
Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy' - DarkContinent
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-50418317
======
PragmaticPulp
One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted
everything done through Slack and email.

It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random
managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come
true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the
need for communication.

Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack channels turned into never ending
pseudo-meetings. Instead of the well-defined start times of a meeting and the
implicit expectation that meeting participants come prepared with an agenda
and material to discuss, we had a spontaneous free-for-all in Slack. People
could, and would, start important team discussions in Slack at random times
all day long. “@here” started to feel no different than a meeting, except it
was unpredictable, you couldn’t prepare for it, and it would certainly disrupt
your concentration.

The other unintended side effect was that people were still scheduling secret
meetings. They just had to be quiet about it because technically we weren’t
supposed to do it. The teams with regularly scheduled meetings were more
cohesive, less disrupted, and significantly less stressed than those who tried
to handle everything in the asynchronous “always on, always connected” style.

So yes, excessive, unnecessary, or poorly-run meetings are bad. But I never
thought I’d miss properly run meetings as much as I did when they were removed
completely from our communication toolbox. Use the right tool for the right
job and enforce good meeting discipline.

~~~
mipmap04
I've found that, with the exception of daily stand-ups, all meetings must have
a bullet point agenda and notes should be sent out for each meeting with
risks, action items, issues and ownership of those items. If both of those
things are lacking, I doubt how useful the meeting will be or was.

~~~
earthboundkid
Agreed but it also applies to standups. I think if you just want ambient
awareness, have people post their daily "what I did/will do" to Slack. No need
to derail every single day for half an hour or more.

~~~
flatline
Half an hour or more is no longer a standup.

~~~
earthboundkid
Doesn't mean that isn't what people are calling a "standup".

More seriously, even if standup actually were 5 minutes like it should be
according to theory, no interruption takes less than half an hour to recover
from and resume flow.

~~~
username90
> standup actually were 5 minutes like it should be according to theory

Jeff Sutherland who invented scrum thinks it should be 15 minutes, so
according to theory they should be 15 minutes:

> The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team.
> The Daily Scrum is held every day of the Sprint. At it, the Development Team
> plans work for the next 24 hours. This optimizes team collaboration and
> performance by inspecting the work since the last Daily Scrum and
> forecasting upcoming Sprint work. The Daily Scrum is held at the same time
> and place each day to reduce complexity

[https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum...](https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-
Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100)

~~~
jk20
Scrum, Agile etc. is a nonsense which should be ended. The one reason why it
is so popular is that it provides managers with opportunity to organize
meetings - stand ups, planning, retrospectives,... Why in the world would
anyone reach out to other people to figure out what to do in the next 24
hours? The development of even a minor feature takes longer than that, and
contrary to Agile principles cannot be arbitrarily split into smaller parts.

------
lukethomas
There's some truth to this, but holy smokes, another meeting is not the cure.

There is value in "venting" at work. A few years ago I built a software tool
that pings people at the end of the week asking how their week went. Some of
the quietest people in the company had the most to say when they were behind a
screen. In fact, some people literally called it therapeutic. It turns out
that writing things down can serve as a form of "therapy" (source:
[https://positivepsychology.com/writing-
therapy/](https://positivepsychology.com/writing-therapy/))

If you lead a team, I'd strongly recommend you have a feedback mechanism like
this in place, but a meeting is not the right medium. It's just a place for
the extroverts to complain.

If you do hold a meeting for this stuff, a 1-1 is probably the best way to
surface a similar level of information.

~~~
crazypyro
Perhaps you are being overly dismissive of the "extroverts" needs in the
situations you are describing...

Some might just "complain", but others feel safer being vocal in a group of
people.

You mention understanding that some of the quietest people have the most to
say behind a screen, well, I imagine there is a non-insignificant group of
people who feel much safer talking it out within a group where there isn't a
written record and they can judge the crowd's reaction immediately.

I wouldn't consider myself anywhere close to an extrovert and I would consider
myself more candid in spoken communications at work, even when my whole team
is present.

Just my 2 cents.

