5 ms·

At my company we have weekly all-hands meetings. It lasts about an hour as ~15 people take turns giving updates. I’d say 95% of this meeting is just verbalizing

by minton 9y ago

At my company we have weekly all-hands meetings. It lasts about an hour as ~15 people take turns giving updates. I’d say 95% of this meeting is just verbalizing the kanban board. I’d say 80-90% of the meeting isn’t applicable to most attendees except the owner who needs to be aware of everything. I work remote so I attend via a slack call. I just mute my mic and keep working until my department comes up. The on-site folks have to just sit at the conference table.

colanderman 9y ago
Lucky. We do that every day. (20-minute daily "standup" of 10 people following the format you describe, in addition to once-weekly 30-person status meeting. It's absurd.)
- firepoet 9y ago
  If people aren't getting value from a meeting, they should stop doing it. Or reflect on why they were doing it in the first place. Talk about it at retrospective! Or sooner! You do have those, right? :-) I once quit a job and when my boss asked why I was quitting it was the lack of retrospectives. The following week we had a retrospective, and I stuck around for a while longer. That's how much I believe in it. Of course, that company went from upstart to dominating its market in 5 years. Who knows if the fact that the whole company started constantly tuning its process helped? I'd like to think it did..
- samnwa 9y ago
  Maybe you think there is no value, but don't realize the information you or others glean from the meeting pays off. Perhaps think about what value could come from these meetings and then determine whether you are getting it.
  - colanderman 9y ago
    The psychological toll of being held to recount and justify my actions of the past 24 hours, every single day, is wholly demoralizing. I'm working on the same god-damn thing I was the day before, and the day before that. Everyone knows that, and they can look at Jira if they forget. If they need me to unblock them, they can walk over to me. (It's a fucking open office, so it's not like I can hide.) If they don't know they need me to unblock them, e-mail exists. I don't feel a need to share each trial and success of my past 24h, but maybe some people do? We're adults. If we can't be trusted to focus on work or take initiative to solve our own problems, management should reconsider their hiring strategy.
- jmulho 9y ago
  In the past few years I have experienced a full spectrum of meeting philosophies. At one point I was required to attend 25 standups per week! I cried mercy and got it reduced to 15. It was still miserable. Mostly I reported that I accomplished nothing since yesterday, and if you really need something done today, see me after 5PM. My current meeting schedule is as follows: a) once a week, 30 minutes with my manager, b) once every two weeks, one hour with my team, c) once a month, 30 minutes with the whole company. Somehow work still gets done without all the meetings. Or wait... work gets done when people are not in meetings! What might be surprising is that in the environment with fewer meetings there is also less chaos, less confusion, fewer mistakes, fewer disasters, and less stress.
philipodonnell 9y ago
I'm not a software engineer, but isn't the idea that if everyone is sharing their progress and challenges then others who had similar challenges on previous projects can voice their suggestions? It seems like "mute my mic and keep working until my department comes up" is why the meetings seem so pointless, because you aren't listening to other team's challenges and providing input? Then again, I could be romanticizing these meetings and maybe at your company unsolicited feedback is discouraged, so I don't want to project that onto you, but I always though that was the _idea_ of the daily/weekly standup?
- dfischer 9y ago
  The overall argument against it is that all the information is already reflected in the ticketing system and if anything had to be resolved you can do it 1:1 rather than wasting everyone’s time.
  - philipodonnell 9y ago
    That sort of assumes that you know who to talk to. I was thinking more about the case of "here's how we are doing it" and someone you wouldn't have thought to ask saying "oh, we tried to do that at [x] last year and it didn't work because [a], [b], [c]".
    - dagw 9y ago
      But then to ensure that that 'right' unknown person is at the meeting you basically have to invite the whole company. Much better to send out a quick "hey, anybody done any work with Monte Carlo simulations before" on the company mailing list. Maybe twice a year you can have a big 'all-hands' all day work shop where you go through and discuss major long term issues.
- dagw 9y ago
  isn't the idea that if everyone is sharing their progress and challenges then others who had similar challenges on previous projects can voice their suggestions? At least in my experience, 90% of the time there aren't any 'useful' challenges being presented. Mostly it's stuff like "Dave was sick last week so we're a bit behind", "ticket #447 was much trickier than we expected, but we've solved it now" or "We're still waiting for the client to send us the updated data files". The actual technical challenges are almost always hashed out in smaller ad hoc meetings among the relevant people. And even when a 'real' challenge does get aired it's often of such a specialized nature that only 2-3 people have anything useful to add and it's much better for them to have a separate meeting. So it's not that feedback is discouraged, it's that there is hardly anything at the meeting to give constructive feedback on, and any feedback I can give has already been given days ago in one those above mentioned ad hoc meetings. And in the very very rare event that someone has a challenge that is big enough and generic enough that it's reasonable to assume that the whole team will have something productive to add then that is a unique enough event that it's worth scheduling a specific meeting just for that.
closed 9y ago
I just wear wireless headphones and tidy my room during big meetings. It's still easy to pay attention, and takes care of feeling restless during irrelevant parts. In a sense, being in the conference room is asking people to be (ostensibly) 100% on during the whole meeting, which seems like a huge mental drain.
- minton 9y ago
  I love this idea but the four remote people are on a slack video call and projected to the big screen in the conference room. I can't imagine the response if I was seen walking around in the background cleaning stuff up.
  - tomsthumb 9y ago
    Say your connection is rough and the quality is cutting so you’re just going to audio only?
  - duckwheat 9y ago
    Most of the people on my team have uninstalled their built in webcams for this exact reason.
dfischer 9y ago
I always like to total the hours of every meeting with actual cost. It’s obscene when there’s no value.
duckwheat 9y ago
We do this every morning at 8am sharp for 30 minutes. I finally just decided not to attend as the inertia from just sitting there was killing my morning productivity.
sytse 9y ago
Exactly, if people start multitasking at meetings giving the meeting their full attention is probably not a good way to spend their time. Trust people to assign their attention as they please and measure results, not hours.

