Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings
github.comThis always seems to be such a controversial view here, but if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go. We're all grown-ups at work, and are ultimately responsible for our own productivity. Be prepared to articulate exactly why you feel some other use of your time is more appropriate, in case someone asks, but nobody is holding a gun to your head telling you to join the meeting. I'm double-booked for meetings all day, so I'm constantly making judgment calls about which one (or neither) is more important. It's not a big deal, and you don't need an app for it.
It can also be useful to, perhaps, engage in either a passive or active interrogation of what the value and purpose of a meeting is in the eyes of others.
I agree there are some useless meetings. I would, however, classify more meetings as unproductive but important. That represents a different problem and necesitates a different solution but seems to beguile engineers. Does an unproductive meeting need to be cancelled or fixed?
Finally, I have experienced meetings where one person who believes the meeting is useless and just runs it off the rails. The meetings can BECOME useless because of that person's behavior. Others may see it as valuable for alignment, clarification, ideation, many other reasons even if you don't. In my experience, the people who are willing to act on a belief a meeting is useless more frequently misunderstand what the goal of a particular meeting is, misunderstand the role of meetings in engineering/technical work, or just are generally premaddona assholes.
Declaring a meeting useless for everyone is rarely a productive solution. The idea that technical work is primarily and individualized activity is about as outdated as waterfall project management.
You can constructively engage in a conversation of 'what is the purpose of this meeting in the short and in the long term' without talking about the cost. If we reduce everything to that metric of observability then coders should be paid in lines of code written not thinking done.
> If we reduce everything to that metric of observability then coders should be paid in lines of code written not thinking done.
If this happens I'll do well. Just don't ask how I "write" the code that gets submitted.
To add to that, if you default to the position that any meeting is pointless, you'll find yourself continually frustrated and likely wrong at times. Talk to your manager about time management and let them know where you think your time is best served. They may agree and give you the cover you need to duck out, they might revamp some meetings to be more effective, or they may just give you the context you need to have the meeting become more valuable to you personally.
Or they may become offended, or cut you out of communications, or tell you their misunderstandings as if they’re true…
Many organizations cannot handle discussing or even innocently questioning their communication problems openly.
I would never use this calculator, for the record. There are ways to redeem the time, including trying as much as possible to make the bad meeting worthwhile.
> cut you out of communications, or tell you their misunderstandings as if they’re true…
Tell you their misunderstandings as it they're true. I really appreciate the phrasing there. Super useful for my own experience.
I would agree with this. A lot of folks retreat rapidly. One of the most common responses is "Why didn't you tell me this sooner so I could make meetings more useful?" It's a really slick deflection tactic.
I agree there are always ways to use the time better though.
As a manager, I encourage my team to just say "no" where ever possible. I also always push to halve the times of meetings I'm in (and typically that works well).
- We have 10 min standup every day
- We have 30 min sprint planning every week
- We have 30 min retro every week
Beyond that we will talk as necessary between people. In reality pushing back is pretty effective at determining if a meeting is important. If they don't move it for you, you didn't need to be there.
> - We have 10 min standup every day
At my workplace we now have 90 minute daily standups because it was perceived the employees are not doing enough quick enough. It has obliterated any hope of progression in a single work day without overtime (unpaid!) since these typically will run over by a long margin, eating up what little time we had for actual development.
I've seen teams that have a 30+ minute morning standup, and an end-of-day standup of unlimited duration based on how much the lead wants to rant that day.
Wow, 90 minutes. That‘s mind boggling. How many people do attend these daily meetings? I guess there‘s only a few persons using most of the time for their talking?
The entire team...
So 5 people?? We have no idea how big your team is.
30 people. Didn't need to downvote me for not specifying an exact number.
Have you tried not showing up and seeing what the consequences are?
Threatening to put people on PIP, a few people tried to get excused from these meetings (even those who are rather all stars when it comes to output imo).
Agreement from me, although I'd avoid double booking. Double booking means that other people are expecting you to attend, they may wait to see if more people join, or need to reschedule if the right audience isn't able to make it. I think it's best to pro-actively reject meetings versus only showing up for one.