~~~
potta_coffee
Most work places are heavily dominated by the extroverts. The sales and
executive teams are all extroverts. So is the marketing team. IMO it's fair to
consider the other side of the coin, there's virtually no way that extroverts
aren't going to continue to rule the workplace.

~~~
stingraycharles
Playing the devil’s advocate, if what you say is true, that most of an
organization is extroverted, why would you want to optimize your feedback
process for the introverts? Is the reason that you believe the extroverts’
voice is already heard?

~~~
potta_coffee
Extroverts are over-represented because they're the loudest voices. Introverts
have a lot to offer but they're pushed aside.

------
Nokinside
Since this is Swedish study, I just want to point out that Swedish
organizational culture is very meeting and consensus oriented.

Nordic cultures may seem very similar, but their organizational cultures are
different even within the same company. Others are often frustrated about
Swedes and their endless meetings. Finns in the meeting are 'OK. lets do
this.' and Swedes reply 'But Jan-Erik has not shared his point of view yet.'

~~~
altacc
So true! I work across Scandinavia and there are definitely more consensus
forming meetings in Sweden than elsewhere, even. Having previously worked in
US & UK companies I'm still not used to it and I often feel like banging my
head against the table and crying out "Will somebody please make a decision!".
But of course this is Sweden, no single person will make a decision. I'm sure
they think I'm terribly rude.

~~~
patcon
Heh sounds like you've maybe run across something quantified in the Hofstede
leadership studies, commissioned by IBM when they first wanted to become an
international globocorp.

What you're feeling is the difference between a collectivist leadership
culture and an individualist leadership culture. Collectivist cultures value
leaders who generate power through _maintaining relationships_, whereas
individualist leaders prioritise leadership via _authority_. Think of it as
accruing power in the edges vs the nodes of the social graph.

Fun fact: countries whose leader cultures are more individualist (e.g.
America) are MUCH more likely to have whole populations who agree highly with
"economic growth is important above all else", whereas collectivist leader
nations (e.g., Taiwan, Finland) have a general populace who agree less highly
with that phrase, but MORE highly with "ecological sustainability and
environmental stewardship are important".

So while correlation doesn't prove causation, it may be the case that
American-style individualist leadership culture is in opposition to our shared
goals of non extinction :) but that's maybe a leap.

The whole study is really rad. Oh, and more bonus: collectivist leadership
style correlates highly with feminine leadership style (another axes of
Hofstede study)

