

10-20 minutes seems short. Most doc reads I’ve been in at Amazon have a 30-40 minute reading phase. 10-20 minute reads would only be for very short or simple documents.

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