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The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire re
by meroes 1y ago
The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills.
- hobs 1y agoThe last sentence is it - most people can't communicate much less write well, hell, I don't write well, but I hope my ideas are at least clearly communicated.
- chii 1y agoWhen you can't write well, you "resort" to using a lot of body language and facial nuances in face-to-face communication, which works acceptably. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate well on zoom. This "writing well" as a form of good communication is needed, but while in school, those same people who cannot write well also likely were complaining about learning how to write essays and such. Over time, this sort of lack of learning has resulted in poor written communication into adulthood i reckon. And with the advent of LLM and all these chatGPT-esque bots writing for them, esp. in school, the level of literacy skill is only going to continue to drop!
- dickersnoodle 1y agoDon't forget the number of people who think they write well but don't. These type of people tend to litter their communications with ghastly MBA-speak, passive voice and super-tired business cliches instead of just writing in plain language.
- Levitz 1y agoWhich is frankly appalling in this day and age. We write all the time, sure, the vast majority of it aren't essays or any kind of dense text, but expressing ideas in writing is something we do constantly.
- rib3ye 1y agoIn software, you have the privilege of writing succinctly to communicate facts. In every other industry, the message needs to be packaged with courtesies like a greeting, cushioned delivery, and salutations. It’s a big waste of time and people stop reading your messages. But don’t put a bow on it and you get labeled as an asshole. At least the AI note taker can make me sound more palatable.
- Hamuko 1y agoI wish I had that privilege. I've had a manager make a paragraph-long question about if I had any training courses that I'd want to take, and when I answered with a "No", I got chewed out for not being communicative or something.
- coliveira 1y agoIn the past, companies had people specialized in translating conversations into written documents: secretaries. And executives took seriously the task of reading these documents. All this seems to be gone.
- jedberg 1y ago> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills. That's not entirely it. Some people just won't say something unless put in a setting where they are explicity asked for it. I've had meetings where I ask for a status, and someone says they are stuck on X, and they've been stuck on X for two days. And I'll ask why they didn't just ask for help. They weren't comfortable asking for help. They were only ok stating the problem when asked specifically for status. So it also creates that environment were some people are more likely to share.
- kaashif 1y agoIt's usually possible for the person running a small project to ask everyone for status and know what everyone's going to say in the meeting before the meeting. Then the meeting is pointless. But not all projects allow for that.
- coliveira 1y agoWhy do you think a larger meeting is a remedy for this? Quite the opposite, if you can't get a personal status from a large group, doing the meeting is completely pointless because it demonstrate lack of preparation.
- kaashif 1y agoIt's not. That's not what I meant or said. I said not all projects allow for getting status ahead of time. This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously. They're just bad at communicating. On a well functioning team I can rely on people just reporting status themselves when something relevant happens and reaching out for help. But some people just don't do that, especially people from other teams, departments, etc.
- coldtea 1y ago>This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously. Like, you explicitly ask them in an IM and they don't tell you? Not telling you on their own, I can understand. If the former happens though, you have bigger problems, that asking on a real-life meeting wont solve.
- xyzzy123 1y agoThere's this huge difference in quality between execs who work in writing and execs who NEVER write _anything_ down, which is surprisingly common. In my experience it correlates closely with toxic behaviour and I don't know why it's common for senior management in many orgs to allow people to operate in this style.
- coliveira 1y agoMost modern companies drift toward the non-written style (effectively managing by the seat of the pants) because it has the appearance of being more effective, even when it is in fact the opposite. Business myth makes the guy who is always having meetings to appear more dynamic and effective, and is consequently rewarded by upper management.
- rightbyte 1y agoYe there are multiple such fallacies. E.g. making brittle systems and later save the day makes you seem competent and important. Also the opposite effect, where the most productive and important engineers seem to cause most problems and seem incompetent.
- lynx97 1y agoAs parent already hinted at, writing down stuff makes you vulnerable to criticism. Just stay vague, and you have a lot of wiggle room left...
- DrillShopper 1y agoAn exec writing down minutes can also come back to bite them in the ass if there's a lawsuit or criminal investigation. Email can have retention policies. That's harder to enforce with paper, especially when it's someone's personal notes.
- lynx97 1y agoYa, it quite simply boils down to Plausible deniability.
- coliveira 1y ago> because that authority is harder to question It's not even that, they do the meeting to appear personally leading something. Modern companies confuse leading meetings with true leadership, because hardly anyone knows how to do the later. It is a fast, effective way to give an appearance of leadership and say they're doing something, while doing close to nothing.
- lynx97 1y ago[flagged]
- rekenaut 1y agoTrust me, the 80% meeting workday became prevalent loooooong before the 2020s.