Depends. If your schedule has a lot of flux (meetings being cancelled ad-hoc, etc.) then it can be useful to accept everything but notify the host that you probably won't be there unless something changes. That way if something does change you at least still have it on your calendar (I use Outlook, maybe other calendar/meeting apps handle this better).
Google Calendar has a Maybe option that solves it simply enough.
Outlook has Tentative, for the same reason.
As someone who has done this, I can tell that it's not easy to justify. In my previous company, there were two teams, one in India and the other in US, working on a project. Each team had a scrum master and a daily morning scrum call. The India team was expected to attend the US team's scrum call as well. This made no sense to me as I already provided updates in the Indian scrum call. So I made it clear that we should either cancel the Indian scrum call or we should not attend the US one. But I was a relatively junior developer and senior engineers were complying despite disagreeing with the arrangement. So, the US scrum master escalated it as far as he could take it. I did not back down and defended my position with senior management as well. It was a fun filled week though. Every day the US scrum master would think of a new silly reason to escalate my absense and I would have to counter it. Eventually, the practice of attending both scrum calls was dropped.
Good job. Fuck scrum masters who just want to show that they are running a meeting for 2x the number of people.
> We're all grown-ups at work
I want to work where you work.
Then just change jobs, duh. I mean, if you’re in a company where you can’t say “Look, it’s better if I skip this discussion to ship a feature”, odds are you’re wasting more time than you imagined.
"Just change jobs" isn't always feasible just like "just break up with them" isn't always feasible in relationships. Kids, health situations, money issues, professional enjoyment, location, and needed benefits (particularly remote work) can all play factors into why one might need to stay at a particular job.
And further, we should always be encouraged to first try to solve our issues before running from them. Yes, solutions may not always be possible but learning to solve difficult issues is an important skill.
It's pretty good for SWE to have positive alternatives to everything you mentioned these days, isn't it?
If by positive alternatives you mean backup plans, savings, and safety nets, then yes, I agree that emergencies should be prepared for as much as possible. However, life sometimes gets in the way.
i've seen similar techniques used before where meeting cost has been calculated. it's kinda geek-cool, but it's also pretty passive aggressive, a little petty (not only are you wrong for calling the meeting, but hey, everyone look how wasteful it is) and dare i say, toxic.
sometimes it can be hard to break out of routines and have frank conversations, and it's certainly easier to complain behind closed doors, ignore or otherwise be passive aggressive... but all that does is create a toxic environment where fear, speculation and rumor rule the day. i think the correct answer is to pull the organizer aside and provide direct feedback on the utility of the meeting... 9/10 times, they will listen and respond in a positive manner.
Here's the one simple trick they don't want you to know about:
email the organizer, making sure to CC everyone, asking for the meeting's agenda.
no, please don't do that. only asking for an agenda while cc'ing everyone is passive aggressive.
a more congenial approach would be to provide your understanding of the agenda, perhaps as a question, and then asking if there's more or another alternative: "it sounds like we're going to collectively make a decision on [x]. is there anything else on the agenda for this meeting?" even better if you do this one-to-one and, if needed, suggest the meeting invite be updated accordingly.
I think this depends on my relationship to the organizer. If they are my employee or mentee then sure. If the perceived agenda takes 5 seconds, maybe.
But it takes a few minutes to compose a draft agenda for someone else’s meeting. So I could spend an hour a day trying to figure out what blank meetings are supposed to do.
Asking for an agenda is quick, helps the organizer with a signal for what’s expected, and I can sustain that behavior.
I wouldn’t cc all the invites unless I think they are all also curious about the agenda and I just want to stave off an email storm asking the same question. (But then if I know that others will ask the same thing, I might just do nothing because someone else will ask)
> a more congenial approach would be to provide your understanding of the agenda
That shifts works to me.
If someone sends a meeting invite without an agenda, either I trust them and we already agreed this was worth spending time on or they should learn to write an agenda.
