3 ms·

For certain things, yes. For other things, no. For instance, I find "all hands" meetings at work to be a complete waste of time, except maybe for the possibil

by magduf 7y ago

For certain things, yes. For other things, no. For instance, I find "all hands" meetings at work to be a complete waste of time, except maybe for the possibility of socializing or getting a free lunch. I could learn everything I need to know from these meetings in a few minutes just by reading an email, instead of wasting an hour of my time listening to bosses drone on and on about stuff or show photos of their families and dogs. Basically, I think the key is latency. If you need to communicate two-way to work out issues, then you want low latency (because each response of yours depends on the other party's last response), so speech is quickest. (There's also texting, but that sucks because the data entry method is so slow; I don't know why so many people prefer it to talking, even for conducting intimate relationships.) However, if the communication is one-way (like your company disseminating some general information for all employees), then at least for me, reading is much, much faster than listening to someone talk.

thu2111 7y ago
I WFH all the time. I was able to design the product that our company now sells, write the initial code, hire the team that built it and sometimes manage some of them, all remotely. I dunno, the things I read about WFH imply that shouldn't have been possible but it was. I find almost all meetings to be a waste of time. Maybe 1:1s are the exception, but they're also pretty much optional - good to have a catch up with team members sometimes but if someone can't make it that day no big deal. The problem with meetings is that a well run meeting needs to have an agenda and ideally written minutes, I don't think anyone disputes that (except for casual 1:1 catch-ups which don't). So you end up writing anyway, or wish someone had. Without the writing aspect meetings are often poorly disciplined, achieve little, run over and end with an agreement to organise another meeting. In the end, work - the production of useful artifacts customers will buy - gets done alone. It doesn't get done in meetings with colleagues.

by magduf 7y ago

thu2111 7y ago

I WFH all the time. I was able to design the product that our company now sells, write the initial code, hire the team that built it and sometimes manage some of them, all remotely. I dunno, the things I read about WFH imply that shouldn't have been possible but it was. I find almost all meetings to be a waste of time. Maybe 1:1s are the exception, but they're also pretty much optional - good to have a catch up with team members sometimes but if someone can't make it that day no big deal. The problem with meetings is that a well run meeting needs to have an agenda and ideally written minutes, I don't think anyone disputes that (except for casual 1:1 catch-ups which don't). So you end up writing anyway, or wish someone had. Without the writing aspect meetings are often poorly disciplined, achieve little, run over and end with an agreement to organise another meeting. In the end, work - the production of useful artifacts customers will buy - gets done alone. It doesn't get done in meetings with colleagues.