EDIT: a-ha! Found the source:
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/40836056?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40836056?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

~~~
mekoka
Thanks for sharing. It's certainly food for thought. I was trying to picture
this sort of leadership by consensus applied in different parts of the world
where I've lived. Although it might work with some success in a few places, in
most I could only foresee catastrophe. Then I was reminded that Sweden has a
really good education system. Maybe there's another lesson to draw here, that
in order for consensus (democracy?) to work, it's worth ensuring that the
minds that will voice their perspective actually have the ability to work out
the issues.

------
dredmorbius
"Yet to suppose that President Hoover was engaged only in organizing further
reassurance is to do him a serious injustice. he was also conducting one of
the oldest, most important --- and, unhappily, one of the least understood ---
rites in American life. This is the rite of the meeting which is called not to
do business but to do no business. It is a rite which is still much practiced
in our time. It is worth examinging for a moment.

Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They need to
instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action. They
find thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in
private. But there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no
business. Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum,
wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige
which accrues to the man who presides of meetings, and this leads them to
convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting
which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is
necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings
are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.

\-- John Kenneth Galbraith, _The Great Crash, 1929_ , pp 138-139.

------
corodra
Wasn't it Microsoft Japan that realized meetings were naturally crunched down
to strictly useful ones when they went to a 4 day work week? Then more time
was spent doing real, actual work and then workers being able to ACTUALLY
relax at home or doing something truly therapeutic... like not being at
fucking work. Not this bullshit "you can relax at work" crap. Oh, and their
employees felt ACTUALLY better and ACTUALLY less stressed. I feel like this
"study" is more a focus-group bullshit attempt to fight off the results of a 4
day work week.

The world is getting silly. Not because of studies like this. But because
people actually agree with obvious bullshit like this. I feel like I'm taking
damn crazy pills.

------
havkom
Many meetings are extremely important for me as a manager.

Very few of the meetings are about “deciding things”, rather they are about
aligning views. As a manager I see my role as setting up meetings so that the
most qualified peoples views properly influences the right stake holders. When
everyone aligns on what problem to solve and how to solve it there are
generally no need to take any decisions, since work gets efficiently done and
few issues pops up that are not automatically solved by way of previously
achieved alignment.

While using this strategy, what generally drives more meetings are: 1)
Managers and other power holders that cares more about their importance and
status than the work. 2) The parts of the staff that are dissatisfied and
don’t like their work. In many of these cases, they have been obviously
neglected/abused by management before and don’t feel trust in the
organization.

------
roland35
I thought Wrike had a pretty good infographic on deciding whether or not to
have a meeting:
[https://d3tvpxjako9ywy.cloudfront.net/blog/content/uploads/2...](https://d3tvpxjako9ywy.cloudfront.net/blog/content/uploads/2015/06/Should-
we-have-this-meeting-e1434381032233.jpg?av=b36e9b420136299c52657400eb7d40a0)

Basically you should have a meeting if:

* It can't be solved by collaborating outside a meeting

* Everyone is needed to participate

* The group has authority to act

* There is a clear agenda and goals

* Someone can be the facilitator

I have found that if a meeting has all those elements than a lot can get done
very quickly, rather than having ideas bounce around email or slack for weeks!

------
robotmay
This sounds accurate to my now recently-ex company. The number of meetings
have soared, to the point where they probably spend 2-3 days per two week
"sprint" (it's really more of a hobbled walk) in project meetings. Not just
the absurd number of project managers (currently 1 PM to every 2 programmers,
I believe), but the whole team. And what's weird is that when you're in the
office, it doesn't feel out of place, but if you're actually trying to be
productive it's a horror-show. I had a 3 hour meeting a few weeks back, and
then another meeting directly after it which was a summary of the previous
meeting.

Add to that the fact that 90% of the company are incapable of being on time to
those meetings, and you can probably guess as to one of the reasons I'm moving
on to another company. The meetings are usually also at short notice and the
person who requests it will universally be late to their own meeting.

I see excessive meetings and calls as a failure of written communication
skills. The people I see organising the most meetings are also those who are
least adept at understanding writing, and the worst at communicating via it
themselves. There's definitely an art to being a good written communicator,
and maybe there should be more emphasis placed on it when recruiting in tech
roles.

~~~
dhdhebsb
I must work at the same place

------
GordonS
True story:

A project I was on earlier in the year was full on Agile, with _constant_
meetings - daily standups, weekly retrospectives, weekly scrum-of-scrums,
weekly reviews/demos, bi-weekly product backlog refinements, weekly story
refinements, weekly product backlog planning, weekly sprint planning, frequent
meetings about git branching strategies and near daily "way of working"
meetings. And of course there were some relatively meaningful small meetings
closely related to actual development work.

Everyone was losing the will to live, including myself - there simply wasn't
enough time to actually _work_!

I had a word with the project manager, and with a totally casual manner he
said: "OK, let's have a meeting with the whole team to discuss it".

~~~
pc86
It's easy to poke fun but this seems like a 100% reasonable response when the
alternative is changing the entire schedule of the entire team based on the
feedback of a single person. And it doesn't seem like any one person should be
attending all of these meetings (agreed it's definitely too many though).

~~~
GordonS
> It's easy to poke fun but this seems like a 100% reasonable response when
> the alternative is changing the entire schedule of the entire team based on
> the feedback of a single person

So, it's meant to be an amusing anecdote on HN; I haven't told the entire
story of the project :) The PM had heard this from several other team members
alread, several times. The difference is I was tech lead, so he listened a bit
more to me, and I was also quite adamant this time (I'd tried to tell him more
politely numerous times).

