I Hate Status Calls....

Nov 8, 2012
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I have like 20 calls to update a given group on status of things. I've honestly never seen so much wasted time in my life.

from 8:00 - 10:30 every Friday it's just back-to-back-to-back status meetings. One for our group. One for the project management group... one for the testing team...

Plus there is all the preparation leading up to those of filling out the templates the days prior. Seems like the biggest waste of consulting hours. That and I just hate doing it... :(
 
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pete6032

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2010
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Are you billing hourly? If so then there is no such thing as wasted time. ;)

EDIT - I also hate project status meetings with a passion.
 
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purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
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Status reports and meetings are probably the #1 waste of time and money at many businesses. The new project I'm on I have to do a status report at the end of each pay period and it's literally me looking at git logs for the past period and filtering by my username, and transcribing what I see into a stupid report. The people who need the status report can't just fucking do that themself. And all they do with it is push it up the chain to someone who doesn't even know who the fuck I am. Such a waste of time.
 
Nov 8, 2012
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Are you billing hourly? If so then there is no such thing as wasted time. ;)

EDIT - I also hate project status meetings with a passion.

Billing hourly - paid salary :(

Probably some of the highest billing hour rates you will ever see too heh.
 

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
15,332
7,792
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The only time I hated weekly status reports was when our project lead was out sick and I found out an hour before hand that I'd be the one giving the update. That sucked - quick, what has everyone been working on if you weren't working with me o_O
 
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Nov 8, 2012
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Pre-record a status update and play it for each group. Life Hacked!

Gotta be there to answer questions about your status and if anyone has questions for you on their status as well... or if you don't you will get your hand chopped off :eek:
 

clamum

Lifer
Feb 13, 2003
26,255
403
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i hate outsourced support from india, change my mind
Is that a reference to Crowder? I like his show. Although NotGayJared does have a face that makes you want to punch it, when he's doing a dance during intros, rofl.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
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www.anyf.ca
I hate that crap too. We put out a major outage based on alarms we see and suddenly everyone is calling us for a status update. Everything that's in the major outage report is what we know, we don't know anything more, we're not the ones at the scene.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
94,687
14,935
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I have like 20 calls to update a given group on status of things. I've honestly never seen so much wasted time in my life.

from 8:00 - 10:30 every Friday it's just back-to-back-to-back status meetings. One for our group. One for the project management group... one for the testing team...

Plus there is all the preparation leading up to those of filling out the templates the days prior. Seems like the biggest waste of consulting hours. That and I just hate doing it... :(
You forgot the status meeting about the state of your status update meetings.
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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I worked at one company where we had more meetings than actual work. It was not only frustrating, but very boring. Boring stuff literally makes me sleepy. I had a really hard time staying awake during those meetings lol.

My friend's company does standing meetings. They have a raised table and no chairs. His boss hates long meetings, so it's an incentive not to sit around & let things drag on forever. I'd love to implement that strategy at more companies!

My personal preference is to keep a simple project word doc (or spreadsheet) that each person manually updates themselves, and then let people check on the status of the project themselves. If the project is big enough to have a project manager attached, then that person can manage all of that stuff, with maybe a quick weekly status update meeting to address roadblocks & course-correct as needed with any project adjustments required. It's not rocket science, but people get busy, and people are disorganized, and then Dilbert becomes a documentary, haha.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
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www.anyf.ca
When I was in IT they LOVED meetings at that place. Was crazy. One time me and my coworker were literally in the process of rack mounting a SAN, we were both holding one end and lining it up with the rails. IT manager walks in and calls a meeting, we continue lining it up and he yells "I MEANT NOW! DROP WHAT YOU'RE DOING!" It was only a 60k SAN enclosure. So we put it back on the ground.

The meeting was to give us shit about how slow the SAN deployment was. We literally got the box an hour before we had started to rack it. They were the ones that kept delaying our every chance to work on that project.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
37,404
8,038
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I've never had to deal with that stuff IIRC. When I finally developed the chops technically (programming), I was on top of it, nobody was monitoring my work except me, and I did that well. People could come to me for info, I was ready for them. I've never really felt like just one of the team.
 

