4 ms·

>they scale well with number of members up to a point of four or so, where adding another participant generates more ideas than it costs time. That's the main

>they scale well with number of members up to a point of four or so, where adding another participant generates more ideas than it costs time. That's the main thing I come across. Most meetings are well over four people. And personally, I already don't deal well with more than 3 people as most people work on a vastly different wavelength than myself. Now consider all the "Agile" meetings are already 5+ people and often contain management types and people who are both higher on the chain of command and have no technical background either hogging the attention. Suddenly, most meetings I see become either a hybrid announcement + roll call, a "meeting" with ulterior motives (e.g. managers trying to measure "participation" as a way to grade employees) or a very rushed design-by-committee approach to solving something.

FeepingCreature 5y ago
Yeah we very rarely have that sort of management meeting, which is good cause they're useless.
ethbr0 5y ago
Meeting sizing is a good point. It feels like adding additional people is often done aggressively but thoughtlessly, so maybe the solution is to have a company-wide rule to counter-balance that tendency. If voice/video meetings could have no more than 4 participants unless (insert somewhat burdensome exception process), all participants would presumably consider more carefully who should be added.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  A more flexible rule that also might help a little would be to require a separate justification for the use of time to be filed for every single invitee. It's just like of the signup process on your landing page. Make things you want to happen as effortless as possible -> make things you want to happen less more effortful.
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    In an evil afterthought: If people still keep inviting to many others to meetings, make the filing of the justifications only possible using a special intranet page, and make your least capable intern code that page. That should sort it out. }:->
rtkaratekid 5y ago
I dislike when management decides to join a technical meeting randomly and then spends the whole time being confused and trying to get folks to explain something to them. It’s happened at every place I’ve worked so far. For the record I’m not saying they’re unintelligent, it’s just that explaining something like how a kernel module actually works to someone who doesn’t know what a kernel is tends to put a damper on the meeting if it takes 30+ minutes.
- dvtrn 5y ago
  A previous boss was like this. Couldn’t avail himself for any of the status updates when I tried to-dutifully-keep him informed on project status, but would then show up to my team planning meetings, be confused, or get upset when he found out we were either not where he expect us to be in terms of progress, or that a minor decision was made among the group that he wasn’t roped in on (but doesn’t require senior management approval or consent) Meanwhile in my “Sent” (aka “CYA”) folder…you can guess where this is going.

FeepingCreature 5y ago

Yeah we very rarely have that sort of management meeting, which is good cause they're useless.

ethbr0 5y ago

Meeting sizing is a good point. It feels like adding additional people is often done aggressively but thoughtlessly, so maybe the solution is to have a company-wide rule to counter-balance that tendency. If voice/video meetings could have no more than 4 participants unless (insert somewhat burdensome exception process), all participants would presumably consider more carefully who should be added.

_0ffh 5y ago
A more flexible rule that also might help a little would be to require a separate justification for the use of time to be filed for every single invitee. It's just like of the signup process on your landing page. Make things you want to happen as effortless as possible -> make things you want to happen less more effortful.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  In an evil afterthought: If people still keep inviting to many others to meetings, make the filing of the justifications only possible using a special intranet page, and make your least capable intern code that page. That should sort it out. }:->

rtkaratekid 5y ago

I dislike when management decides to join a technical meeting randomly and then spends the whole time being confused and trying to get folks to explain something to them. It’s happened at every place I’ve worked so far. For the record I’m not saying they’re unintelligent, it’s just that explaining something like how a kernel module actually works to someone who doesn’t know what a kernel is tends to put a damper on the meeting if it takes 30+ minutes.

dvtrn 5y ago
A previous boss was like this. Couldn’t avail himself for any of the status updates when I tried to-dutifully-keep him informed on project status, but would then show up to my team planning meetings, be confused, or get upset when he found out we were either not where he expect us to be in terms of progress, or that a minor decision was made among the group that he wasn’t roped in on (but doesn’t require senior management approval or consent) Meanwhile in my “Sent” (aka “CYA”) folder…you can guess where this is going.