> And it doesn't seem like any one person should be attending all of these
> meetings

Bingo, this was the biggest problem - the project manager in particular was
bad for telling irrelevant people to join meetings.

------
throwaway713
This is probably controversial, but I generally disagree with the popular HN
sentiment that great progress is accomplished by groups of people working
together in teams. My view is that the greatest work is done in isolation by
individuals, with the occasional conference to stay up-to-date on new ideas.
This isn’t to say that individuals accomplish great feats entirely on their
own (which undoubtedly is almost never the case), but merely that almost all
productive work is done independently.

If I ran my own company, I would ban almost all meetings and limit the most
crucial ones to 15 minutes tops. And while my company might fail due to a
misplaced sense of schadenfreude, it’s a risk I’m willing to take to get
experimental verification of whether meetings are actually as valuable as
everyone claims they are.

~~~
journalctl
I work with people like that. They’re extremely siloed and they make decisions
in a vacuum. It always ends up creating problems for everyone else. Then when
we actually do have meetings, they don’t want to collaborate or discuss, they
just want everything immediately, end of discussion. It doesn’t work.

If you don’t want to work with other people, move out into the woods.

------
holstvoogd
I call BS. Meetings make me lose the will to live & drove me to quitting my
job multiple times. If you want to make sure I don''t do anything during the
day, put in a meeting in the middle of it.

Perhaps it helps people who have pointless jobs that create no value?

~~~
cabraca
I call your BS call :)

There is nothing better than a day with nicely spaced meetings

My current Project on every second wednesday:

10:00-10:30 Daily Standup

11:00-12:00 Architect Jour Fix

12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak

13:00-14:00 Sprint Retro

15:00-16:00 Sprint Planning

Most of the gaps have a reason (conflicting meetings, etc) We use those gaps
to "transfer knowledge". That basically means we sit in the cafeteria chatting
about work or non-work relatet stuff, planning our weekends, etc.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Wait, you're actually putting that forward as a good day? That boggles my
mind...if you come in at 9, get settled, you have maybe 45 minutes to work.
Then, until 14-15, you have NO one hour stretch, then you have just one more
stretch from 16-17...when do you actually code?? Don't you need a couple hours
of focused time?

~~~
WaylonKenning
As an Architect, I'd rather have six hours of meetings, and one hour of
documentation, than eight hours straight of being at a computer. In some jobs
- meetings are the work. Meetings are influencing, are negotiating, are
discussing, are communicating. And all of that is best done face to face.

~~~
wutbrodo
That's orthogonal to the fragmentation. Probably two thirds of my job is
meetings, but I'm ruthless about compacting them so that the remaining third
isn't a scattered forty five minutes at a time

------
cyborgx7
I've had times when a pointless meeting with too many participants was a
welcome break. Of course, just reducing the work week and having more free
time would be a lot better. But I'll take what I can get.

------
eris_agx
This articles reminds me of Parkinson's Law: "work expands so as to fill the
time available for its completion".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law)

Without efficient ways of doing things managers want more people doing things
like them. Like the traffic problem doesn't get better with more lanes.

~~~
dredmorbius
Exactly and the point I was going to make, and pointed at in the article
(toward the end).

Uncosted inputs will be used to the limits of tolerance of costed inputs.

Time is a near-universal uncosted input, at least in internal allocation.

------
throwaway5752
One of the things you realize quickly as you manage is that there is a more
bimodal distribution of preferences for socializing among engineers. I don't
want to fall into stereotypes, but there are some people that don't like
meetings (aggressively) and are pretty outspoken about it.

There are a number of people that kind of enjoy it as a form of socializing.
That obviously doesn't apply to overly long, poorly structured meetings that
waste time. But a sizeable (mostly) silent group of people appreciate
reasonably scheduled and structured meetings in the way described in this
article. To each their own.

