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> They could easily do the same thing ahead of the meeting, and you'd have much shorter meetings. Amazon’s practice is a reaction to the fact that nobody actua

> They could easily do the same thing ahead of the meeting, and you'd have much shorter meetings. Amazon’s practice is a reaction to the fact that nobody actually does this. According to the article I read about this years ago, they realized that “creating a strong culture around reading before the meeting” also isn’t possible because many attendees had a meeting before this one, and couldn’t prepare for that meeting because they had a meeting before that, etc. On paper you could punch a ton of holes in this: Why not reduce the number of meetings people have to attend? Doesn’t the reading reduce the amount of time available in the meeting to actually make decisions? But it would seem that in practice they found that the meetings people were attending did in fact have value, and that even with the reading time a lot of decisions got made. So this may just be one of those things where you have to look at the results instead of worrying about what could theoretically be done differently. And it sounds like people really like the results and that the benefits of this approach outweigh the drawbacks, at least at Amazon.

mtlynch 1y ago
>Amazon’s practice is a reaction to the fact that nobody actually does this. But isn't that bizarre? I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it.
- melagonster 1y ago
  They just do not allocate time to read documents for engineers.
- nlawalker 1y ago
  > I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it Pretty much anything, unless you're in the engineer's management chain, or you've given them a direct incentive. It's always been my experience in bigco that people can ignore almost anything that doesn't come from their management chain up until scheduled meetings get involved. Being uncooperative with meetings (declining invites without alternatives; not attending; not participating) are when escalations and complaints start occurring, and there seems to be a silent consensus that this is the standard - as in, if you complain that someone hasn't answered your emails, the standard response you should expect from anyone, including their manager, is "then schedule a meeting." So, if you need someone to do something, you schedule a "meeting" to block time on their calendar in which they will pay attention to your thing. That includes anything they need to do to prepare, because anything you don't include in that time block isn't part of the meeting and therefore isn't going to get done.
  - rixed 1y ago
    Then you should schedule two meetings: one in a reading room, at any time that fits each individual calendar, and then later the real one in a meeting room with everyone's involved, at the same time.
    - closewith 1y ago
      We all know the costs of context switching. Why would you unnecessarily introduce two new context switches? Is it because you don't like being told when to read?
  - justsid 1y ago
    In my experience there is always more work to be done than there is time. That means people have to start prioritizing things, managers breathing down necks over specific things is a priority signal, just like meetings. Reading something doesn't give you much actual production output to show for, so it just doesn't get prioritized.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 1y ago
  The rule is not so much for the benefit of the kind of junior IC engineer who has time in his schedule to work on code, but for busy leaders whose experience of the world is otherwise 100% verbal.
- joshuamorton 1y ago
  > But isn't that bizarre? I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it. This is practically the point of meetings. Meetings exist as a forcing function to achieve communication that likely could have happened asynchronously but for some reason didn't.
  - mtlynch 1y ago
    I disagree. I think companies that have meetings like this have an immature meeting culture. Meetings are for low-latency collaboration, not information transfer. For example, reading a design doc is obviously more efficient asynchronously because everyone has different reading speeds and doesn't need everyone else in the room while they read. Arguing about tradeoffs in a design doc is usually more efficient in a meeting than an email because the low latency communication and additional signals from live communication make the discussion more efficient. For example, if the design doc says we should do X but you think it should do Y, in an email I maybe have to enumerate all the advantages and disadvantages, but in a meeting, maybe you're convinced after seeing just 20% of my rationale.
    - newAccount2025 1y ago
      > Meetings are for low-latency collaboration, not information transfer. Ok, but without a doc, collaboration in a meeting can become inefficient in many ways. Folks can talk past each other, bouncing between unclear options and losing clarity on what they are even debating. Only one person can talk at a time, so folks are sitting and waiting for their turn, etc.; Strong personalities can dominate and filibuster. Writing even a bad doc ahead of time can help to make the meeting’s purpose clear. The author can guide the discussion by laying out and labeling big options and decision points. While reading the doc, everyone can comment in parallel, so you aren’t serializing the conversation for small things or letting some verbose person waste the time. Reading during the meeting helps folks manage time outside the meeting. It means: you don’t have to prepare for meeting you don’t own. It avoids “random people” assigning you work beyond what they are asking you for in your calendar. For busy managers this is a huge benefit.
- closewith 1y ago
  If your solution to a problem involves changing human nature, you're on the wrong track.
- navane 1y ago
  Isn't that how corporate work is usually done? We call the room an office and the babysitter a manager or lead.