> I'm double-booked for meetings all day, so I'm constantly making judgment calls about which one (or neither) is more important. It's not a big deal, and you don't need an app for it.
It seems like your job is more meeting-centric than the average engineering job. I'd hate to juggle meetings daily instead of working on the same problem for hours uninterrupted.
If you are in a leadership position this is kind of a nightmare. If you are just an IC you're bolder than I. tbh my morning standup could be reduced to a sentence.
For your standup, I've really enjoyed my teams switch to writing out what were doing that day in our team's chat channel. Then we still have a standup, but we talk about interesting problems and blockers and not just what were doing.
Yeah I wish we could do this. It just makes so much more sense.
I think sometimes people may forget that in a lot of cases a person may be put on a meeting invite as a courtesy to inform them a topic is being discussed. This is a form non-repudiation such that the person being invited cant complain later they were left out of any decision making.
More positively, they are offering you the opportunity to head-off braindead decisions at the pass.
As engineer, I just continue working on other tasks in every single meeting. For me that multitasking works, and I don't have meeting fatigue at all. Then again, I'm not the main decision maker most of the time.
Also an engineer - I've always found this to be really disrespectful. It's not multitasking, it's ignoring the people around you. If the meeting isn't worth your undivided attention, it's better to drop the organizer a note about why you're excusing yourself from it.
Making the meeting host compete feel like they're constantly competing for your attention is just really demoralizing.
Is there possibly a middle ground? If the meeting is about a big project and I have expert knowledge on a small part of that, I will often work through the meeting but stay tuned in for parts relevant to me. Spending the whole meeting in rapt attention would likely be a waste of time, but not attending at all is bad as well.
As others have said, an upfront agenda is helpful.
That's a good point. I personally got numb against people not paying attention the past year, doesn't mean everyone is.
It's just an easy way to reclaim time. I agree the better solution is to trim meetings.
Many meetings are completely useless, full of checked out attendees. I guarantee that many people with their cameras off are doing this exact same thing. Some of them are just using this time to get stuff done around the house.
That's even worse, IMO, because you're contributing to the waste of every else's time and making the meetings seem more important than they really are.
> if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go.
Or, even better, normalize showing up to a meeting, and if you feel like it is useless/irrelevant to you after 10 minutes, just stand up and leave. You never know ahead of time if the meeting would be useless for you or not (ok, in a lot of cases you do, but more often than not it isn't super-decisive). But after 10 minutes, it becomes a bit more obvious whether you would benefit from staying or not.
Saw a senior engineer from our sister team do it once, then he explained his logic to me later regarding this. At first i was afraid, thinking "ok, he is a senior engineer, he can do whatever without negative consequences, and I don't think I can afford to do it as an entry level engineer [at the time]".
One day I tried it, and never looked back. No one had any issues with it, and it had made me so much more productive. Then a new manager for my team came along, saw me do it once, and asked me about it, like "why did you do this". I explained to him the exact same reasoning as for why I was doing it. He ended up having zero issues with it after my explanation either, and had even mentioned this approach to other people on the team who were struggling with meeting overload as a recommended approach.
This doesn’t really work when power dynamics are in play. If you’re a junior or just have less experience than the person calling the meeting I can guarantee it’s causing some type of negative view of you by someone. You do that enough times and you’ll find yourself on a PIP, and eventually on the job market.
This is why meetings in general are net negative. There’s little need for scheduled meetings. Just do one stand up per week, ad hoc calls when needed, but mostly just let people work.
If you're an inexperienced junior developer, you probably should not assume you know better than everyone else what meetings are useful.
> This always seems to be such a controversial view here, but if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go. We're all grown-ups at work, and are ultimately responsible for our own productivity.
I tried doing this. Was told I need to attend more meetings. So I asked how many? They said, "it depends". "It depends on what?" "On how often we want to meet."
So whatever the hell that means. I think I need to meet every week for some reason. Just to prove 'something'
Eject.
I had a colleague with this problem. Kept being told that they had to attend meetings and they thought the meetings weren’t useful.
They left and solved their problem, but the group problem remains.