~~~
manmal
I don’t like meetings because they are not „productive time“, but I do like
them because they do, as you wrote, fulfill my socialization needs. Onsite
meetings work way better for me in that regard.

------
Havoc
As unpopular as it might be - I kinda like open offices for this reason. (work
type dependent).

Having the 4x mission critical managers sitting in a cluster & overhearing
each other's conversations did wonders for keeping everyone on the same
wavelength - without meetings.

[offtopic]

Was a bit of an eye opener how powerful that can be. 40 man team, insane
yearly sprint-like pressure for 2.5 months solid. Everything continuously on
fire basically...but it's fine as long as the center holds. Also had an
interesting effect on team morale - they're a lot happier to charge into
battle if they're confident leadership is unified.

------
eeZah7Ux
WTF? Venting might be arguably beneficial in some cases, but in many companies
employees don't get to vent in a meeting.

Rather, they have to endure demands, complaints and display of status from
management - which is the opposite of therapy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)

One of the reasons of pointless meeting is to keep busy and appear busy - see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

~~~
jka
The article is, in part, suggesting that it's exactly those kind of status-
conscious people who benefit from 'meeting therapy':

"Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden say meetings provide an
outlet for people at work to show off their status or to express frustration."

But yep, that might not be ideal for a participant who would prefer to be
making progress on something else. I've seen a bunch of tech companies start
to suggest to employees that they can and should leave meetings if they don't
feel like their presence is important.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
"outlet for people at work" hints that benefits everybody, or the majority.

"outlet for management" sounds quite different.

~~~
jka
Yep; I'd imagine that's an intentional distinction by the author. Some people
might act this way regardless of whether they move between a management or
individual contributor role.

------
drugsupplychain
There's an interesting hatred of meetings by software engineers, and I think
it's to far on the hatred spectrum. There's definitely a lot to hate about
meetings and they are very poorly run in general. But the argument of "when do
you do actual work!" is not a good one. If you run an organization of 200
people, it's a lot more effective for 25 people to spend all of their time
making the efficiency of the team, and impact of the team on the business as
high as possible, than it is to increase the team size to 225. If those 25
people can, through messy meetings, debates, and emotional outbursts, somehow
make 200 ppl twice as effective, that's great!

I think a better framing for meetings is not by looking at the battle, but the
war. Individually, yeah it can suck. But the goal is to ensure a large amount
of individuals march in the same direction, toward the same goal, and are
progressing the business forward. Some amount of work is needed for that.

Let's optimize for maximizing that impact, not how "good" the process feels.

~~~
randomsearch
Coding takes an enormous amount of concentration and headspace. Meetings are
context switches that make retaining focus much harder. That’s why coders hate
them.

------
stjohnswarts
They aren't therapy for me. It takes me a while to get into the zone if I'm
doing anything that I would consider "creative" as far as coding. Incessant
meetings break up my day into chunks that aren't useful. I don't mind status
meetings but a recent job turned into 3 or 4 meetings a day for half and hour
at a time and that destroys my day and creates a lot of stress. I think
sending a status to the team once a day is fine. If you want my attention
email me and we'll set something up. This public flogging that managers like
to pull at meetings really is stress inducing.

------
throwaway68AC2
I feel fairly alarmed and skeptical at the idea of managers being therapists,
not because I think it’s a bad idea — in fact I think it ought to be a good
one — but because in my experience, most of the folks asking for your
vulnerability in the business world aren’t willing to off any in turn.

~~~
ilaksh
No, its not the managers who are therapists. Everyone forced to go to their
meetings are providing free therapy for them.

------
bob1029
I have found that our daily standup calls are fairly therapeutic for those
involved. Occasionally, a call will start with a very salty conversation
regarding some topic from the prior day or concerns around schedules, but
every single time it eventually evolves into a productive call. Sometimes this
takes 20 seconds, sometimes this takes 20 minutes. I have a bad habit of
trying to pre-empt or quench a salty exchange in progress, which usually
escalates the situation further. I've found the best thing someone on the
sidelines of a heated or otherwise pointless exchange can do is to come up
with a completely different topic, or propose some sort of compromise. But, at
the end of the day it can really help some people when you just let them yell
it out for a few minutes on the phone. Doing this all the time is obviously
not healthy for team dynamics, but there is always some happy medium between
extremes.

