19 ms·

Why do remote meetings suck so much? (2018)

24 points by adrianhoward 2y ago

lilly45 2y ago
[dead]
JSDevOps 2y ago
They don’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- HackeNewsFan234 2y ago
  "The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions." -the first paragraph of the linked Wikipedia page
- _hcuq 2y ago
  But there is not a yes or no answer to the headline question, so Betteridges law does not apply. From the wiki link you provided, here are examples of where the law applies: "Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.)"
  - marcus0x62 2y ago
    Those examples are terrible. Other than the AIDS question, a real discussion of the other two is likely to start out "no, but ...", and much more open-ended in practice than perhaps the author wants to admit. Just like the answer to "Why do remote meetings suck so much" is likely to be "they don't, per se, but..."
- cooolbear 2y ago
  wh-questions are different than polar questions, and in particular, saying "no" is infelicitous in most cases, and denying presuppositions is also different than answering a polar question with "no". From the Washington Post: Does sister need to know her abusive husband is why they stay away? Do landlords have to provide AC? Is your lamp the right size? The law also doesn't seem to work quite as well when the verb is a modal (e.g. should, can, could, ...).
smetj 2y ago
They don't but they do if you have too much of them. In my experience, the amount of meetings only increased when working remotely. I would welcome a meeting budget ... how many time one is allowed to spend in meetings over a certain time window ... once consumed you cannot be invited to, organize or join a meeting anymore.
- gumby 2y ago
  Great idea. Wish I’d heard it years ago.
- jacobgorm 2y ago
  I am cofounder of Jamscape, a startup that is trying to replace as many video meetings as possible with short ad-hoc face-to-face conversations that you can then share with others, and with actual eye contact. Perhaps a tool like this could help cut your meeting load.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    you used more words but it sounds like your product is a video meeting product. I'm not sure having more meetings with your product will cut down on the number of meetings I have, but I understand why you would rather I have meetings on your platform
    - fragmede 2y ago
      sure, but if it's meaningfully better then people should know about it and try it out and decide for themselves. I don't care that Google wants me to use their product because it makes them money. I search there because it's better than the alternatives I've tried. If this meeting product is better then by all means, let's hear about how it's actually better rather than dismissing the product owner for wanting you to use their product because it makes them money. we're all well aware of how zoom/meet/teams meetings suck by this point. a product that manages to make them less onerous so I'm less exhausted at the end of a day off then would be a godsend.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I feel like 60% of the points in this article relative to the problems with meetings in general that remote meetings make worse are entirely solved with judicious use of the "raise hand" feature that Teams has, and while I've never used any other software for meetings, I would be utterly gobsmacked if Zoom and the others didn't have a similar feature. The rest of this is a lot of complaints about meetings in general that are kind of, maybe made worse with someone's bad A/V setup, but I'm always trying to avoid meetings for all of those reasons anyway. Maybe some of people's problems with meetings have less to do with the meetings and more to do with the apparently extremely adversarial relationships they have with coworkers. I don't find many of these issues in my workplace at all, and I think unavoidably a big reason for that is we have a very solid company culture that encourages mutual respect and pro-solution attitudes. I think that's a better answer by far than anything to do with your meetings.
- patrick451 2y ago
  The raise hand feature actually makes these problems worse. There are usually a few more senior and loquacious folks who at some point start to ignore the raised hand queue. They will freely chime in like it's a normal conversation. Once that happens, the raised hand queue is nearly forgotten. This problem is even worse in a mixed meeting when the loquacious folks are all present in the meeting room and the more timid rule-following folks are all remote.
  - LordGrey 2y ago
    I've been in a couple of meetings like that. Fortunately, the person running the meeting shut down the loquacious people and redirected to the people who followed the rules. That of course was a public reward, so everyone else followed the rules, too. It worked well.
  - jimberlage 2y ago
    This is one of the thing you pay engineering managers for - someone should jump in and ask the senior people to pause while we go to others’ points.
gumby 2y ago
Let’s not forget that in some ways remote meetings are superior to in person (this is not to ignore the problems with remote meetings). One thing I like is that remote meetings can have automatic transcripts and recordings which in person ones don’t. We have those for all meetings I attend, using some tool that also tries to extract things like agreed action items. So if I missed one or forgot something I can easily review without wasting everybody’s time on a slack post or email. I’m sure there are a few sociology PhDs waiting to be written and some killer tools to be invented. Personally I prefer remote to in person for the same reason I prefer the Mac: “sucks less than the alternatives.” (I have found that it has paid off to travel to meet in person some of the remote people I meet with the most. This isn’t scalable, and also means our current tooling is grossly inadequate).
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
Isn't it just a special case of why remote communication sucks in general? We're primarily built and optimized to live our lives in person.
jalapenos 2y ago
They don't, because even if forced to attend one you can tune out and work on something else.
- sam_bristow 2y ago
  Some places make remote meetings work really well for themselves. You can get automated transcripts, easy sharing of stuff like slide decks, low barriers to pulling in people if you realise they have something to add, etc etc. But if your company has a shit meeting culture I think remote meetings can make it worse. People zoning out and working on other stuff is a symptom of that. I have found online meetings hide the costnof adding too many people and people are less diligent about meeting minutes etc. So you get a pattern of meetings with lots of people who are sitting there zoned out but who can't just skip it completely because there's no other way of finding out what's going on.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
(2018)
hcfman 2y ago
They don’t suck.
smackeyacky 2y ago
I work fully remote, the suckiest meetings are internal to the company but not because the meetings are remote, it’s because the company sucks. The external meetings are always superior because most of those companies don’t suck.
carlmr 2y ago
My top 3 reasons are: 1. Audio delay makes everyone feel like they're interrupting and being interrupted. And the audio quality is still abysmal. I get serious misophonia from this. 2. I talk with my hands a lot, so I feel I can't express myself properly when sitting in front of a camera. If I had the space I could maybe make it a presentation floor, but I feel that would be weird. In a similar vein I don't see my colleague's body language making it harder for me to gauge their interest or opinion. 3. I get really hot ears from on-ear and over-ear headsets. In-ears also cause discomfort after a while and the microphone sucks, too.
JohnFen 2y ago
In my opinion, remote meetings suck just as much as in-person meetings. The problem isn't whether or not the meeting is remote, it's that meetings themselves tend to be done badly.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  I find remote ones tend to suck more because of the ease of scheduling them. In person meetings need a venue, they have to double check if offsite people can get there in time and they often have a fixed endpoint because other groups need to use the venue. Remote meetings don't need all of that and they often can last literally hours because of it.
watwut 2y ago
I like them better then in person meetings.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I do as well. The cost/benefit of online meetings is, to me, a bit better than the cost/benefit of in-person ones. But 90% of all meetings I've even been in have been bad in some way (usually that they're wastes of time), online or not.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Yes, but if online meeting is bad or long, I can at least walk around the room, exercise a bit, read HN. With in person meeting, you are stuck.

