7 ms·
> he points out that a one-hour meeting with eight people isn’t really a one-hour meeting at all; it’s a meeting that just consumed eight hours of productive ti
by caseysoftware 10y ago
> he points out that a one-hour meeting with eight people isn’t really a one-hour meeting at all; it’s a meeting that just consumed eight hours of productive time from your team
I still think this is an underestimate.
Odds are people were working on something before the meeting and stopped just a bit early to get their notes together or read that email chain or whatever. Count on at least 5 minutes but assume more like 15. And then after the meeting people collect their notes, head back to their desks, and then to read the recap after. Another 15 minutes is likely.
So that 1 hour meeting just became 1.5+ hours times 8 people.
What a waste.
- matwood 10y agoI think a better point is to simply say cut all the bullshit. Bullshit work is just as bad if not worse than bullshit meetings. Programmers hate bullshit meetings but many will happily do bullshit work and change over the whole project to a new, flavor of the week js framework. Sometimes meetings are required, just like sometimes changing frameworks is required. The skill is separating the required from the bullshit.
- caseysoftware 10y agoMy rule: No agenda, no attenda. (I didn't come up with it.)
- bmm6o 10y agoUgh, yes. To be fair, running a meeting well is an acquired skill. It's just that it's never taught and nobody realizes that they run shitty, inefficient meetings.
- acedinlowball 10y agoMy rule: Call going to take longer than 2 minutes? Send me an email. I don't waste my time talking to people when I could be working. Personal preference, I know not everyone will agree with it.
- thesmallestcat 10y agoLol, anybody who needs to tack 30mins just to get their shit together for a meeting should go work for Yahoo! or something. The reality is that everybody brought their laptops to the meeting and many are passively if not actively working. And it's not like attendees were all going to be busting their asses for an hour straight otherwise. Meetings are actually helpful, but it's no good if you're working with a bunch of idiots who see it as break time.
- tehlike 10y agoThe mental cost is high.
- pc86 10y ago> The reality is that everybody brought their laptops to the meeting and many are passively if not actively working. Working on your laptop while you're in a meeting is one of the most rude behaviors possible. If you have something more important than the meeting, decline the invite. If you're too busy, decline the invite. If you're not going to be utilized for enough of the meeting for it to be useful to you, decline the invite. Don't be that asshole in the back responding to emails or working on some unrelated project and not listening to what's going on.
- mipmap04 10y agoThis great advice - especially for new engineers. An outlook invite doesn't trump more important tasks. If you need to be working at that time, decline the invite and send a note back saying you can't make it due to other responsibilities. It's better to miss the meeting than to be at the meeting and look like you don't care about the conversation.
- zbuf 10y agoDon't worry, we can add this guy into the equation too. The assclown in the meeting on his laptop is generally operating at between 0 and 50% efficiency; about 25% on Google Chat and 25% in the meeting asking questions that have already been answered. Let's be generous and say 50%, but its probably less. Now, that's 1.5 hours lost in the meeting plus preparation, but the meeting needs twice as much time to get the same done so that's 2.5 hours now times 8 people per meeting. It's probably exponential though, since laptop people have to talk to other laptop people in the meeting at only 0.5 efficiency. So its probably more like 0.5 to the power of the number of people on their laptops.
- intoverflow2 10y agoIs every bum-on-seat-hour ACTUALLY valuable? Maybe in a sweatshop....
- overcast 10y agoThey are valuable when you're paying them.
- BjoernKW 10y agoUnfortunately, this misconception or perhaps misguided idea of the value you get when paying for work is still surprisingly common today. Yes, for lack of a more accurate measure work is generally measured in "hours spent". However, as an employer or as a client, what you actually want is not someone's wasted hours but the business value created during those hours. Insisting on someone filling an office chair just because you paid him to do so seems petty. It's almost this liege lord kind of thinking comically displayed in Dilbert where the people you pay to play "butts in seats" are your part-time serfs to do with as you please.
- overcast 10y agoWe're talking about wasting time(money) in meetings.
- Arnt 10y agoNo. But >0 of the 8 people involved in the example would've spent a productive hour if the meeting hadn't intervened.
- aidanf 10y agoAdd to that the fact that the meeting breaks up everyones day, making it more difficult for attendees to have long uninterrupted periods of deep, concentrated work.
- Cthulhu_ 10y agoMind you, alignment before said work is important. I had a colleague that started at an assignment the same day I did. We had an onboarding day (lots of stuff to explain), and only a few hours in he was rubbing his hands asking when he could start coding. But there wasn't anything to code yet, or if there was, that wasn't explained to him yet, so, ???? Morale: don't write code if there's no clear "what to build".
- dj-wonk 10y agoEating also takes time and breaks up people's days. So should not eat? Some of the debate I'm seeing here is lacking synthesis of the tradeoffs. First, getting people to communicate is essential (a collective activity). Second, giving individuals time to work productively is essential. Some work is done best solo, some is done best collaboratively. The key is intelligently striking a balance.
- garrickvanburen 10y agoThis. It's the pre- and post- transitions that are the most invisible and harmful. I think 15min is conservative, in my experience 2+ hrs for a 1hr meeting is average.
- electriclove 10y agoWhat about an 8 hour meeting with 25 people? Sadly, this is not an exaggeration...
- dclowd9901 10y agoI know it's not, for we had an 8 hour meeting with 50 people -- the entire dev team.
- corecoder 10y agoDid the meeting have any positive outcomes?
- logfromblammo 10y agoEveryone is now trained on the department-wide foobar system that is expected to save 200 man-hours each year. No, don't do the math! Stop doing the math! Pencils down!
- dclowd9901 10y agoThe goal was to plan a milestone for the end of the next 8 weeks. Since progress at software orgs is about as predictable as weather, I'll leave it to your imagination how effective these meetings were at mapping work.