7 ms·

Its the lack of consecutive days off, 2 is not enough. 3 would really be a change. I bet I would accomplish just as much during the week as I do now, workplaces

Its the lack of consecutive days off, 2 is not enough. 3 would really be a change. I bet I would accomplish just as much during the week as I do now, workplaces would just have to reduce the number of useless meetings. I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. Kill the meetings, my code generation would be through the roof. There are several things wrong with the American knowledge work place. Trapping 10 - 15 people on calls for half their day is a huge waste of resources and productivity and leads to less work delivered and more stress overall. Cut my meetings in half and give me Friday, Saturday and Sunday off and I will show you a 5x developer.

jasonpeacock 3y ago
If you're not a presenter or decision maker, then decline the meeting and say "If there's something I need to do as a result of this meeting please let me know". If you're still forced to attend then update the development schedule to reflect the impact of that time. Managers can't change physics no matter how much they want - you're either writing code or attending meetings, not both.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  They believe what they feel, and they feel like the physics behave differently than they actually do.
greymalik 3y ago
More code isn’t better. As an engineering manager I don’t want 5x as many lines of code. I want the code you work on to be solving the right problems. Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings. That's the idea, but does it work in practice? From what I can see, very little of that takes place in actual meetings. It takes place in emails and chats, because meetings don't allow you the time or space to really think about the issues.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Very rarely does that happen during meetings, in my experience it happens async during RFCs, pull requests, and chat conversations. Fostering async communication is slow productivity to me, and it results in better outcomes than forcing decisions in meetings.
- srcreigh 3y ago
  This isn’t really what tends to happen in meetings ime. Usually the problem is well understood and the meetings are spent with architecture types micromanaging the implementation of the solution.
- goostavos 3y ago
  I don't think more meeting are the solution here. Most meetings are a complete and utter waste of time. They meander, they lack focus, and beget more meetings as a result. I am obsessive about correctness, I want to build the right thing, but meeting culture is fundamentally broken. It's faux productivity. Humans getting together on a call -- often many of whom have no real stake in the game -- is just about the slowest way possible to get alignment on something. And, more often than not, that alignment ends up wrong, because spoken word sucks at precision -- even when aided by Word / Excel. I've become increasingly bullish on using formal methods for business requirements. The dev side can spent time modeling their understanding of the problem, then use small *focused* meetings with the business to move that understanding of the current model forward. tbh, my experimenting with this approach is still early. But, initial results are really promising. It feels really good to be able to concretely model (and machine check!) something amongst a small group, and then only schedule/attend a meeting when you need to confirm that your invariant are correct.
  - engagthe 3y ago
    I agree! I do think if you cut ALL meetings, you may miss out on some important relationship building stuff that is helpful when necessary conflict arises. Formalizing business requirement gathering may help reduce conflict, which is great, but you inevitably will have some. That said, I don’t think meetings are a good way to build relationships or trust, and there are more efficient and enjoyable ways to do that! If in person, at least go for a walk, get some food together, talk about hobbies, etc. Give some freedom to “waste time” just getting to know people, especially if the relationships will come in handy later! If you kill unnecessary meetings, you should have plenty of time for this! People need down time to de-stress, and to recharge, but meetings are not the way.
    - re-thc 3y ago
      No 1 says you have to have the meeting in the meeting room. You could do it in a cafe or elsewhere. Not everything has to be so strict. Depends on your team and environment.
- closeparen 3y ago
  This almost never happens in official scheduled meetings or in the presence of any kind of manager. Instead it takes place randomly around the office, in Slack chats that escalate to ad-hoc Zoom calls, in documents and their comment threads, in putting eyes and hands on the actual product (underrated!), or in deep-diving data.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  This is not accomplished by holding developers in 15+ people meetings over and over again. Opening my calendar and seeing that I have 8 or 9 30+ minute meetings means I am going to get nothing accomplished today due to context switching. Its every day. I have almost no 2 - 3 hour periods where I can just focus
WrtCdEvrydy 3y ago
>I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. The problem is that meetings are considered work and there's no output from those other than long term planning that can't be measured day to day.
- Bang2Bay 3y ago
  it is really odd to only discuss long term plans in a meeting. Meetings help individuals present their idea/code and reviewer to critically/loudly think about the solutions. If that does not happen, thinking happening offline is not likely.
JohnFen 3y ago
I know that I would much prefer to work 4 10 hour days than 5 8 hour days. I want to have as many days in a row as I can that I don't have to give to an employer.
- sph 3y ago
  Hear me out. 40 hours dedicated to your employer, however you slice them, is modern slavery. Why the hell are we creating all this technology to slave even more, with only energy to drool in front of Netflix and repeat the next day? People should have the time to explore their passions, projects and families more than a couple hours every day. Not dedicate half of their waking life, their mental and physical prime, to someone else's idea for food money. Something snapped for me the past few years, but I'd rather eat ramen, than get $250k a year and expected to be at my employer's beck and call 8am-5pm. Go be an hungry artist. Go work for yourself on the things you care about. The fact that pretty much no one seems to see anything wrong with this terrifies me. Being a corporate drone has become the norm.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    Wow, 250k a year to go to work 8-5 is “modern slavery”. On a bit of a high horse there.
    - janalsncm 3y ago
      250k is peanuts compared to the value that developer creates for the company.
      - sph 3y ago
        "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I read HN on company time."
    - sph 3y ago
      Slavery is quite a loaded word, agreed. My point is your time on this Earth is more valuable than $250k. It is not being a slave, but it is not being a free man either. There are people in abject poverty that do not have to ask for permission to anyone to spend two weeks doing whatever they want, or to end the day early today. I do not believe freedom is one-dimensional, on one side the Egyptian slave, on the other, the FAANG engineer. The latter has only a theoretical ownership of their time, but in reality, to keep a roof over their head, society pretty much favours only one choice: As much time as you can give, for as little money as you would take.
rozap 3y ago
I halfway agree, but I think at some point most people hit diminishing returns. I went from a regular job at a medium large company (though I didn't have 4 hours of meetings each day...) to a job where there are 4 people and none of the software ceremony. I definitely produce a lot more code, but I found that the limiting factor is that writing code is just more mentally draining than sitting in meetings which aren't productive. I get more done quicker, but hit a wall sooner. Fortunately there's no pressure to fill up the rest of the day with fluff just to maintain the illusion of productivity. Overall it's a huge win, but I don't think it's totally linear for me.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
Picking up traction. https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/countries-that-are-embracing-or-experimenting-with-a-4-day-workweek.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/countries-that-are-embracing... https://www.google.com/search?q=4+day+week+pilot https://www.google.com/search?q=4+day+week+pilot https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=4%20day%20week&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
mlsu 3y ago
My theory is that most people don't actually want to get anything done, they just want to hang out. Meetings is how you just hang out. They want to just hang out at work because work is a very convenient and structured social apparatus with very well defined rules, boundaries, and hierarchies -- in a world where such things are becoming more and more rare.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jasonpeacock 3y ago

