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The individual meetings aren't a big interruption on their own, but their scheduleing is usually the problem. I frequently will have half hour meetings in a day
by lovich 9y ago
The individual meetings aren't a big interruption on their own, but their scheduleing is usually the problem. I frequently will have half hour meetings in a day but sprinkled throughout the day, which means I am always just getting back into the zone when trying to work.
When you combine that with coworker interruptions and the need to eat I can end up with an entire day where I can't solve anything more than trivial problems.
I can always stay late or work on the weekends but I don't really have any desire to eat into my free time because management wants to constantly hear updates from me every day about how the very work they are interrupting is going
- softawre 9y agoHave you tried telling management that them asking for updates is slowing the work down? You can't expect them to read your mind.
- lovich 9y agoThe people calling the meetings don't have any of their goals tied to engineering productivity and the issue isn't big enough in managements view to come in and deal with it. The issue has been brought before and ignored. It's one of the perils of being in a cost center
- mitchty 9y agoI find it easier to just block off 4 hour chunks of my day as a way to convey: I'm only working during these times no meetings. In manager land a block of free time is fair game, so play by those rules and make your own meeting with work. When any manager asks why you just tell them and explain. Seems to work fine.
- gobrarian 9y agoI have. I actually provided hard data on how daily status updates were impacting the project schedule. They didn't care. Didn't stay there long.
- smileysteve 9y agoThis is one of my big stressors right now. A Product asks the dev manager how soon something can get done, so he urgently messages me asking for an eta. At a similar time, a product person messages me asking for the same thing. And this is after the work is planned, pointed, and ready to work. Worst of all, at the same time my product team is asking an eta, they're working with the marketing team to change the story!