4 ms·

The sight of a bunch of passive engineers shuffling off to a meeting they aren't needed at still makes me seethe. You have a professional obligation to say "no"

The sight of a bunch of passive engineers shuffling off to a meeting they aren't needed at still makes me seethe. You have a professional obligation to say "no" sometimes. Engineer and executive hours are not cheap. Every unnecessary person in a conference room is a gigantic waste of resources. Beyond three or four people, the marginal utility of adding another person to a meeting is almost certainly steeply negative. Exceptions are situations that require consensus, or where someone is observing to learn. The last team I worked on had regular 10+ person meetings that entire teams would shuffle off to. I started refusing to go to meetings with more than four other people in them (unless there was a very specific reason to be there). I felt it reduced distractions and waste. What bothers me even more than the meetings though are engineers who attend them repeatedly, then grumble quietly about how useless they are afterwards. Articulate a thoughtful "no." Get good at it, because you'll need to do it often if you want to be a good engineer.

thisisit 9y ago
I completely agree. People tend to be afraid of saying "no" to avoid offending people. And then there is the case of showing off in front of 10+ people. At my last job, people were spending nearly 2 hours each day in meetings. Each of these meetings required 1-2 hours of preparation. So, nearly 50% of the work week or 20 out of 40 hours were being lost. And most of these meetings were "updates" meetings. Update to Lead Engineer, then team, then VP etc. To top it off the manager believed in "face to face" interactions. So, all meetings happened via video conferencing. Whenever I explained on how it should be a lead engineer updating the manager and the manager updating to VP, I was given a strange look. How do we show off our achievements? They said. But it also meant I couldn't individually say "no". Every time I did that my manager received flurry of mails from other engineers on why I was given the "special" treatment of skipping these meetings.
- jknoepfler 9y ago
  It's a shame it's so ingrained in the culture there. I completely respect that in many situations one isn't permitted to refuse. The idea of showing off at meetings, as opposed to by shipping quality on time and documenting it is crazy.
- Yokohiii 9y ago
  That is beyond crazy. If I have more than 2h meetings a day my work is practically done. Bad meetings usually create internal discussions and dissipate discipline. Cost of bad meetings multiplies negatively.
walshemj 9y ago
There's a difference between not needed and not preparing properly for meetings
- valuearb 9y ago
  There is a principle, i believe parts of Apple do it, that whoever calls a meeting is responsible for - providing an agenda describing the purpose to attendees - taking notes - distributing action items after meeting identifying responsible parties for each item That way the meeting justifies its existence. The agenda explains why it’s necessary (or it doesn’t and people push back). Something is actually decided, the decision is tracked/communicated and if things don’t happen everyone knows who was responsible.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wpietri 9y ago
Yeah. I've consulted at too many places where actually programming is the lowest-priority activity. It's something that is supposed to be squeezed in around meetings that can be declared at any time by anybody. In college I worked in a factory, and there meetings were a) avoided, and b) carefully scheduled to maintain production. I've never understood why we don't treat more office work the same. My most productive times have been in shops with a strong pair programming culture, and I think that's partly because non-programmers are much more reluctant to interrupt two people doing something together than one person doing something alone. (Interestingly, other programmers would still sometimes interrupt, but they knew how to do it well. A quick question with a quick answer would merit an interruption; anything that was a longer time sink would get held until a break or the morning stand-up.)
valuearb 9y ago
Steve Jobs was famous for at the beginning of meetings asking people why they were there. Often when they were assistants/subordinates to a manager in the meeting. If they didn’t have information/knowledge needed to contribute to the discussion, Steve would say, “Thanks, but you aren’t needed, you can leave now”. I really admire him for that.

thisisit 9y ago

I completely agree. People tend to be afraid of saying "no" to avoid offending people. And then there is the case of showing off in front of 10+ people. At my last job, people were spending nearly 2 hours each day in meetings. Each of these meetings required 1-2 hours of preparation. So, nearly 50% of the work week or 20 out of 40 hours were being lost. And most of these meetings were "updates" meetings. Update to Lead Engineer, then team, then VP etc. To top it off the manager believed in "face to face" interactions. So, all meetings happened via video conferencing. Whenever I explained on how it should be a lead engineer updating the manager and the manager updating to VP, I was given a strange look. How do we show off our achievements? They said. But it also meant I couldn't individually say "no". Every time I did that my manager received flurry of mails from other engineers on why I was given the "special" treatment of skipping these meetings.

jknoepfler 9y ago
It's a shame it's so ingrained in the culture there. I completely respect that in many situations one isn't permitted to refuse. The idea of showing off at meetings, as opposed to by shipping quality on time and documenting it is crazy.
Yokohiii 9y ago
That is beyond crazy. If I have more than 2h meetings a day my work is practically done. Bad meetings usually create internal discussions and dissipate discipline. Cost of bad meetings multiplies negatively.

walshemj 9y ago

There's a difference between not needed and not preparing properly for meetings

valuearb 9y ago
There is a principle, i believe parts of Apple do it, that whoever calls a meeting is responsible for - providing an agenda describing the purpose to attendees - taking notes - distributing action items after meeting identifying responsible parties for each item That way the meeting justifies its existence. The agenda explains why it’s necessary (or it doesn’t and people push back). Something is actually decided, the decision is tracked/communicated and if things don’t happen everyone knows who was responsible.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wpietri 9y ago

Yeah. I've consulted at too many places where actually programming is the lowest-priority activity. It's something that is supposed to be squeezed in around meetings that can be declared at any time by anybody. In college I worked in a factory, and there meetings were a) avoided, and b) carefully scheduled to maintain production. I've never understood why we don't treat more office work the same. My most productive times have been in shops with a strong pair programming culture, and I think that's partly because non-programmers are much more reluctant to interrupt two people doing something together than one person doing something alone. (Interestingly, other programmers would still sometimes interrupt, but they knew how to do it well. A quick question with a quick answer would merit an interruption; anything that was a longer time sink would get held until a break or the morning stand-up.)

valuearb 9y ago

Steve Jobs was famous for at the beginning of meetings asking people why they were there. Often when they were assistants/subordinates to a manager in the meeting. If they didn’t have information/knowledge needed to contribute to the discussion, Steve would say, “Thanks, but you aren’t needed, you can leave now”. I really admire him for that.