- dyauspitr 1y ago[flagged]
- Fade_Dance 1y agoNobody is complaining about 3 minute meetings... Try 30+
- dodslaser 1y agoPersonally I don't mind spending several hours solving a problem over "async communication" if that means I'm free to work on other stuff while the other party is formulating a response. Then I also get the benefit of having something in their writing to refer back to. The kind of person who takes hours to explain something in written form are unlikely to explain it in 3 minutes in person. More likely, they set up a meeting where they waffle on about an issue, expecting the receiving end to distill some valuable information from their ramblings, and then inevitably end up complaining when the solution doesn't match their expectations (which of course were never formalized anywhere).
- CalRobert 1y agoTaking time to develop cogent responses is the opposite of poor communication skills
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- benhurmarcel 1y ago> Issues that can be resolved in a three minute meeting Why is every meeting 1h+ then?
- bravetraveler 1y agoI'm of the opinion that those who want "it" now are short-sighted and impulsive. I'm inclined to believe you're closer to management than actual execution: when you say "resolved" I hear "owned".
- pj_mukh 1y agosigh You have engineers that read memos? Must be nice.
- 0xEF 1y agoThat's on them, though. But if you do not hold the engineers accountable for reading the memo, that's on you (or whomever has the authority to do that). This is why having things in writing is important and verbal directives have about as much value as a fart in the wind.
- DidYaWipe 1y ago"These meetings?" Which ones, exactly?
- PeterStuer 1y agoThey are "low information density" because that is not the point of the meeting. Meetings are first and foremost about relationship management. You do not get to management and certainly not climb the management hierarchy if you do not at least implicitly feel this. The actual meeting topic, while it can be relevant, is secondary. You establish and reinforce the pecking order, sense allegiance and subversion, or, feel out potential for reinforcing bonds or mitigating fallouts. This is why people focussed on 'doing the actual work' hate meetings, while carreer focussed people love them. Now I have exaggerated all the above, but only to make the point more clear. As always it is not black and white. And sometimes, it is worse. There are realy situations with managers that schedule meetings and calls because they are simply bored at work. These are the types that when the step into the car to go to a meeting, will always have to get on the phone with some rapportee to have a quick 'update' that might just last the lenght of the drive.
- mft_ 1y agoI've led cross-functional teams in multiple organisations (albeit not in tech) and I'd argue it's a bit more complex than that. Regular team meetings can cover multiple needs, e.g.: * Keeping everyone working on a complex project updated on progress * Keeping everyone 'aligned' - (horrible corporate word but) essentially all working together effectively towards the same goals (be they short or long term) * Providing a forum for catching and discussing issues as they arise * A degree of project management - essentially, making sure that people are doing as they said they would * Information sharing (note I prefer to cancel meetings if this is the only regular purpose) * Some form of shared decision-making (depending on the model you have for this) and thus shared ownership If a meeting 'owner' is sensitive to not wasting people's time and regularly shortens or cancels meetings, it can be done well, I believe.
- weatherlite 1y ago> It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. Higher ups like meetings too, everyone likes feeling better about themselves by showing status. Perhaps A.I will be able to relieve us of that eventually ...
- OtherShrezzing 1y ago> They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo Authority is also much harder to deliver in an asynchronous format. If someone can just _not read_ the memo, it functionally has no power. The risk isn't that your memo might be questioned, it's that your memo might never be read.
- 0xEF 1y agoI have to disagree since I can also just not listen/pay any attention to what is vocally delivered in the meeting, which I find to be an abhorrent waste of my time in the first place. If the directive is in writing such as an email I (or the person who issued it) can't point to that and say "you did not read this" which shifts the onus entirely on the person receiving the directive. About a year ago, I nearly quit my job over this, going so far as to put my two weeks notice in as a way to hold a gun to their head, repeating my frequent request that all directives handed down from on high _must_ be in writing if they are expected to be followed. My company had (still does, to some degree, but we are still working on it) a cancerous culture of he said/she said that was being abused to avoid any accountability from upper management, which was both impeding the actual work being done as well as demoralizing to th workers. We even ended up losing some talent over it before I used my own value and authority to put my foot down, making me wish I'd done it sooner. Verbal directives only stroke the ego of the person delivering them and their meaning either evaporates or gets twisted as soon as everyone walks out of that conference room or logs off that video call. If the person issuing them is not willing to have their directives questioned when they are in writing, then they should not hold the position they do. It's not about questioning someone's authority, it's about ensuring the directive makes sense with the work being done and adds value or guidance to the existing processes. Screw the fragile ego nonsense.
