
Ask HN: What are your main issues with meetings? - wastedhours
I&#x27;ve read a lot of comments on HN with criticism for meetings of various forms - what are the main issues that people have with them? And have you ever been in a place where they&#x27;ve been done well (either remote or in person)?<p>- break of flow from &quot;deep work&quot;?
- waste of time with no outcomes?
- overtaken by &quot;loudest person in the room&quot;?
- politics etc...
- anything else?
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anoncoward111
They very rarely have anything of value for the people whose livelihood
depends on actually getting things done.

Meetings were mostly invented and proliferated by middle managers who wanted
to look busy and provide some structure to their otherwise unproductive
existence

And if its a sales meeting, well, that's just summed up with "please give us
money."

~~~
stupidgeek314
if you leave things up to engineers to just "get things done", you're not
going to end up with a product/service that is actually useful.

meetings are a critical part of any project. what people don't like is BAD
meetings. And most meetings are bad, because most people don't know how to
have effective meetings.

~~~
jwbensley
I think this is an important note that you have made. Meetings are not a place
for free and open discussion, which in my experience often derails them.

We tend to have two kinds of meetin. The first kind is with another team (or
teams) that is to clarify something, or request something, or provide them
with information etc. (what exactly is roughly agreed beforehand so that we
come with the info required). This is not a free for all discussion. We need
something from this meeting, or maybe they do, so we have an aim to stay
focused on.

The other kind of meeting we tend to have is a private team meeting where we
discuss things openly and freely, although the head of our team still steers
the topic, but loosely (so, still not a total free for all, but less strict
that a meeting with another team). An example is our weekly team meting, the
main agenda is sharing updates with the rest of the team on where we are in
our individual projects, but we can also side track a bit if its some how
relevant or noteworthy.

