4 ms·

I do software eng and at my work we have "meeting days" and "maker days". Maker days are supposed to be no meetings unless it's an emergency, while meeting days

I do software eng and at my work we have "meeting days" and "maker days". Maker days are supposed to be no meetings unless it's an emergency, while meeting days are just normal work days. Personally, I've found meeting days to be pretty much unbearable for working from home, while I love my maker days from home. Anything that requires collaboration of more than 2 or 3 people just sucks to do over Zoom, IMO, but being able to lock myself in a quiet room and turn off notifications is a godsend for writing code. In my experience, I've found that this seems to match up with the opinions of the people I know. The people who work in jobs that require a lot of meetings are completely burned out on WFH, while the people I know who are mainly individual contributiors absolutely love it. I'm curious if that is the experience others are having, but personally, it seems to me a good explanation why opinions on WFH seem to be all over the place.

op03 6y ago
Probably has something to with the Extrovert-Introvert personality spectrum. The reward mechanisms of Extrovert brains is tied to social contact. Introverts not so much. Whats required in creating good teams is understanding there is a spectrum and different people need different things to thrive.
saiya-jin 6y ago
Man, I wish we had similar culture. But multinational corp where IT is viewed as purely an annoying cost centre, every day is meeting day. On top of 100% project allocation (3 in parallel), which run side by side various maintenance/troubleshooting/support roles. On top of that any production issue takes first seat. I skip what I can, but there are limits. Recently tried pair programming, it was a joke. Or I wish it was, rather a frustrating experience for both parties. Maybe one day virtual reality will take it closer to real experience, but we were far away from that. I hate my work now more than ever. Meetings certainly don't help. Kind of death by thousand cuts.
- derwiki 6y ago
  If you haven't tried Live Share in VS Code, it might be worth a shot. It's not the same as a "perfect" pairing set up but it's certainly better than two people sitting at one keyboard/mouse or screensharing over Zoom.
- jackcviers3 6y ago
  If you do TDD, give ping pong pairing a try. One person writes a test, the other implements the test. Commit between non-passing test and passing implementation. Switch places, repeat. In this way you don't have to rely on controlling the ux of a remote machine and you can just rely on the screen sharing video and voice communication.
peruvian 6y ago
"Maker Days" sound like a great idea but they don't fit every company. At my place the eng department is far from the biggest team and we do a lot of cross-team work. No way the rest of the company (who do most of their work via meetings... somehow) would agree to have a day with no meetings at all.
- kjaftaedi 6y ago
  just block your calendar ahead of time. they can't book a meeting if you're not available.
  - ninkendo 6y ago
    They can and they do.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    That's... not true. It's often impossible to schedule a meeting with 5 people where there is a no-conflict time for anyone. The person scheduling (ideally) looks at people's calendars, guesses which meetings a person will be able to move (20-person OKR review no, 1-1 with peer yes), and tries to schedule at a time like that. So yes, anywhere I've worked, blocking your calendar doesn't magically get you out of meetings.
    - shard 6y ago
      Especially with distributed teams. When you try to have meetings with Europe and Asia at the same time, there's only a small window available that fits two of the groups (which every other meeting is fighting for), and the third group is going to have to suffer a midnight meeting. So meetings are scheduled with the time where most people can attend.
thewebcount 6y ago
I have a confession to make. I love doing meetings over video conferencing specifically because everyone hates them and it makes them get right to the point so they can get off of them as quickly as possible. There's far less chit chat about irrelevant stuff, or political talk, or whatever other nonsense is keeping me from getting work done. Yes, I hate the disconnects and freezes, and the half-second delay, and all that stuff. But if it makes my meetings short (and it does!) then I'll take it!
- haswell 6y ago
  Interestingly, I have not found the same to be true at all. I suspect this varies from org to org. I've noticed a marked increase in meeting pre-amble: - General checkins about how people are doing / holding up (mostly a positive thing) - Chitchat about the latest thing: new COVID restrictions, or a favorite restaurant closing, or "I finally braved a haircut" - Fires - The usual small chitchat about the weather, etc. I've interpreted this as folks feeling desperate for connection. Connection they'd usually get by being in the office. When I started typing this comment, I was trying to categorize the type of meeting where I've seen this happen, but it's actually pretty universal, ranging from: - Daily standups and other standing meetings with immediate team - Broader planning discussions - I've even seen this "personal interest" chatter from execs who are usually a bit more private. At times, it's nice to indulge in this. Over time, it's had a negative impact on productivity. It's hard to know how to react to it - on the one hand, it feels like people are in need, and this is their way of staying sane. On the flip side, there aren't very many hours in a day. Could be a company culture thing.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    I've been working from home for five years now, at remote only companies. One thing we do is start every all hands meeting with a personal update. Everyone gets a chance, if they want, to talk about something personal. A movie they saw, a kid's accomplishment, etc. But these updates are limited to the weekly all hands meeting. Other meetings just get right into it. It seems to be a good balance of getting to know your coworkers and not wasting too much time. In the grand scheme of things, it probably takes up less time than all the random water cooler chitchat that takes place in an office.
qsort 6y ago
I've been working from home since March and my experience matches yours exactly. In general, any task that requires you to allocate several hours of consecutive time with no interruptions (and coding is definitely like this) is much better from home. So much better in fact that I wish I could continue to work from home at least a couple of days a week even after covid is over! I suspect a part of this is due to the fact that developers/individual contributors are more used to using tools like git, ssh etc. that makes the transition almost seamless; my workflow is completely independent of even my machine, I could pick up any brand new laptop on amazon and I'd be productive within minutes. Maybe less familiarity with the technology stack is a significant source of additional attrition.

