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Any company of under 200 with a middle management layer who enforces meeting attendence through the threat of firing and executes a formal performance review pr
by j4yav 3y ago
Any company of under 200 with a middle management layer who enforces meeting attendence through the threat of firing and executes a formal performance review process should be considered de facto sociopathic imho.
- hef19898 3y agoCounter point: Any employee who refuses to go to meetings and coordinate with others is toxic. Meeting attendence is important, because - others need input or have relevant information to share - activities have to be coordinated - decisions have to be met and shared Getting the balance right is trickey, just not showing up is simply not acceptable so.
- j4yav 3y agoAgree to disagree maybe. But consider trying an experiment - take notes so anyone who wasn't there for whatever reason, intentional or not, can read them later, and don't threaten to fire anyone or insult them as being toxic who didn't make it. If you end up in a meeting by yourself, just make a decision and write it down. I'd personally at least be very surprised if all of a sudden you were unable to coordinate activities, make decisions, or share information.
- hef19898 3y agoMay I remind you that you started with >> Alternatively, skip all the meetings anyway and then fire your middle manager. Or, if that fails, go work for a company that values your time.
- j4yav 3y agoImho you'll find that a middle manager who spends his days in meetings by himself wishing he could fire the "toxic" people who didn't come is non-essential, but I'm happy to leave that journey of discovery as an exercise to the reader.
- hef19898 3y agoYou uave to be a real pleasure to work with...
- pdimitar 3y agoNot going to meetings and not coordinating with colleagues are two different things.
- itsboring 3y agoAll of those things are better done in writing so that: - There’s a record of decisions and the thought process behind them - When asked for input I can take time to consider a response and therefore give a higher quality reply - I can refer back to conversations or search them when I inevitably forget some detail - I don’t miss key information because I was out sick or had to take a bathroom break - There’s a paper trail you can copy/paste when there’s a disagreement in understanding - In meetings it can be frustrating to try to get a word in: there are often too many people or just one really chatty bastard who won’t stop - It’s easier to scroll past chatter about weekend plans and sports than it is to sit through it in a meeting The problem with meeting notes is they only reflect one person’s understanding, and often the person taking notes only has half an understanding anyway. Meeting notes are like JPEG compression set to the lowest possible quality. I work with a team that spans +9h and +16h from me and it’s great because there are few meetings and lots of written communication. It’s very easy to search past communications to find old materials or decisions, and that’s not just hypothetical: I do it ALL the time. We’ll use meetings, but for more tactical purposes: troubleshooting a specific problem, or doing a demo of some feature (although even then I would suggest demos are better as a recorded video). Most objections are really something like “wah, I don’t want to read or write, it’s too haaaard.” Reading and writing were some of the earliest inventions in human civilization and everyone learns them starting in pre-school. It’s a low bar for a grown professional.
- j4yav 3y agoNow this is what I would call a professional approach to work.