24 points by adrianhoward 2y ago

[dead]

They don’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

HackeNewsFan234 2y ago
"The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions." -the first paragraph of the linked Wikipedia page
_hcuq 2y ago
But there is not a yes or no answer to the headline question, so Betteridges law does not apply. From the wiki link you provided, here are examples of where the law applies: "Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.)"
- marcus0x62 2y ago
  Those examples are terrible. Other than the AIDS question, a real discussion of the other two is likely to start out "no, but ...", and much more open-ended in practice than perhaps the author wants to admit. Just like the answer to "Why do remote meetings suck so much" is likely to be "they don't, per se, but..."
cooolbear 2y ago
wh-questions are different than polar questions, and in particular, saying "no" is infelicitous in most cases, and denying presuppositions is also different than answering a polar question with "no". From the Washington Post: Does sister need to know her abusive husband is why they stay away? Do landlords have to provide AC? Is your lamp the right size? The law also doesn't seem to work quite as well when the verb is a modal (e.g. should, can, could, ...).

smetj 2y ago

They don't but they do if you have too much of them. In my experience, the amount of meetings only increased when working remotely. I would welcome a meeting budget ... how many time one is allowed to spend in meetings over a certain time window ... once consumed you cannot be invited to, organize or join a meeting anymore.

gumby 2y ago
Great idea. Wish I’d heard it years ago.
jacobgorm 2y ago
I am cofounder of Jamscape, a startup that is trying to replace as many video meetings as possible with short ad-hoc face-to-face conversations that you can then share with others, and with actual eye contact. Perhaps a tool like this could help cut your meeting load.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  you used more words but it sounds like your product is a video meeting product. I'm not sure having more meetings with your product will cut down on the number of meetings I have, but I understand why you would rather I have meetings on your platform
  - fragmede 2y ago
    sure, but if it's meaningfully better then people should know about it and try it out and decide for themselves. I don't care that Google wants me to use their product because it makes them money. I search there because it's better than the alternatives I've tried. If this meeting product is better then by all means, let's hear about how it's actually better rather than dismissing the product owner for wanting you to use their product because it makes them money. we're all well aware of how zoom/meet/teams meetings suck by this point. a product that manages to make them less onerous so I'm less exhausted at the end of a day off then would be a godsend.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