Sometimes I can’t fix cultural issues despite working really hard, so moving to a new team or company is the best move. Also, I think there are people who like lots of meetings so it may be a function of people finding the right culture fit for them.
Thankfully, technology may help us to find a middle ground. For one thing, it's possible to work on one computer while attending a meeting on another. My home office is two computers for this reason. This is useful for those "status update" meetings where each of 12 people gets 5 minutes to update everybody on their tasks.
You can also accept a meeting invite with the proviso that you will participate if you are actually needed.
This seems like the last place that that view would be considered controversial.
Agreed. I posted this exact thing in a comment the other day and it got downvoted. If you get an invitation to a party, you don't just automatically accept, you would (or should) question whether you will enjoy this party. A meeting should be the same, except it's not about enjoyment but about worth. What are you expected to contribute to the meeting? What will you gain by attending? If this isn't clear, ask for clarification. If it's still not clear, decline the invitation.
Fun app for personal use, but it seems rather passive aggressive to display this in Zoom if you aren't the one who called the meeting. Voice a concern if you think a meeting isn't necessary. Don't quietly try to undermine the meeting as it is happening. And odds are if this is something everyone on the team wants to include in a meeting, the team probably already puts a priority on not wasting time in meetings.
Agreed. Passive aggressive approaches like this app should be left to fantasy.
If you have a problem, learn to handle it like a professional adult. Talk it out. Propose alternatives. If you find yourself in a 127-person Zoom call that isn’t relevant to you, just leave and send a note to the meeting organizer that you’re not available for such meetings and ask them to please let you know if anything comes up that is specific to you.
Making a scene by holding up an app and being passive aggressive about the point you’re trying to make is not a productive way to communicate. It likely won’t have the intended effect, either.
Yeah, it’s not a constructive approach. I would not want to work with anyone who pulls stunts like this, no matter how “clever” they are.
>Voice a concern if you think a meeting isn't necessary
Correct, I simple ask if I can be excused from the meeting.
Which I find myself doing occasionally, since a lot of people do not bother looking at anyones busy/ free calender and I end up being quadriple booked
I would also recommend voicing your concerns privately with the meeting host (before the meeting). Publicly asserting some meeting isn't necessary could feel like an attack on the meeting host. Give the host an opportunity to be the "hero" who improves or cancels the meeting. You can get the outcome you wanted without looking like a jerk.
There was a time when I used to say "What? Another pointless meeting? Oh c'mon that just distracts me from working on features/writing code!". I don't say that anymore. I'm fine with useless meetings because:
- it's work time. I don't really mind how I spend my working hours. It's 8h and no more (well, with WFH, it's more like 5h or so, but the point stands)
- if the meeting is pointless, I just disconnect. So, the meeting is actually like a break for me. I grab a coffee and let it go
- if I have too many pointless meetings that do not let me do "my job" (but remember, pointless meetings are your job as well!), well let it be. In the standup of the next day I will clearly state: "I spent 2h attending meeting X". If someone asks "why aren't your Jira issues done on time?", I just answer "Oh, I was working on something else (meeting X)".
So, pointless meetings are actually not bad. Just keep your soul free of noise, work (code) when you have time for it.
I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but IMO, if you are at work just clocking your 8h, you should consider switching.
Also, if you think you are attending too many useless meetings, it’s your responsibility to let them (or at least your direct report) know. They might not be aware that you aren’t needed.
> I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but IMO, if you are at work just clocking your 8h, you should consider switching.
Fair point. I don't think I'm at work to "just clock my 8h". I actually enjoy what I do most of the time; it's just that I don't fight anymore against, imho, pointless company bureaucracy. But above all, my philosophy is: work is work; sometimes it's enjoyable, sometimes it's not.
> Also, if you think you are attending too many useless meetings, it’s your responsibility to let them (or at least your direct report) know. They might not be aware that you aren’t needed.
Sure; I never said "don't give feedback". I was just assuming the scenario in which pointless meetings are "inevitable" for whatever reason and we have to come up with (although I know it's a joke) apps like the one we see here in this post.
