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98% of meetings are useless for almost everyone in attendance, and the whole meeting could have probably been replaced with an email
by irishcoffee 8y ago
98% of meetings are useless for almost everyone in attendance, and the whole meeting could have probably been replaced with an email
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI'm not sure that is an unpopular opinion, quite the opposite in fact.
- irishcoffee 8y agoHeh, tell that to all the people that hold the meetings. I think it may be a popular opinion __here__ on hn
- maxxxxx 8y agoEven the people who hold the meetings often agree but they seem to think there is nothing that can be done. Same with open space. Most people agree they suck but somehow it's still the safe choice. "Nobody ever got fired for holding meetings" "Nobody ever got fired for creating an open space office"
- ThePadawan 8y agoI'm always surprised to see another person beat this dead horse. I've never worked in an environment was happy to see highly paid engineers sit idly in a meeting. No one has ever said "Yes sure we have the time and money to spend to have you be bored instead of productive". Obviously, YMMV - I simply want to express how I can in no way relate to the "bad guys" (management) in this scenario.
- dandare 8y agoDevelopers can be like small kids. They will complain about meetings or they will complain about not having the big picture, not being consulted, not having a say in whatever, etc. Irrelevant, unfocused or unprepared meetings are bad, but that is a truism.
- irishcoffee 8y agoOh my. Being a parent of small kids, not once have my kids complained about "not having the big picture" or "having a say in whatever, etc." I'm struggling to find the useful, productive substance part of your comment.
- orwin 8y agoWe do a weekly meeting every monday morning, and i think as long as you work remotly, you can be as productive as any other day while in a meeting. And if your manager is good, he will only get your attention back when needed. Actually, some of my best ideas/hacks came to me during seemingly boring (remote) meetings. I agree with you with non-remote meetings though, they are highly improductive to me.
- ryandrake 8y agoSince the opinions have to be unpopular... As far as E-mail and meetings go I've observed that: 1. The people who most vigorously argue things like "this meeting could be replaced with an E-mail"... tend to not read their E-mail. 2. The people who complain that they're always out of the loop are the ones that don't go to the meetings or read their E-mail. 3. The least productive/reliable people tend to be the ones that flake out on meetings and/or have 13,591 unread messages in their inbox. 4. I hate to interrupt people while they're "in the zone" but I'll do it after 2-3 un-answered E-mails/IMs over the course of a few days. A lot of times they'll get irritated and say something like "Why can't you just E-mail this to me instead of interrupting me?"