If you're not a presenter or decision maker, then decline the meeting and say "If there's something I need to do as a result of this meeting please let me know". If you're still forced to attend then update the development schedule to reflect the impact of that time. Managers can't change physics no matter how much they want - you're either writing code or attending meetings, not both.

datavirtue 3y ago
They believe what they feel, and they feel like the physics behave differently than they actually do.

greymalik 3y ago

More code isn’t better. As an engineering manager I don’t want 5x as many lines of code. I want the code you work on to be solving the right problems. Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings. That's the idea, but does it work in practice? From what I can see, very little of that takes place in actual meetings. It takes place in emails and chats, because meetings don't allow you the time or space to really think about the issues.
candiddevmike 3y ago
Very rarely does that happen during meetings, in my experience it happens async during RFCs, pull requests, and chat conversations. Fostering async communication is slow productivity to me, and it results in better outcomes than forcing decisions in meetings.
srcreigh 3y ago
This isn’t really what tends to happen in meetings ime. Usually the problem is well understood and the meetings are spent with architecture types micromanaging the implementation of the solution.
goostavos 3y ago
I don't think more meeting are the solution here. Most meetings are a complete and utter waste of time. They meander, they lack focus, and beget more meetings as a result. I am obsessive about correctness, I want to build the right thing, but meeting culture is fundamentally broken. It's faux productivity. Humans getting together on a call -- often many of whom have no real stake in the game -- is just about the slowest way possible to get alignment on something. And, more often than not, that alignment ends up wrong, because spoken word sucks at precision -- even when aided by Word / Excel. I've become increasingly bullish on using formal methods for business requirements. The dev side can spent time modeling their understanding of the problem, then use small *focused* meetings with the business to move that understanding of the current model forward. tbh, my experimenting with this approach is still early. But, initial results are really promising. It feels really good to be able to concretely model (and machine check!) something amongst a small group, and then only schedule/attend a meeting when you need to confirm that your invariant are correct.
- engagthe 3y ago
  I agree! I do think if you cut ALL meetings, you may miss out on some important relationship building stuff that is helpful when necessary conflict arises. Formalizing business requirement gathering may help reduce conflict, which is great, but you inevitably will have some. That said, I don’t think meetings are a good way to build relationships or trust, and there are more efficient and enjoyable ways to do that! If in person, at least go for a walk, get some food together, talk about hobbies, etc. Give some freedom to “waste time” just getting to know people, especially if the relationships will come in handy later! If you kill unnecessary meetings, you should have plenty of time for this! People need down time to de-stress, and to recharge, but meetings are not the way.
  - re-thc 3y ago
    No 1 says you have to have the meeting in the meeting room. You could do it in a cafe or elsewhere. Not everything has to be so strict. Depends on your team and environment.
closeparen 3y ago
This almost never happens in official scheduled meetings or in the presence of any kind of manager. Instead it takes place randomly around the office, in Slack chats that escalate to ad-hoc Zoom calls, in documents and their comment threads, in putting eyes and hands on the actual product (underrated!), or in deep-diving data.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wonderwonder 3y ago
This is not accomplished by holding developers in 15+ people meetings over and over again. Opening my calendar and seeing that I have 8 or 9 30+ minute meetings means I am going to get nothing accomplished today due to context switching. Its every day. I have almost no 2 - 3 hour periods where I can just focus

