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> I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an hour makin

> I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an hour making a couple of decisions while the rest of us tried not to look too bored.. That sounds horrible. Did you mention your concerns to the people who owned those meetings, in a way that made it clear you were trying to help improve them? I've had success several times with this in BigCo, with various satisfactory outcomes: 1. "You're right, this meeting is BS! But it has to happen for various reasons X Y Z -- since you don't care about this area you don't need to come, we'll grab you if we need you." 2. "You're right, and other people feel tuned out as well, so let's try cutting it to 10 minutes / mailing out an agenda beforehand / starting exactly on time." 3. "You're right, this is an inefficient way to gather state so we're going to just swing by each person 1-on-1." 4. "You're right, this team is too big so we're splitting in 2/3 smaller groups"

marssaxman 13y ago
No, I never did. It just seemed to be an accepted part of the institutional culture, and I felt like fighting against it would have only made me look like a complainer. Maybe someone with more status could have tried it, but I was just a newbie and nobody seemed to care what I thought. I think the project I worked on was worse than average because it was the sort of cross-cutting change that affected a lot of different teams - six different products, I think? There were a lot of PMs involved.
- bobbles 13y ago
  I'd just like to add that pointing out seemingly mundane things like these are what allowed me to move from engineering into the consulting team at my company (which is what I wanted). It's worth testing the waters a few times. You'll know pretty quickly if they value your input, and if not you can decide if you want to continue working for them.

marssaxman 13y ago

No, I never did. It just seemed to be an accepted part of the institutional culture, and I felt like fighting against it would have only made me look like a complainer. Maybe someone with more status could have tried it, but I was just a newbie and nobody seemed to care what I thought. I think the project I worked on was worse than average because it was the sort of cross-cutting change that affected a lot of different teams - six different products, I think? There were a lot of PMs involved.

bobbles 13y ago
I'd just like to add that pointing out seemingly mundane things like these are what allowed me to move from engineering into the consulting team at my company (which is what I wanted). It's worth testing the waters a few times. You'll know pretty quickly if they value your input, and if not you can decide if you want to continue working for them.