- VSerge 1y agoFair point in your case, but my experience across companies and industries is that people just don't read. It's true in any customer facing experience where tutorials etc are routinely unread and ignored, it's true for execs who are always short on time and want the exec summary in order no to read a whole memo (however misguided this may be in certain instances), it's true for seasoned professionals who prioritize and decide to ignore certain requests until they are clear enough / repeated enough, the list goes on. Even people getting @mentionned on slack or in emails seem to find it acceptable to say routinely they didn't see/read whatever it was they were specifically asked to look at.
- nandomrumber 1y ago> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills by people with low verbal IQ
- lqet 1y agoI also used to think that work meetings are low information density. Then I attended our first parent-teacher conference at kindergarten. It was incredible: 2.5 hours of discussions and ridiculous complaints ("why does my child has to put on splash pants on rainy autumn days, putting them on is just such an ordeal!!"), and not a single bit of relevant information was transmitted. Not a single decision was made. I went home in utter disbelief. Currently, our parents' council is trying to organize a party for the children who will be going to school after summer. What should've been a TODO list where parents can write down what food they will bring and who will help with what escalated into 2 evenings of discussions, a Skype meeting, and a Whatsapp group where several fractions of parents have been fighting over whether T-Shirts should be printed to celebrate the end of kindergarten for over a week now.
- codeduck 1y agoNothing made me appreciate the information-density of engineering meetings like attending parent/teacher or sports club committee meetings. It's like... people, is your time not worth more than this thirty minute bun-fight over summer clubs? Still hate meetings though.
- smeej 1y agoI don't think the existence of "even lower information density" attempts at communication justifies the low density of work meetings, but you're right--trying to communicate anything to more than one person at a time in a child-focused setting is close to impossible.
- bgro 1y agoThis is it. We can’t have people going back and forth over chat to work out an issue. I need to start a meeting so I can monologue the portion people already understand again and then I can complete the work because my portion is complete. I already completed my work so I don’t need to change with these back and forth messages finding oversights or conflicts. I can just sit back and coast. Also when it’s in chat everybody’s messages are the same size and you can’t just skip over them. By holding a meeting, I can disable everybody else’s mic and the chat or just talk over anybody else and win the discussion. By talking louder, my opinions are better and correct. I don’t like when some random person causes me more work by speaking up in chat so that’s why we need to have meetings. Plus there’s a whole paper trail and it’s just messy and inconvenient.
- manbitesdog 1y ago> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills I'd say poor reading skills are even more of a problem
- qwerty456127 1y ago> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills. I thought most meetings take place because people are to report how many meetings they organized/attended as this is considered a productivity metric.
- at_ 1y ago"The meeting is the message"
- nancyminusone 1y agoIn meetings I attend in my line of work, more often than not it's about something AI wouldn't be able to summarize anyway. "Do you want these to fit together like this or like this?" AI would only be able to summarize to the context of this comment.
- jader201 1y ago> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills. That’s funny, because I actually prefer writing to make up for my poor meeting skills.
- Aurornis 1y ago> The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. I've been in my share of useless meetings. However, I've been fortunate enough to be able to cut down the useless meetings at most of my jobs (with one exception, which was awful). The problem now is that the AI note takers are turning even the good meetings into useless exercises. It's obvious that the AI note taker participants have no intention of participating during the meeting. Then 3 hours later you start getting follow-up questions that they should have asked in the meeting. Everyone knows "This meeting could have been an e-mail" but fewer people recognize when "This 50-response e-mail conversation spanning 3 days could have been solved in the 30 minute meeting" The root problem is people trying to transform their own work into async at the expense of forcing everyone else to accommodate them.
- teddyh 1y agoIt reminds me of the recurring scene in Real Genius with the lectures and the tape recorders.
- wmeredith 1y agoMeetings can be low information, but they don't have to be. The point of meetings is to create a space where people with different knowledge sets working on the same project can ask questions and get answers in a zero latency feedback loop. This is quite useful at certain times.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoLet's not pretend someone who sends an AI note taker, which also implies they have time to read notes taken by an AI of a meeting they couldn't find time to turn up for is someone lacking in time. The prerequisite of reading notes written by an AI means you have time. They should just be honest and say "I don't need to be in this" or "I don't want to be in this" rather than pretending they do.
- tstrimple 1y agoThis doesn't follow. Plenty of hour long meetings could easily be summarized in a paragraph. Having the time to read a paragraph does not equate to having time to sit through an hour long meeting.
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- Tainnor 1y agoJust today I had a "communication 101" training session that was telling me, among other things, to be concise and targeted. I don't know what's either concise or targeted about an 1h session that doesn't differentiate by job description or amount of work experience.