One other thing that can help a lot is to have structured calls and ways for
people to flag things for mandatory discussion. If I am on a call that starts
going sideways, having some established process where I can say something like
"Hey guys, can we take a look at <some bucket of flagged items>?" can very
quickly right the ship. What this does is effectively remind everyone that we
are here to do a job with certain degree of professionalism and diligence.
Everyone also has a vested interest in getting to the bucket of review items,
because these are usually the topics creating the most stress day-to-day, and
talking through them with the team is an excellent means to relieve much of
that stress.

------
cryptica
It's therapy for the worst kinds of people. For productive people, meetings
are horrible; akin to sitting there and watching a bunch of monkeys howling
and banging on their chests to maximize the amount of bananas that they're
going to get at the end of the month.

------
Nursie
> Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden say meetings provide an
> outlet for people at work to show off their status or to express
> frustration.

Yup, see this all the time, and it's one of the reasons I try to avoid most of
them. Nothing gets done, half the people aren't really prepared, and the usual
outcome is the guys with the biggest egos sound off and make themselves feel
important and everyone else just has a good old moan.

It may be therapy for them, but I'd rather not be there, thanks!

------
ilaksh
"Many managers don't know what to do," he says, and when they are "unsure of
their role", they respond by generating more meetings.

Another reason that we should have less managers and instead elevate engineers
into dual engineer/executive positions.

------
throwaway857384
I once talked to a manager about how meeting seemed like a waste of time, he
said he loved meetings because it meant people were working together and
getting things done.

That made me think, that meetings were about making people feel that their
work was meaningful when it wasn't. Basically, if you do meaningful work, you
don't need meetings, but if its the other way around, meetings make total
sense.

~~~
bluGill
The problem with that is it is very easy for someone to get a lot of work done
in something useless. It is very easy to keep adding more and more features to
product X not realizing the the product will never sell enough to make the
investment in releasing it worth it: you would be just as useful to the
company by taking a nap. Meetings are how you get everybody on the same page
on these things. Of course if it is obvious the product won't pay off you send
a memo to everyone. However more likely it is a combination of the marketing
person doing some productions of sales, engineering projecting how much effort
is left, and then someone senior deciding if we need to invest anyway because
the loss leader is still worth it for other reasons...

None of this is to say you are wrong though.

------
bransonf
The problem I experience with meetings is that often times the information
presented is only tangentially related to you.

I hate it when I’m in a meeting and it ends up a conversation between two
people. It’s stressful if you have an expectation to get something done but
also an expectation to sit in a meeting you realize really doesn’t pertain to
you.

~~~
Bartweiss
Once upon a time, this was the point of circulating 'minutes' or a summary
after meetings.

Outside of some special cases (e.g. the Federal Reserve), they're specifically
meant to reflect _conclusions_ , not the full course of discussion. Back-and-
forth that reaches an answer isn't needed, and a debate that ends unresolved
would just read as a summary of the positions. That way, you can invite the
people who need to speak in a meeting, while anyone who just needs to be
informed about the result can catch up from a shorter, async source.

It seems like easy video recording and calling have been one reason for the
decline - minutes were handy if someone couldn't make the meeting, but now
they can dial in or watch it afterwards. That's great for not having to create
a summary, but I think it loses much of the value of a concise, written record
of what happened.

~~~
bluGill
Depends on the minutes. I've seen some where the entire minutes where things
like "Heard the report from the director of X on the state of Y". I would like
to know if the department in question is a useful use of my tax dollars, so I
really want to know what the state of Y is, but I'll probably need to do a
FOIA request to get it.

------
djohnston
We have a 1hr weekly with just the SWE's that is definitely therapeutic. We
basically just poke fun at whatever stupid things happened during the week,
while still keeping our teammates abreast of our progress on tasks. It's 1 hr
once per week and I definitely want to take it to my next workplace

------
waspleg
"People often feel marginalised. They feel that they have no influence or
position. In these cases, the perception is that meetings do not improve
anything, but actually cause even more frustration."

Literally the last paragraph hits the nail on the head for, I'd wager, the
vast majority of people.

