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I really wish the author didn't use such an inciteful title for his section on meetings. The title offers another catch phrase to avoid meetings. I'd much rathe

I really wish the author didn't use such an inciteful title for his section on meetings. The title offers another catch phrase to avoid meetings. I'd much rather have seen Zach focus more on his actual point: holding short, focused, and tiny meetings. I fear that his title, and other catch phrases like it, encourage siloing. Siloing is far more "fucking toxic".

famousactress 15y ago
Where did you pick up the fact that his actual point was to hold tiny focused meetings? Working asynchronously is pretty anti-meeting, and frankly it's totally independent of a culture that supports silos. I work in a very asynchronous culture right now. Very few meetings.. but that's not to say we don't communicate. We communicate very thoroughly. However short and focused they are, my definition of a meeting is a schedule block of (any size of) time where a number of people are expected to party on something and decide on some action. To extend Zach's metaphor, meetings are a communication mutex. They force a topic to be wrestled by a group of people at the lowest-common-denominator of pace. I think they're rarely the best or most efficient way to collaborate.
- jherdman 15y ago
  I'm reading a bit into his words, yes. Here's the part of interest: """You don’t have this problem with chat transcripts. Forcing people to reduce their otherwise rambling thoughts into concrete sentences helps focus discussion, too. We’ll have meetings at GitHub, but I can count the number of full “meetings” we’ve had in the last year and a half on one hand.""" The former bit implying that the focus of sentences helps, the latter bit implying to keep the membership of the meeting to only those required. Again: siloing is far more toxic than meetings in my experience. It's far too easy for a dev to wander down a path that has no value when operating in a silo. Agile tells us that we need to exist in a state of constant communication and feedback. This necessitates meeting with people in some fashion.
  - famousactress 15y ago
    Apologies, but my brain turns off when the word 'Agile' is used in a sentence in such a way that it could be comfortably replaced by the name of a deity. Anyways. Maybe semantics.. My points were just that meetings are basically awful, and that there's a distinction between communication and meetings... Meetings aren't the only form of communication.
  - daleharvey 15y ago
    they are on campfire, they are constantly in communication I echoed his sentiments in a post I wrote about working remotely - http://arandomurl.com/2011/09/03/working-remotely.html http://arandomurl.com/2011/09/03/working-remotely.html
  - randomdata 15y ago
    They haven't really eliminated meetings, they have changed the way meetings are conducted. Thanks to the technology, you can step out of a meeting at any time to have lunch or, you know, work without missing out on anything. As a result, meetings never need to end. I have worked under a similar model for almost a decade now. It comes with so many benefits over a traditional meeting that I am uncertain why any software development company would do it any other way.
- bguthrie 15y ago
  The trouble with working asynchronously is that you're relying on everyone to contribute their knowledge diligently. Github has a great culture and this works well for them. In places where it doesn't, brief standup-like meetings help get everyone on the same page at least once a day - a chance to say 'sup. The goal isn't to decide on anything, just to let everyone know where you're at.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Most engineers focus in meetings about "what I got". The reality is meetings should be about "what the organization gets". Sometimes an engineer may come away with nothing but the organization profited significantly. That said, too many meetings are intensely toxic for any company, and nothing is worse than working at a company that thinks meetings are "getting things done".
ellyagg 15y ago
Well, then you object to more than just the section head, right? Because he didn't suggest anywhere that he approved of short, focused, tiny meetings. As far as I can tell, he meant precisely what he said in the title.
masklinn 15y ago
> I'd much rather have seen Zach focus more on his actual point: holding short, focused, and tiny meetings. That is nowhere in sight in the post. In fact, the content of the section is even more damning than the title: > I tend to loathe meetings even more than 37signals. I despise them. > meetings pull you from doing actual work in order to talk about doing work. > meetings are utterly forgettable. Even if you take meeting notes, you can’t capture them all. Zach does not say he likes "short, focused and tiny meetings", Zach says he hates meetings as much as a human being can hate a concept.

famousactress 15y ago

Where did you pick up the fact that his actual point was to hold tiny focused meetings? Working asynchronously is pretty anti-meeting, and frankly it's totally independent of a culture that supports silos. I work in a very asynchronous culture right now. Very few meetings.. but that's not to say we don't communicate. We communicate very thoroughly. However short and focused they are, my definition of a meeting is a schedule block of (any size of) time where a number of people are expected to party on something and decide on some action. To extend Zach's metaphor, meetings are a communication mutex. They force a topic to be wrestled by a group of people at the lowest-common-denominator of pace. I think they're rarely the best or most efficient way to collaborate.

jherdman 15y ago
I'm reading a bit into his words, yes. Here's the part of interest: """You don’t have this problem with chat transcripts. Forcing people to reduce their otherwise rambling thoughts into concrete sentences helps focus discussion, too. We’ll have meetings at GitHub, but I can count the number of full “meetings” we’ve had in the last year and a half on one hand.""" The former bit implying that the focus of sentences helps, the latter bit implying to keep the membership of the meeting to only those required. Again: siloing is far more toxic than meetings in my experience. It's far too easy for a dev to wander down a path that has no value when operating in a silo. Agile tells us that we need to exist in a state of constant communication and feedback. This necessitates meeting with people in some fashion.
- famousactress 15y ago
  Apologies, but my brain turns off when the word 'Agile' is used in a sentence in such a way that it could be comfortably replaced by the name of a deity. Anyways. Maybe semantics.. My points were just that meetings are basically awful, and that there's a distinction between communication and meetings... Meetings aren't the only form of communication.
- daleharvey 15y ago
  they are on campfire, they are constantly in communication I echoed his sentiments in a post I wrote about working remotely - http://arandomurl.com/2011/09/03/working-remotely.html http://arandomurl.com/2011/09/03/working-remotely.html
- randomdata 15y ago
  They haven't really eliminated meetings, they have changed the way meetings are conducted. Thanks to the technology, you can step out of a meeting at any time to have lunch or, you know, work without missing out on anything. As a result, meetings never need to end. I have worked under a similar model for almost a decade now. It comes with so many benefits over a traditional meeting that I am uncertain why any software development company would do it any other way.
bguthrie 15y ago
The trouble with working asynchronously is that you're relying on everyone to contribute their knowledge diligently. Github has a great culture and this works well for them. In places where it doesn't, brief standup-like meetings help get everyone on the same page at least once a day - a chance to say 'sup. The goal isn't to decide on anything, just to let everyone know where you're at.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

Most engineers focus in meetings about "what I got". The reality is meetings should be about "what the organization gets". Sometimes an engineer may come away with nothing but the organization profited significantly. That said, too many meetings are intensely toxic for any company, and nothing is worse than working at a company that thinks meetings are "getting things done".

ellyagg 15y ago

Well, then you object to more than just the section head, right? Because he didn't suggest anywhere that he approved of short, focused, tiny meetings. As far as I can tell, he meant precisely what he said in the title.

masklinn 15y ago

> I'd much rather have seen Zach focus more on his actual point: holding short, focused, and tiny meetings. That is nowhere in sight in the post. In fact, the content of the section is even more damning than the title: > I tend to loathe meetings even more than 37signals. I despise them. > meetings pull you from doing actual work in order to talk about doing work. > meetings are utterly forgettable. Even if you take meeting notes, you can’t capture them all. Zach does not say he likes "short, focused and tiny meetings", Zach says he hates meetings as much as a human being can hate a concept.