op03 6y ago

Probably has something to with the Extrovert-Introvert personality spectrum. The reward mechanisms of Extrovert brains is tied to social contact. Introverts not so much. Whats required in creating good teams is understanding there is a spectrum and different people need different things to thrive.

saiya-jin 6y ago

Man, I wish we had similar culture. But multinational corp where IT is viewed as purely an annoying cost centre, every day is meeting day. On top of 100% project allocation (3 in parallel), which run side by side various maintenance/troubleshooting/support roles. On top of that any production issue takes first seat. I skip what I can, but there are limits. Recently tried pair programming, it was a joke. Or I wish it was, rather a frustrating experience for both parties. Maybe one day virtual reality will take it closer to real experience, but we were far away from that. I hate my work now more than ever. Meetings certainly don't help. Kind of death by thousand cuts.

derwiki 6y ago
If you haven't tried Live Share in VS Code, it might be worth a shot. It's not the same as a "perfect" pairing set up but it's certainly better than two people sitting at one keyboard/mouse or screensharing over Zoom.
jackcviers3 6y ago
If you do TDD, give ping pong pairing a try. One person writes a test, the other implements the test. Commit between non-passing test and passing implementation. Switch places, repeat. In this way you don't have to rely on controlling the ux of a remote machine and you can just rely on the screen sharing video and voice communication.

peruvian 6y ago

"Maker Days" sound like a great idea but they don't fit every company. At my place the eng department is far from the biggest team and we do a lot of cross-team work. No way the rest of the company (who do most of their work via meetings... somehow) would agree to have a day with no meetings at all.

kjaftaedi 6y ago
just block your calendar ahead of time. they can't book a meeting if you're not available.
- ninkendo 6y ago
  They can and they do.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  That's... not true. It's often impossible to schedule a meeting with 5 people where there is a no-conflict time for anyone. The person scheduling (ideally) looks at people's calendars, guesses which meetings a person will be able to move (20-person OKR review no, 1-1 with peer yes), and tries to schedule at a time like that. So yes, anywhere I've worked, blocking your calendar doesn't magically get you out of meetings.
  - shard 6y ago
    Especially with distributed teams. When you try to have meetings with Europe and Asia at the same time, there's only a small window available that fits two of the groups (which every other meeting is fighting for), and the third group is going to have to suffer a midnight meeting. So meetings are scheduled with the time where most people can attend.

thewebcount 6y ago

I have a confession to make. I love doing meetings over video conferencing specifically because everyone hates them and it makes them get right to the point so they can get off of them as quickly as possible. There's far less chit chat about irrelevant stuff, or political talk, or whatever other nonsense is keeping me from getting work done. Yes, I hate the disconnects and freezes, and the half-second delay, and all that stuff. But if it makes my meetings short (and it does!) then I'll take it!

haswell 6y ago
Interestingly, I have not found the same to be true at all. I suspect this varies from org to org. I've noticed a marked increase in meeting pre-amble: - General checkins about how people are doing / holding up (mostly a positive thing) - Chitchat about the latest thing: new COVID restrictions, or a favorite restaurant closing, or "I finally braved a haircut" - Fires - The usual small chitchat about the weather, etc. I've interpreted this as folks feeling desperate for connection. Connection they'd usually get by being in the office. When I started typing this comment, I was trying to categorize the type of meeting where I've seen this happen, but it's actually pretty universal, ranging from: - Daily standups and other standing meetings with immediate team - Broader planning discussions - I've even seen this "personal interest" chatter from execs who are usually a bit more private. At times, it's nice to indulge in this. Over time, it's had a negative impact on productivity. It's hard to know how to react to it - on the one hand, it feels like people are in need, and this is their way of staying sane. On the flip side, there aren't very many hours in a day. Could be a company culture thing.
- jedberg 6y ago
  I've been working from home for five years now, at remote only companies. One thing we do is start every all hands meeting with a personal update. Everyone gets a chance, if they want, to talk about something personal. A movie they saw, a kid's accomplishment, etc. But these updates are limited to the weekly all hands meeting. Other meetings just get right into it. It seems to be a good balance of getting to know your coworkers and not wasting too much time. In the grand scheme of things, it probably takes up less time than all the random water cooler chitchat that takes place in an office.

qsort 6y ago

I've been working from home since March and my experience matches yours exactly. In general, any task that requires you to allocate several hours of consecutive time with no interruptions (and coding is definitely like this) is much better from home. So much better in fact that I wish I could continue to work from home at least a couple of days a week even after covid is over! I suspect a part of this is due to the fact that developers/individual contributors are more used to using tools like git, ssh etc. that makes the transition almost seamless; my workflow is completely independent of even my machine, I could pick up any brand new laptop on amazon and I'd be productive within minutes. Maybe less familiarity with the technology stack is a significant source of additional attrition.