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Hidden in here is the “reasonable default” change for meetings from 1 hour to 30 minutes. If you havent already done so, go and change your entire organization
by thinkingkong 5y ago
Hidden in here is the “reasonable default” change for meetings from 1 hour to 30 minutes.
If you havent already done so, go and change your entire organizations default meeting length to 30 minutes. Force people to justify why they need an hour. Still not sure why it isnt the default.
- FredPret 5y ago…or even 0 minutes!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dpeck 5y ago25 minutes and everything starts at either XX:05 or XX:35. People get to be human and do things like use the restroom, get a drink, or just take a breath in between meetings without being flustered and apologizing for being late.
- amoorthy 5y agoThe sentiment and logic here is good but I think all employees have to agree otherwise wastes some time for those folks who do show up on time. My personal observation is the timing matters less than the number of participants. More people usually equals less insights and more wasted time. One rule could be "if you can't emerge with an action item you shouldn't be here." But I'm not sure if that's practical as an organization grows and social/political relationships matter more.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoNot everyone takes an action item out of the meeting. Some people provide information to the meeting. But if you're not contributing or taking something away, you should go, yes.
- travisjungroth 5y agoI’ve seen early endings but not late starts. That seems way better.
- zaphod12 5y agoEveryone ignores early endings, late starts is so much better!
- Graffur 5y agoI don't even apologize for being late anymore.
- loloquwowndueo 5y agoI just sprinkle short events that show me as “busy” and start at odd offsets like :15 and :45 so I can have some blocks of time where I get to take a break from meetings and do some of the work that stems from those meetings (otherwise when the hell do I do the work). The weird offsets really confuse calendaring applications :) which always try to align things to :30 or :00.
- dpeck 5y agoJust block off times as “reserved” for work, and unapologetically so.
- CameronNemo 5y agoLast time I did that, a PM just ignored it.
- loloquwowndueo 5y agoThen you just say “no” to the meeting and don’t attend :)
- dimitrios1 5y agoExactly. Make your own schedule, or others will make it for you.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoThe anecdote said that they did make their own schedule but then someone made it for them anyway.
- tspike 5y agoIt sounds like they attempted to make their own schedule, but then acquiesced when faced with an inconsiderate ask.
- javiramos 5y agoAt MIT, all classes started 5 minutes after the scheduled time and ended 5 minutes before the scheduled time.
- Someone 5y agoSomething like that is fairly normal at universities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quarter_(class_timing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quarter_(class_timing...: “An academic quarter (localized into various languages in the countries where it is practiced[a]) is the quarter-hour (15 minute) discrepancy between the defined start time for a lecture or lesson ("per schema") and the actual starting time, at some universities in Europe including Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the United States.”
- viceroyalbean 5y agoThis was applied in 100% of classes at my university in Sweden. A 14-16 lecture would start at 14:15, take a break from 15-15:15 and end at 16. The practice was frequently applied in student union meetings and events.
- xwolfi 5y agoWhile in France they d start on time but the students would trickle down for 15 minutes. You can imagine our respective surprise when I had a german boss one day and I d arrive always 2 minutes late not understanding why it would be written on the meeting note as if it was a huge mega deal :D Complete disrespect for him, absolutely the norm for me :D He learned to be less angry and I learned to be less "late"
- saiya-jin 5y agoThis is so common... and a few kind words in the beginning would avoid any negative effect once and for all. Yet its so hard for so many folks
- mcot2 5y agoOr just cancel almost all meetings and do async communication. Works great.
- rjzzleep 5y agoI try to schedule them at 20 minutes, so that people have 10 minutes to prepare for the next meeting. If I'm on point that's usually enough. A lot of these organizations put status updates as meetings though, which is never necessary. There are a lot of better ways to send status updates.
- macjohnmcc 5y agoI only lost 2 hours to meetings yesterday give or take.
- kwdc 5y agoMake it 25 minutes instead. Now there's a break of time in-between allowing your brain to properly context switch so your night's sleep isn’t messed up.
- Graffur 5y agoThe only problem with this is that it frees your calendar so that other people can book things in. If something is booked for an hour but it can be wrapped up in 30 mins.. that gives 30 mins breathing room.
- steveBK123 5y agoDefinitely don't join an agile shop with 2hr ceremony BS meetings
- ipaddr 5y agoYour comment made me realize why burnout exists.
- steveBK123 5y agoIt's funny because we all think the grass is always greener and yet.. my most recent 2 job leads: * a firm that was demanding devs return to office already in January pre-vaccine, justifying it by paying for Ubers & doing PCR testing in office * a firm which in its job-spec explicitly listing that "8a-6p are standard hours" and "plus other hours as required for role / due to support / meetings out of region / some flexibility required" what a shitshow tech can be
- danjac 5y agoWe can push back by publicly shaming bad actors and ensuring they go to the back of the queue along with the firms with psychopathic interview processes when it comes to choosing tech talent at a time of high demand. Unionising would probably be better but for some reason a bad word around these parts...
- janandonly 5y agoMuch Good has come from unions. So why would that be a "bad word around these parts" ?
- mixedCase 5y agoBecause Much Evil has also come from unions, devs are in high demand, and unions are political structures instead of technical ones.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoIt would be awesome if every meeting had a scoreboard that displayed a running total of the cost of the meeting based on the salaries of the participants.
- jsilence 5y agoThat could be a plugin in OBS.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago> Force people to justify why they need an hour. Force people to justify why they need a meeting as well, have an agenda, keep a tight schedule, don't let people change the agenda or rant on. One thing I found in the scrum style meetings is that people love to be on the soapbox for their allotted time.
- tails4e 5y agoAnd try have meeting free zones. 8 half hour meetings spread over a day is nearly as bad as 8 hour meetings in terms of getting work done, 30 mins gaps only allows for easy tasks (email, etc), but not true engineering/deeper work.
- toyg 5y agoI feel 30 mins is often not enough to get things done, but if you give it an hour people get too "relaxed" or tune out. So the best approach would probably be to schedule 30min meetings that are always followed by 30min free time; so that everyone knows there is an urgency to be brief, but it's not the end of the world if you overrun 10mins. Otherwise you end up with back-to-back meetings and "I have to go, sorry", even if we're not actually done, or the 1h snoozefests. I think there is space for some software here, that could automatically tweak one's calendar to "block out" post-meeting time by a predetermined amount in Outlook (yes, don't try to pry people out of Outlook, you're not going to win).
- aliasEli 5y ago> So the best approach would probably be to schedule 30min > meetings that are always followed by 30min free time It seems better to have no free time between meetings. That way everybody is much more motivated to keep them to the allotted time. 30 min is much too short an interval to do serious technical work.
- rorykoehler 5y agoEven better make it 25 minutes to allow for transition time between meetings
- wly_cdgr 5y agoFor me, the most important thing isn't that meetings be short - they can be a good way to build relationships as well as get work done, after all. The most important thing is for meetings to be bunched up with no gaps at either the beginning or end of the day, and never added to the schedule outside of those blocks