MagnusTheBrewer

IN MEMORIAM
Jun 19, 2004
24,135
1,594
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Do a study on what the meetings are costing in terms of production and service. The only thing corps understand is money. Of course, if there's a top dog's ego involved, they don't even understand that.
 
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Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
12,029
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www.anyf.ca
There was a project at the hospital I worked at to replace a white board with a TV in the ER. This was used to track patient intake and assigned doctors etc. It took 3 years worth of meetings and planing to finally get it done. The ER nurses, who were not even involved in the process, didn't like it as it went against their work flow (had to log into the computer vs just walk to it), and it was also too bright. It got taken down and the white board put back up. I think it's safe to assume that TV ended up in the IT manager's living room.

I don't even want to know how much this project cost just in meetings alone. :eek: Tax dollars at work.
 
Nov 8, 2012
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Do a study on what the meetings are costing in terms of production and service. The only thing corps understand is money. Of course, if there's a top dog's ego involved, they don't even understand that.

Cost? That's pretty easy, when our whole team is in the meeting of about the 5 of us (we range in ranking) I would estimate that it's costing the client ~$1500/hour. That's just our time billing - if people traveled out for meetings there is the cost of that as well.

When you're the client you don't really care if it's wasted time... other than I hate it. I'm not going to teach them how to save money by getting rid of useless tasks - thats part of our revenue building model :p
 

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,348
3,426
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Status calls don't bother me too much since I can usually get work done during them. My parts are usually pretty quick:
"Where do we stand with X?"
On track to meet the deadline

Or "My group completed project Y this week." Done.

Vendor dog and pony shows bother me more. Dude did you even read the RFP?

Do a study on what the meetings are costing in terms of production and service. The only thing corps understand is money. Of course, if there's a top dog's ego involved, they don't even understand that.

If its customer requested status calls they may not care but just bill them more for the costs without increasing salary.
 
Nov 8, 2012
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Eh, I guess my annoyance is that I essentially have to lead calls for the most part. If it were as simple as someone else asking "Where do we stand on x" then I wouldn't have a problem.

But in my case I basically speak on behalf of our group to the entire project management team and the team we are hired for.

Fridays are the official status call days.... So just got through them... now to drink excessively in celebration.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,364
7,516
126
Had the usual status meeting today...

boss - How'd it go today?
me - Same as usual
boss - How's that?
me - Perfection

Took about 7 seconds, and interupted me updating the job book.
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,729
559
126
I worked at one company where we had more meetings than actual work. It was not only frustrating, but very boring. Boring stuff literally makes me sleepy. I had a really hard time staying awake during those meetings lol.

My friend's company does standing meetings. They have a raised table and no chairs. His boss hates long meetings, so it's an incentive not to sit around & let things drag on forever. I'd love to implement that strategy at more companies!

I've read that because buildings are so tight now and ventilation is so crap in a conference room you're basically just breathing tons of CO2 after a half hour and getting dumber by the minute. That might explain why I also start to flag and fall asleep.

I have a crappy back that is triggered by standing. I fear I'd just end up in agony while some one droned on and on if we did stand up meetings.

While I also hate the endless redundant status meetings I can tolerate them better now that they are remote. When I was trapped in a room I couldn't do anything but now I can do some low mental load work while I ignore the half hour of the meeting that I have nothing at all to do with.

Edit: I actually have no idea how I ended up in this thread. I wasn't intentionally digging up ancient history.
 
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Scarpozzi

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
26,389
1,777
126
Status meetings are supposed to facilitate better communication because not everyone is copied on Emails.....but in most cases, not everyone should be copied on Emails. Depending on the pace and seasonality of the work you're in, switching to biweekly or monthly meetings would definitely safe time. Weekly just sucks.

I have a weekly meeting every Friday with my boss. I think we actually met 8 times last year.....maybe 4 times so far this year.