
Meetings – A culture of excess that hurts our productivity and morale - justinucd
https://hackernoon.com/meetings-a-culture-of-excess-that-hurts-our-productivity-and-morale-464a5797c799
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tboyd47
Calling a meeting is almost always the worst way to accomplish something.

IMO it should only be done when you need to make an announcement or poll
feedback from a group of people you don't usually interact with or who are
busy.

If you have a question for a specific person, don't call a meeting; just use
the easiest channel to contact that person and publish the answer.

If you need help with something business critical, don't call a meeting; do
enough research to formulate an intelligent question and ask that question.

If you need to learn about something but it's not urgent, or even if it is
urgent but not for anyone else, find the best person to learn from and ask
them for a 1 on 1 at their most convenient time.

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fhood
What about as a way to make sure the different teams know what everyone else
is doing?

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Consultant32452
Your post just made me shudder. There's nothing I can say or do to stop my PM
from calling those exact meetings. I've gone so far as to say, "I'm already
working with [dept rep 1] and [dept rep 2], they're both being extremely
responsive and actively working on solving this problem with me. There's no
need to take action." The immediate response is to call a meeting, bring in
extra business people, and call it a "working session" that ultimately slows
progress and increases confusion because now the tech people have to
continually translate what we're doing into non-tech speech.

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fhood
I don't usually have to go to these meetings, but I find it very convenient to
have at least one person on the team who can let people know when they are
reinventing a wheel that was already implemented by another team.

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s73ver_
What's that saying? You almost always have to get approval from your manager
to spend $500 on a tool, but call a meeting with 20 people and no one bats an
eye.

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maxxxxx
I think partially this has to do with the lack of overtime pay in a lot of
companies. There is no direct cost in wasting people's times. When I started
my career in Germany we had a strict 35 hour week. There were almost no large
meetings and we spent most of the work week actually working. Despite this the
company was very successful and efficient.

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iamphilrae
I’m now a contractor charging by the hour in a company I used to be an
employee in (no OT). It’s amazing how few meetings I get invited to now
compared to my previous employment. I just get left to get my stuff done and
I’m kept up to date through my own efficient means of finding stuff out (i.e
asking the correct people). I would say I’m at least 3x more productive now
and no worse off.

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partycoder
Some elements that can help are:

\- an agenda

\- sending an e-mail with the meeting goals or slides in advance

\- a moderator that keeps the meeting on topic

\- marking non-essential people as optional

\- minutes, or recording the meeting

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throwaway2016a
I avoid meetings if I can but if there is no agenda I flat out refuse or
volunteer to prepare the agenda myself. I will not step foot in the room
without one.

