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Meetings are the bane of productivity

J

JonathanYoung

Senior member
My rant for the day... I'm plowing through my work listening to my music with my headphones on and basically being a really productive employee today. Then it's time for the meeting. A bunch of people exchange words back and forth for half an hour, bla bla bla, meeting over.

Now I've lost whatever it was I had before the meeting started. Can't concentrate. Can't focus.

I don't know why people love meetings so much. Most of the time a few people talk and a few people listen, but at the end people remember half of the things they talk about or listen to in meetings.
 
If you sit and really concentrate on what happens and what's discussed during a meeting, it's absolutely amazing how inefficient they are. At least in my experience. There are some people who can barely get 10 seconds worth of information across in a 5 minute soliloquy.

/glad I'm out of the corporate world.
 
Yep, most meetings tend to just be time wasters.

My boss likes to have meetings each week, but he's been good about just getting to the point and going over any important and pending stuff. We have a bit of uselessness in there, but it's usually towards the end of the meeting.
 
it is part of the funnel of despair
1 hour of real work requires 10 hours of documentation (design/requirements) and 100 hours of meetings/emails/discussions and 1000 hours of support

1000
100
10
1

see? it is a funnel, a funnel of despair
 
Yeah, I'm going to have to call a pre-meeting meeting for this one.

"What the hell is a pre-meeting meeting!?"

Yeah, well we have a meeting to discuss how we're going to respond and posture in this upcoming meeting. So that's what this pre-meeting meeting is all about, and it's mandatory.
 
Originally posted by: FoBoT
it is part of the funnel of despair
1 hour of real work requires 10 hours of documentation (design/requirements) and 100 hours of meetings/emails/discussions and 1000 hours of support

1000
100
10
1

see? it is a funnel, a funnel of despair
Click to expand...

haha, I actually lol'd for this one. Thanks!
 
My company is really big on All Hands meetings. They get the entire department together once a month for these things where they go over a series of Powerpoint slides and stand there to tell us pretty much exactly what is on the slides. The same thing could be accomplished by just emailing the frigging presentation to everyone and having them read it.
 
Originally posted by: spidey07
Yeah, I'm going to have to call a pre-meeting meeting for this one.

"What the hell is a pre-meeting meeting!?"

Yeah, well we have a meeting to discuss how we're going to respond and posture in this upcoming meeting. So that's what this pre-meeting meeting is all about, and it's mandatory.
Click to expand...

I used to attend meetings with folks where we were in what they perceived as an adversarial relationship (I was a quality control nazi). The folks would always have pre-meetings prior to our meetings* and make practice runs through the agenda. Then they'd get all bent out of shape when the actual meeting didn't flow according to script. Their managers would get really pissed.


* Pre-meetings are a really good idea in this scenario to make sure you have your ducks in a row.
 
Originally posted by: trmiv
My company is really big on All Hands meetings. They get the entire department together once a month for these things where they go over a series of Powerpoint slides and stand there to tell us pretty much exactly what is on the slides. The same thing could be accomplished by just emailing the frigging presentation to everyone and having them read it.
Click to expand...

Here's how to get a handle on this. At your next meeting look around the room and add up hourly salaries. Figure out how much it is costing the company to have everybody sitting there. Ask if anyone has anything to say that is worth XXX dollars/minute.
 
Originally posted by: ironwing


I used to attend meetings with folks where we were in what they perceived as an adversarial relationship (I was a quality control nazi). The folks would always have pre-meetings prior to our meetings* and make practice runs through the agenda. Then they'd get all bent out of shape when the actual meeting didn't flow according to script. Their managers would get really pissed.


* Pre-meetings are a really good idea in this scenario to make sure you have your ducks in a row.
Click to expand...

Included in this pre-meeting meeting is a blamestorming session. I'd like to nominate ironwing for the blame, all in favor?
 
Meetings are what marketing and sales people do so they can feel like they're contributing something to the company.
 
Originally posted by: ironwing
Here's how to get a handle on this. At your next meeting look around the room and add up hourly salaries. Figure out how much it is costing the company to have everybody sitting there. Ask if anyone has anything to say that is worth XXX dollars/minute.
Click to expand...

I did this once. At my first programming gig, NO ONE protected programmers from getting sucked in to meetings by everyone and their mothers. And the lower on the food chain someone was, the more apt they were to demand that programmers be involved. It wasn't at all uncommon for a logistics secretary, sales secretary, or marketing secretary to tie up 2 or 3 programmers for an hour or two.

My boss said he was totally against this sort of behavior, but never really did anything about it. That is, until, all of the programmers started tracking exactly how many hours we spent in meetings each week. It landed, but not enough to promote action. Finally we multiplied said hours by our wages. Jackpot. No more meetings.

Seriously, if you can keep from drifting off into space during a meeting and actually pay attention to what's going on, not only will you realize how much of a waste of time they are, but you'll realize just how fucking stupid the majority of your coworkers are and how wasteful their salaries are.

Once I took over as lead programmer, none of my people went to non-dev meetings. If sales/marketing/etc wanted dev representation, I took the bullet.

Now that I'm "out on my own" consulting, I actually charge a $10/hour premium for meetings. On average, I spend about two hours per week in meetings, and they're actually quite productive.
 
Originally posted by: trmiv
My company is really big on All Hands meetings. They get the entire department together once a month for these things where they go over a series of Powerpoint slides and stand there to tell us pretty much exactly what is on the slides. The same thing could be accomplished by just emailing the frigging presentation to everyone and having them read it.
Click to expand...

We must work for the same company...
 
Thankfully the only meetings I have to sit in on are either client facing or actually informative. If a meeting goes downhill, at least I get to sit around and joke with other people for a few minutes.
 
Someone where I work suggested a system:

First, everyone scans their badge as they enter the room.
Then a counter on the wall begins displaying the dollar amount that the meeting is costing based on everyone's hourly wage.


 
Originally posted by: Jeff7
Someone where I work suggested a system:

First, everyone scans their badge as they enter the room.
Then a counter on the wall begins displaying the dollar amount that the meeting is costing based on everyone's hourly wage.
Click to expand...
Many of the people in meetings I attend are engineers, and I know it wouldn't be 5 minutes before one of them said, "Never be the first person to scan in, because if no one else comes in right with you the next person to come in could figure out how much you made just by asking you how long you've been waiting."

 
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