~~~
ubu7737
I agree with you, but I want to add some precision to this. In some meetings I
feel powerless, and I find them absolutely horrible. In other meetings I have
a voice anytime I want to use it, and I feel powerful, and I wouldn't miss
them for anything less than a diarrhea poisoning incident.

Edit: In most meetings I feel neutral and disaffected.

------
black_puppydog
The text kind of reads to me like those meetings are therapeutic mostly for
the people that cannot really justify having a job there to begin with... This
really reminds me of David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" and the solution to that
would be a restructuring of society that doesn't require being in an
employer/employee situation to be a valuable part of society.

------
antipaul
Important context quote: “Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial
roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not
that clear".“

So this article doesn’t apply to tech-focused organizations. For sure,
meetings are still relevant there, but should trend to fewer not more

------
whack
> _Prof Hall says as a result, meetings can become "maligned somewhat
> unnecessarily". But he argues that negativity towards meetings can be
> because their real purposes are misunderstood... the real purpose of such
> meetings might be to assert the authority of an organisation, so that
> employees are reminded that they are part of it. Such meetings are not
> really about making any decisions, he says._

We're supposed to feel less negativity towards meetings once we realize that
its a way for the organization to assert its power over us? Reading this
article only made me feel more negativity toward meetings, not less. What kind
of an egotistical blowhard would prefer wasting his team's time and
productivity, just to assert his own power and feel better about himself

~~~
ClumsyPilot
I would argue that the purpose is not tyranny, but to make you feel like you
are part of a team, and that people's progress is being checked on.

If tou start feeling "whether I do honest work or slack, it makes no
difference" you might start losing motivation.

------
brodo
Can anyone find the original paper? The press release is here:
[https://mau.se/en/news/work-meetings-have-an-unwarranted-
bad...](https://mau.se/en/news/work-meetings-have-an-unwarranted-bad-
reputation/)

~~~
teddyh
The Swedish version of the press release
([https://mau.se/nyheter/arbetslivets-moten-har-ofortjant-
dali...](https://mau.se/nyheter/arbetslivets-moten-har-ofortjant-daligt-
rykte/)) has a reference; it seems to be a book:

 _Mötesboken : Tolkningar av arbetslivets sammanträden och rosévinsmingel_ ,
by Malin Åkerström, Vesa Leppänen & Patrik Hall. (ISBN 978-91-984203-6-4)

[https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/06a08c62-a8f3-43cc-...](https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/06a08c62-a8f3-43cc-
acbb-91a16f042c07)

------
kstenerud
In other words, more and more people are being employed in pointless jobs.

There isn't enough actual work to go around, but everyone needs to be
"employed". And since they subconsciously know that their jobs are pointless,
they need to justify their existence through posturing and status and
"visibility" and report production (which nobody reads) and endless meetings.
Lots of activity, but little actual achievement. Middle management only ever
grows @1, because everyone in the middle is in the same boat, and having more
people under you makes you more important and less likely to lose your job or
have your department cut.

@1: With the exception of the massive job purges the mega-corporations do once
a decade or so.

------
rdiddly
Oh I have no doubt that they're therapy... for certain people who need
therapy. I even referred to a certain recurring meeting recently that always
tends to be mostly a particular guy talking, as his therapy session. So I feel
vindicated now!

------
hurrdurr2
We are a manufacturing facility and the amount of meetings to discuss how to
best implement LEAN, 6S, and kaizen has become comical. Many of these meetings
indeed turn into complaint fests between managers from different groups.

