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Looking down on, yes. Suffering nonsense meetings silently? No. My entire point was that there is a major difference between the two & that while the instinct
by photonerd 3y ago
Looking down on, yes. Suffering nonsense meetings silently? No.
My entire point was that there is a major difference between the two & that while the instinct to look down on others for this organizational symptom is immature, it’s not unfounded or without basis to highlight the issue: they’re blaming the wrong thing however.
And I often find that in those types of meeting communication & relationship building is the absolute last thing that is happening. Most of these meetings are CYA, checklist, type meetings.
Meetings that literally only exist to allow someone to demonstrate they had a meeting about something.
Worse, the actual communication that is happening is usually in side channels.
- ryan_lane 3y agoI'm guessing you're junior, or you'd have more control over these meetings, or have the ability to decline ones that you believed weren't going to be good use of your time. Having good meeting culture requires everyone involved to improve it. If you want meetings to be better, set them up, add an agenda and objectives, and run the meeting so that it's effective. If you can't run the meeting, if it doesn't have an agenda or objectives, ask the person who created it for them. Ask for action items at the end of the meeting, if no one is calling for them. If it's mostly status meetings, propose a better process to track and communicate status. If you're working through side channels, you're part of the problem. Calling people assholes, rather than improving the situation, is an indicator of inexperience.
- photonerd 3y agoThis is the most wrong, yet condescending and naive, comment I’ve encountered on HN so far. I’m actually impressed. Call me in 20 years, maybe you’ll have learned something.
- DropInIn 3y agoGetting real "toxic positivity" vibes off your whole line of arguments...
- ryan_lane 3y agoBeing proactive in changing the situation isn't toxic positivity, and being empathetic with folks in different jobs isn't toxic positivity either. Assuming people are assholes, and blaming them for situations is just run of the mill toxic. Working through side-channels rather than addressing a problem is also run of the mill toxic.
- DropInIn 3y agoNah your stuff came across as blind tolerance which is just pointless unconstructive and solely to placate people's feelings (in such instances unjustifiable/irrational). Just because Joe or Judy "feels" a certain way doesn't mean it should actually have bearing on anything. Really... Enough placating those with the least logic and self control.
- ryan_lane 3y agoThis attitude is the kind of engineer stereotype we can live without. People's feeling matter in the long term, because it's the difference between them wanting to work with you, and them being forced to work with you. If I had to pick between a genius coder with awful people skills, and an average coder with exceptional skills, I'd essentially always pick the average one.
- DropInIn 3y agoSomeone's feeling do matter in the long term, which is where it should be dealt with, not in the immediate. Do you not see the difference?
- ryan_lane 3y agoPeople's feelings about you are based on a series of accumulated interactions. You can't just "deal with it" later, because that's now how people work. This isn't like tech debt where you can accumulate some and then spend some timing working it down later. If you're consistently an asshole to people, it doesn't matter if you take a little time now and then to try to repair that. Good relationships require taking people's feelings into account and acting consistently.