by minton 9y ago

colanderman 9y ago

Lucky. We do that every day. (20-minute daily "standup" of 10 people following the format you describe, in addition to once-weekly 30-person status meeting. It's absurd.)

firepoet 9y ago
If people aren't getting value from a meeting, they should stop doing it. Or reflect on why they were doing it in the first place. Talk about it at retrospective! Or sooner! You do have those, right? :-) I once quit a job and when my boss asked why I was quitting it was the lack of retrospectives. The following week we had a retrospective, and I stuck around for a while longer. That's how much I believe in it. Of course, that company went from upstart to dominating its market in 5 years. Who knows if the fact that the whole company started constantly tuning its process helped? I'd like to think it did..
samnwa 9y ago
Maybe you think there is no value, but don't realize the information you or others glean from the meeting pays off. Perhaps think about what value could come from these meetings and then determine whether you are getting it.
- colanderman 9y ago
  The psychological toll of being held to recount and justify my actions of the past 24 hours, every single day, is wholly demoralizing. I'm working on the same god-damn thing I was the day before, and the day before that. Everyone knows that, and they can look at Jira if they forget. If they need me to unblock them, they can walk over to me. (It's a fucking open office, so it's not like I can hide.) If they don't know they need me to unblock them, e-mail exists. I don't feel a need to share each trial and success of my past 24h, but maybe some people do? We're adults. If we can't be trusted to focus on work or take initiative to solve our own problems, management should reconsider their hiring strategy.
jmulho 9y ago
In the past few years I have experienced a full spectrum of meeting philosophies. At one point I was required to attend 25 standups per week! I cried mercy and got it reduced to 15. It was still miserable. Mostly I reported that I accomplished nothing since yesterday, and if you really need something done today, see me after 5PM. My current meeting schedule is as follows: a) once a week, 30 minutes with my manager, b) once every two weeks, one hour with my team, c) once a month, 30 minutes with the whole company. Somehow work still gets done without all the meetings. Or wait... work gets done when people are not in meetings! What might be surprising is that in the environment with fewer meetings there is also less chaos, less confusion, fewer mistakes, fewer disasters, and less stress.

philipodonnell 9y ago

I'm not a software engineer, but isn't the idea that if everyone is sharing their progress and challenges then others who had similar challenges on previous projects can voice their suggestions? It seems like "mute my mic and keep working until my department comes up" is why the meetings seem so pointless, because you aren't listening to other team's challenges and providing input? Then again, I could be romanticizing these meetings and maybe at your company unsolicited feedback is discouraged, so I don't want to project that onto you, but I always though that was the _idea_ of the daily/weekly standup?

dfischer 9y ago
The overall argument against it is that all the information is already reflected in the ticketing system and if anything had to be resolved you can do it 1:1 rather than wasting everyone’s time.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  That sort of assumes that you know who to talk to. I was thinking more about the case of "here's how we are doing it" and someone you wouldn't have thought to ask saying "oh, we tried to do that at [x] last year and it didn't work because [a], [b], [c]".
  - dagw 9y ago
    But then to ensure that that 'right' unknown person is at the meeting you basically have to invite the whole company. Much better to send out a quick "hey, anybody done any work with Monte Carlo simulations before" on the company mailing list. Maybe twice a year you can have a big 'all-hands' all day work shop where you go through and discuss major long term issues.
dagw 9y ago
isn't the idea that if everyone is sharing their progress and challenges then others who had similar challenges on previous projects can voice their suggestions? At least in my experience, 90% of the time there aren't any 'useful' challenges being presented. Mostly it's stuff like "Dave was sick last week so we're a bit behind", "ticket #447 was much trickier than we expected, but we've solved it now" or "We're still waiting for the client to send us the updated data files". The actual technical challenges are almost always hashed out in smaller ad hoc meetings among the relevant people. And even when a 'real' challenge does get aired it's often of such a specialized nature that only 2-3 people have anything useful to add and it's much better for them to have a separate meeting. So it's not that feedback is discouraged, it's that there is hardly anything at the meeting to give constructive feedback on, and any feedback I can give has already been given days ago in one those above mentioned ad hoc meetings. And in the very very rare event that someone has a challenge that is big enough and generic enough that it's reasonable to assume that the whole team will have something productive to add then that is a unique enough event that it's worth scheduling a specific meeting just for that.

closed 9y ago

I just wear wireless headphones and tidy my room during big meetings. It's still easy to pay attention, and takes care of feeling restless during irrelevant parts. In a sense, being in the conference room is asking people to be (ostensibly) 100% on during the whole meeting, which seems like a huge mental drain.

minton 9y ago
I love this idea but the four remote people are on a slack video call and projected to the big screen in the conference room. I can't imagine the response if I was seen walking around in the background cleaning stuff up.
- tomsthumb 9y ago
  Say your connection is rough and the quality is cutting so you’re just going to audio only?
- duckwheat 9y ago
  Most of the people on my team have uninstalled their built in webcams for this exact reason.

dfischer 9y ago

I always like to total the hours of every meeting with actual cost. It’s obscene when there’s no value.

duckwheat 9y ago

We do this every morning at 8am sharp for 30 minutes. I finally just decided not to attend as the inertia from just sitting there was killing my morning productivity.

sytse 9y ago

Exactly, if people start multitasking at meetings giving the meeting their full attention is probably not a good way to spend their time. Trust people to assign their attention as they please and measure results, not hours.