mtlynch 1y ago

>Amazon’s practice is a reaction to the fact that nobody actually does this. But isn't that bizarre? I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it.

melagonster 1y ago
They just do not allocate time to read documents for engineers.
nlawalker 1y ago
> I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it Pretty much anything, unless you're in the engineer's management chain, or you've given them a direct incentive. It's always been my experience in bigco that people can ignore almost anything that doesn't come from their management chain up until scheduled meetings get involved. Being uncooperative with meetings (declining invites without alternatives; not attending; not participating) are when escalations and complaints start occurring, and there seems to be a silent consensus that this is the standard - as in, if you complain that someone hasn't answered your emails, the standard response you should expect from anyone, including their manager, is "then schedule a meeting." So, if you need someone to do something, you schedule a "meeting" to block time on their calendar in which they will pay attention to your thing. That includes anything they need to do to prepare, because anything you don't include in that time block isn't part of the meeting and therefore isn't going to get done.
- rixed 1y ago
  Then you should schedule two meetings: one in a reading room, at any time that fits each individual calendar, and then later the real one in a meeting room with everyone's involved, at the same time.
  - closewith 1y ago
    We all know the costs of context switching. Why would you unnecessarily introduce two new context switches? Is it because you don't like being told when to read?
- justsid 1y ago
  In my experience there is always more work to be done than there is time. That means people have to start prioritizing things, managers breathing down necks over specific things is a priority signal, just like meetings. Reading something doesn't give you much actual production output to show for, so it just doesn't get prioritized.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 1y ago
The rule is not so much for the benefit of the kind of junior IC engineer who has time in his schedule to work on code, but for busy leaders whose experience of the world is otherwise 100% verbal.
joshuamorton 1y ago
> But isn't that bizarre? I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it. This is practically the point of meetings. Meetings exist as a forcing function to achieve communication that likely could have happened asynchronously but for some reason didn't.
- mtlynch 1y ago
  I disagree. I think companies that have meetings like this have an immature meeting culture. Meetings are for low-latency collaboration, not information transfer. For example, reading a design doc is obviously more efficient asynchronously because everyone has different reading speeds and doesn't need everyone else in the room while they read. Arguing about tradeoffs in a design doc is usually more efficient in a meeting than an email because the low latency communication and additional signals from live communication make the discussion more efficient. For example, if the design doc says we should do X but you think it should do Y, in an email I maybe have to enumerate all the advantages and disadvantages, but in a meeting, maybe you're convinced after seeing just 20% of my rationale.
  - newAccount2025 1y ago
    > Meetings are for low-latency collaboration, not information transfer. Ok, but without a doc, collaboration in a meeting can become inefficient in many ways. Folks can talk past each other, bouncing between unclear options and losing clarity on what they are even debating. Only one person can talk at a time, so folks are sitting and waiting for their turn, etc.; Strong personalities can dominate and filibuster. Writing even a bad doc ahead of time can help to make the meeting’s purpose clear. The author can guide the discussion by laying out and labeling big options and decision points. While reading the doc, everyone can comment in parallel, so you aren’t serializing the conversation for small things or letting some verbose person waste the time. Reading during the meeting helps folks manage time outside the meeting. It means: you don’t have to prepare for meeting you don’t own. It avoids “random people” assigning you work beyond what they are asking you for in your calendar. For busy managers this is a huge benefit.
closewith 1y ago
If your solution to a problem involves changing human nature, you're on the wrong track.
navane 1y ago
Isn't that how corporate work is usually done? We call the room an office and the babysitter a manager or lead.