WrtCdEvrydy 3y ago

>I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. The problem is that meetings are considered work and there's no output from those other than long term planning that can't be measured day to day.

Bang2Bay 3y ago
it is really odd to only discuss long term plans in a meeting. Meetings help individuals present their idea/code and reviewer to critically/loudly think about the solutions. If that does not happen, thinking happening offline is not likely.

JohnFen 3y ago

I know that I would much prefer to work 4 10 hour days than 5 8 hour days. I want to have as many days in a row as I can that I don't have to give to an employer.

sph 3y ago
Hear me out. 40 hours dedicated to your employer, however you slice them, is modern slavery. Why the hell are we creating all this technology to slave even more, with only energy to drool in front of Netflix and repeat the next day? People should have the time to explore their passions, projects and families more than a couple hours every day. Not dedicate half of their waking life, their mental and physical prime, to someone else's idea for food money. Something snapped for me the past few years, but I'd rather eat ramen, than get $250k a year and expected to be at my employer's beck and call 8am-5pm. Go be an hungry artist. Go work for yourself on the things you care about. The fact that pretty much no one seems to see anything wrong with this terrifies me. Being a corporate drone has become the norm.
- mym1990 3y ago
  Wow, 250k a year to go to work 8-5 is “modern slavery”. On a bit of a high horse there.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    250k is peanuts compared to the value that developer creates for the company.
    - sph 3y ago
      "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I read HN on company time."
  - sph 3y ago
    Slavery is quite a loaded word, agreed. My point is your time on this Earth is more valuable than $250k. It is not being a slave, but it is not being a free man either. There are people in abject poverty that do not have to ask for permission to anyone to spend two weeks doing whatever they want, or to end the day early today. I do not believe freedom is one-dimensional, on one side the Egyptian slave, on the other, the FAANG engineer. The latter has only a theoretical ownership of their time, but in reality, to keep a roof over their head, society pretty much favours only one choice: As much time as you can give, for as little money as you would take.

rozap 3y ago

I halfway agree, but I think at some point most people hit diminishing returns. I went from a regular job at a medium large company (though I didn't have 4 hours of meetings each day...) to a job where there are 4 people and none of the software ceremony. I definitely produce a lot more code, but I found that the limiting factor is that writing code is just more mentally draining than sitting in meetings which aren't productive. I get more done quicker, but hit a wall sooner. Fortunately there's no pressure to fill up the rest of the day with fluff just to maintain the illusion of productivity. Overall it's a huge win, but I don't think it's totally linear for me.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Picking up traction. https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/countries-that-are-embracing-or-experimenting-with-a-4-day-workweek.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/countries-that-are-embracing... https://www.google.com/search?q=4+day+week+pilot https://www.google.com/search?q=4+day+week+pilot https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=4%20day%20week&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...

mlsu 3y ago

My theory is that most people don't actually want to get anything done, they just want to hang out. Meetings is how you just hang out. They want to just hang out at work because work is a very convenient and structured social apparatus with very well defined rules, boundaries, and hierarchies -- in a world where such things are becoming more and more rare.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]