------
mbubb
Makes me think of Ray Dalio on transparency and 'meaningful work'. I agree
that people want to vent and be heard but as others have noted meetings turn
into a way for management to reinscribe control and turn complaints back on
the complainant (Learned helplessness,etc)

If we need meetings to define our job then that is pretty unclear management.
If you dont see how your role pertains to the overall goals of the org and
need meetings to figure this out then there is a general disfunction.

Meaningful work and the ability to give and receive feedback. Less meetings.

------
kube-system
I'm not sure meetings in most organizations are the result of people
'asserting authority' or people 'unsure of their role'. Almost no managers are
calling meetings to fulfill some hidden agenda or personal gratification. Most
are called by people who are legitimately trying to solve a problem.

They're just a product of a lazy/ineffective management style.

The problem is, proper task delegation requires a lot of work:

1\. understanding the problem (probably the hardest problem)

2\. understanding the organization and resources

3\. breaking down the problem

4\. assigning tasks appropriately

5\. managing time, both of the process, and the delegates of the tasks.

When a manager does this properly, it's not a very 'visible' process, so
nobody really knows they've done all this work.

Alternatively, lazy managers can just call everyone into a room and let them
figure out everything. It doesn't require any upfront planning or
understanding of the problem. And it comes with the bonus of high-visibility.

TL;DR: meetings are the result of lazy management.

------
ckastner
The article lacks one important detail: number of companies studied. Because
frankly, it sounds a lot like n=1, and generalizing from one (or possibly a
few) dysfunctional examples is a fallacy.

And even if there were an overall trend: not addressing other scenarios seems
like a substantial omission regardless.

The article makes it sound like the whole world needs status validation and/or
a place to vent. I know enough places where stuff like that gets shut down,
hard.

------
randomsearch
If you’re a meeting maker, one thing to consider is that a one hour meeting
for eight people is equivalent (maybe at a minimum) to 12 hours work. Ask
yourself, if I could achieve what that meeting will achieve by spending 12
hours working alone in a room, would I see that as a good use of my time?
Because that’s what you’re doing. Meetings had better be damn important and
genuinely require active participation from all attendees.

------
sargram01
There’s also the class of pointless meeting where nontechnical managers don’t
understand what they’re responsible for so use them to as a way to “manage by
feel”. They call them to see what people’s reactions are to fishing questions
to judge the situation, and to use them as training sessions. These I find to
be the most counterproductive meetings.

------
asaph
People should decline pointless meetings.

~~~
WhompingWindows
An interesting idea...supposedly at Tesla and SpaceX, Elon recommended that
anyone who found a meeting to be pointless should get up and leave
immediately. I don't know if that's still the practice, maybe someone from
those companies can chime in.

~~~
crustacean
That has presumably worked _for Elon_...

------
Ericson2314
The ideas are not knew here, and I am largely sympathetic, but it's really
funny to hear what is usually normally presented in David Graeber "you should
relate to this and be mad" form here presented presented in dry "studies
show..." form.

------
theonemind
I don't disagree with the article. Without articulating it, I always thought
so--precisely that makes many meetings so infuriating for me personally. I
don't have the job title of therapist or actor/background extra.

------
teddyh
Original source, in Swedish:

[https://mau.se/nyheter/arbetslivets-moten-har-ofortjant-
dali...](https://mau.se/nyheter/arbetslivets-moten-har-ofortjant-daligt-
rykte/)

------
WhompingWindows
Isn't this title a contradiction? They aren't pointless meetings if they are
therapeutic for the attendees. Now, what about pointless AND non-therapeutic,
is that possible?

------
rusk
Sounds like a local maximum at the organisational scale.

------
webew
This reminds me of open-plan offices. What a nightmare.

------
18monthsin
If your meetings are non productive blame yourself and start proposing topics
thay result in actionable innovations.

------
markus_zhang
Pointless work meetings always fatigue me quickly...

------
nbonaparte
yxIjdy;6;d

------
viburnum
It makes sense, since most therapy is about as useful as pointless work
meetings.

