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Brilliant idea actually. When people are paid to spend time, and with very little oversight on how they spend it, people tend to get lazy. I personally started
by tehlike 7y ago
Brilliant idea actually. When people are paid to spend time, and with very little oversight on how they spend it, people tend to get lazy.
I personally started to not go to meetings that fit certain patterns:
- is there a less senior, but capable engineer that can do it without me? If so, great. Lets make it their project [edit: this is to help them increase their impact]
- is there a weekly meeting that fits 'status checking' style? Do not go. I am mostly not needed anyway, and if i am they can reach out to me
- does the meeting involve >5 people? If so runaway, it cant be productive anyway (except if it is some sort of review with vps on project launch etc).
I try to be available and approchable anytime, and doing just the two above cuts my meetings by more than 50-60%.
For others, i try to ask an agenda and whether things can be resolved offline
Meeting creep, process creep are real things that get in the way of productivity. I can see how "showing" some monetary impact of having a useless meeting can help reduce it.
- throwaway2048 7y agoUnfortunately its very difficult to act unilaterally, for most people just not showing up to meetings is a good way to ensure you will never get a promotion, or worse, receive a "performance improvement plan" aka we are documenting a case to fire you with cause. Nobody applauds your productivity gains, they just think of you as a smug jerk that thinks your time is worth more than anyone else's. Same thing with leaving at 5pm sharp in many businesses, it doesn't matter if you outperform the rest of the office combined, you WILL be singled out and delt with.
- tehlike 7y agoMy case is a bit easier, as I was working in advertising, and it is easy to quantify the impact - which is kind of the point in the article (quantifying negative impact of a meeting, for example). Depending on your manager, they will also fight for reducing meetings to necessities only, and find ways to work more in harmony (for lack of a better word) instead of the relatively forced nature of meetings. For most solid engineers, 10 minutes chatting on IM/in person every now and then is more productive then weekly forced meetings (where everyone stares at their laptop). We came up with plenty of improvements where I pinged someone or they pinged me, and it was done soon after. Everyone knew their responsibility, and they did not hesitate to ask for help where they needed. However, your point does sound plausible, and very likely. When everyone is fine with status quo, the one that challenges it can be singled out.
- inlined 7y agoFTA this company docks you currency for staying late.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tarsinge 7y agoI agree with you if you naively do that isolated, but if you play the political game you can get more value for your productivity (like becoming an ambitious manager’s secret asset and then riding on their promotion and just having they back you up when you skip a meeting)
- tehlike 7y agoThat one i never could manage to do. I had often conflicted with my manager.
- purplezooey 7y agoCareful tho. If you don't show up at enough meetings and subtly tell everyone all about your own accomplishments and diminish those of others, people will ask, what does he/she do again? And you'll be put on the next RIF.
- tehlike 7y agoYou dont need to diminish others to prove your own. That is the key to a healthy org. I give a lot of praise to engineers when it is due, and tend to insist on taking things where i think its dull work (i personally feel sad punting on dull work, and try not to do it), so it works both ways. By skipping good chunk of meetings, i spare more time to eng, and hands on help.
- ken 7y agoOne could say you don't need to charge for conference rooms in a healthy org, either. Like a Sufficiently Smart Compiler, though, where do I find a Sufficiently Healthy Organization that every single employee is completely above politics?
- jonsen 7y agoRIF?? Rest in feace?
- DoreenMichele 7y agoI'm guessing: Reduction In Forces. Ie "You will be downsized."
- PeterStuer 7y agoI knew a guy that did exactly as you describe above. Probably most productive employee of the firm, solid tech skills. He's was let go after about 14 months of the above.
- H8crilA 7y agoWow, why? Also I suppose that's good for him, employee salaries are always forced down/up to the average of the company. So if you figure out you're really good at your company it's probably the time to find a higher paying job. And if you're bad you should cling on to that job.
- dsr_ 7y agoI can venture a guess. The point of a company is to do things that one person can't do by themselves. If you reject most of the coordinating activities, you've rejected the company. (And according to Coase, the other function of a company is to reduce the friction of making deals: if you need to negotiate a contract every time you want to get a programmer to do their job, you decrease the value of the programmer by the cost of the negotiation.)
- tehlike 7y agoWe do need people a few std deviation above the mean productivity. Leaps and breakthroughs happen because of them. So i would assume very strongly company is losing. I can also think managers (if not companies) should work on reducing the need to do more meetings.
- jimmaswell 7y agoMeetings aren't real coordinating activities. They're generally listening to a boss drone on about stuff that could have been said in an email for an hour and people asking pointless questions that mostly only pertain to themselves.
- tehlike 7y agoI imagine he still found a great job somewhere else.