I feel like 60% of the points in this article relative to the problems with meetings in general that remote meetings make worse are entirely solved with judicious use of the "raise hand" feature that Teams has, and while I've never used any other software for meetings, I would be utterly gobsmacked if Zoom and the others didn't have a similar feature. The rest of this is a lot of complaints about meetings in general that are kind of, maybe made worse with someone's bad A/V setup, but I'm always trying to avoid meetings for all of those reasons anyway. Maybe some of people's problems with meetings have less to do with the meetings and more to do with the apparently extremely adversarial relationships they have with coworkers. I don't find many of these issues in my workplace at all, and I think unavoidably a big reason for that is we have a very solid company culture that encourages mutual respect and pro-solution attitudes. I think that's a better answer by far than anything to do with your meetings.

patrick451 2y ago
The raise hand feature actually makes these problems worse. There are usually a few more senior and loquacious folks who at some point start to ignore the raised hand queue. They will freely chime in like it's a normal conversation. Once that happens, the raised hand queue is nearly forgotten. This problem is even worse in a mixed meeting when the loquacious folks are all present in the meeting room and the more timid rule-following folks are all remote.
- LordGrey 2y ago
  I've been in a couple of meetings like that. Fortunately, the person running the meeting shut down the loquacious people and redirected to the people who followed the rules. That of course was a public reward, so everyone else followed the rules, too. It worked well.
- jimberlage 2y ago
  This is one of the thing you pay engineering managers for - someone should jump in and ask the senior people to pause while we go to others’ points.

gumby 2y ago

Let’s not forget that in some ways remote meetings are superior to in person (this is not to ignore the problems with remote meetings). One thing I like is that remote meetings can have automatic transcripts and recordings which in person ones don’t. We have those for all meetings I attend, using some tool that also tries to extract things like agreed action items. So if I missed one or forgot something I can easily review without wasting everybody’s time on a slack post or email. I’m sure there are a few sociology PhDs waiting to be written and some killer tools to be invented. Personally I prefer remote to in person for the same reason I prefer the Mac: “sucks less than the alternatives.” (I have found that it has paid off to travel to meet in person some of the remote people I meet with the most. This isn’t scalable, and also means our current tooling is grossly inadequate).

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

Isn't it just a special case of why remote communication sucks in general? We're primarily built and optimized to live our lives in person.

jalapenos 2y ago

They don't, because even if forced to attend one you can tune out and work on something else.

sam_bristow 2y ago
Some places make remote meetings work really well for themselves. You can get automated transcripts, easy sharing of stuff like slide decks, low barriers to pulling in people if you realise they have something to add, etc etc. But if your company has a shit meeting culture I think remote meetings can make it worse. People zoning out and working on other stuff is a symptom of that. I have found online meetings hide the costnof adding too many people and people are less diligent about meeting minutes etc. So you get a pattern of meetings with lots of people who are sitting there zoned out but who can't just skip it completely because there's no other way of finding out what's going on.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

(2018)

hcfman 2y ago

They don’t suck.

smackeyacky 2y ago

I work fully remote, the suckiest meetings are internal to the company but not because the meetings are remote, it’s because the company sucks. The external meetings are always superior because most of those companies don’t suck.

carlmr 2y ago

My top 3 reasons are: 1. Audio delay makes everyone feel like they're interrupting and being interrupted. And the audio quality is still abysmal. I get serious misophonia from this. 2. I talk with my hands a lot, so I feel I can't express myself properly when sitting in front of a camera. If I had the space I could maybe make it a presentation floor, but I feel that would be weird. In a similar vein I don't see my colleague's body language making it harder for me to gauge their interest or opinion. 3. I get really hot ears from on-ear and over-ear headsets. In-ears also cause discomfort after a while and the microphone sucks, too.

JohnFen 2y ago

In my opinion, remote meetings suck just as much as in-person meetings. The problem isn't whether or not the meeting is remote, it's that meetings themselves tend to be done badly.

jhbadger 2y ago
I find remote ones tend to suck more because of the ease of scheduling them. In person meetings need a venue, they have to double check if offsite people can get there in time and they often have a fixed endpoint because other groups need to use the venue. Remote meetings don't need all of that and they often can last literally hours because of it.

watwut 2y ago

I like them better then in person meetings.

JohnFen 2y ago
I do as well. The cost/benefit of online meetings is, to me, a bit better than the cost/benefit of in-person ones. But 90% of all meetings I've even been in have been bad in some way (usually that they're wastes of time), online or not.
- watwut 2y ago
  Yes, but if online meeting is bad or long, I can at least walk around the room, exercise a bit, read HN. With in person meeting, you are stuck.