> I don't really mind how I spend my working hours.
Must be nice to not have hard deadlines while on salary.
I don't get it. If I don't deliver on time whatever I must deliver because of external reasons (e.g., you're slacking, you don't really communicate well with others, you don't have a solid understanding of some tech concepts, etc.) then sure, it's "my fault" (although, it's more like the "team's fault" because is the whole team the one that delivers stuff, but this is another topic). And I understand if I don't get salary raises/promotions.
But if the reason I don't get a salary raise is because I don't deliver on time because I am working on other company-related stuff (i.e., attending meetings) then either: a) I didn't communicate this clearly to my manager ("hey, I spent a significantly portion of my time on meetings") or b) the company thinks meetings "is not work".
So, if it's "a)", it's my fault; but if it's "b)" then I probably already quit (who wants to work in such a company?)
This is an emergent property of social organizations over a certain size, say the Dunbar number, I claim. The organization has its own eye, and cannot look in all directions at once. Some of its members will be able to hide.
Programmers often think the technical aspect of the work is the most important. I’ve met many developers wannabe entrepreneurs who were convinced they had to spend as much time perfecting their app as possible instead of talking to prospective customers. We all know that doesn’t end well.
What I realized over my relatively long IT career is that maybe developers just don’t get why meetings are necessary. Not saying all meetings are equally useful, many of them are in fact a waste of time. But many engineers are narrow-minded and outright reject all the benefits of getting into the same room and discussing a problem.
As someone who worked as a feeelancer and on film sets, as well as in teams: communication is key. But that doesn't mean this communication has to happen in a meeting.
I am not a fan of meetings, but I like a weekly meeting for a project or our department. What I don't like is pointless meetings where things are repeated that are written more concisely in the gitlab issues or in an email everybody should have read.
The point of meetings is to bring all the relevant people onto the same information level and discuss potential issues, however a lot of the more detailed stuff should be consumed beforehand individually.
I think we should make a distinction here.
Client, prospect and customer meetings are absolutely necessary and you should prioritize those no matter what.
Internal time wasting meetings are the pinnacle of the art of not working and should be avoided at all costs.
> Internal time wasting meetings are the pinnacle of the art of not working and should be avoided at all costs.
I’m yet to experience a 100% black-and-white phenomenon in the Universe. We’re all not equal in how we see the work and how we process the information. That’s why we need to compromise and try to underhand why meetings are scheduled.
Ok, suppose programmers are 100% exempt from the internal meetings. Engineering managers and product owners then go ahead and just make every single decision there is. How’s that? The meetings are often used for people to sync on the progress and issues. Moreover, technical people can give their input and help non-technical ones to better understand the limitations, issues, etc.
> Ok, suppose programmers are 100% exempt from the internal meetings. Engineering managers and product owners then go ahead and just make every single decision there is. How’s that? The meetings are often used for people to sync on the progress and issues. Moreover, technical people can give their input and help non-technical ones to better understand the limitations, issues, etc.
That sounds horrendous. Those people shouldn't be making every decision. I don't know what that has to do with meetings. I'm not saying engineers should skip meetings. I'm saying abolish all internal meetings at your company. If you don't run the company then I can see how this is useless advice.
I find ad hoc "meetings" which are really just phone calls (we use Remotion at my company, it works great) to be far more useful. They aren't scheduled, so they don't take up mental space where you're dreading the meeting coming up. They aren't scheduled, so it's super easy to just say "hey I'm busy, can't talk". They aren't scheduled, so there's literally no pressure to take the call, and instead say something like "hey, can you just slack me what's happening and I can take a look in a bit?".
I also think overreliance on meetings leads to a lack of quality internal documentation, writing, and requirements gathering. If everyone is just shooting around ideas out loud, in a room, there's nothing making it on paper. I find that sitting down and actually writing out everything before I present the idea to anyone or discuss it, is far more useful than scrambling before a meeting I forgot that I had today.
The only black and white regarding this I’ve seen are status meetings where most questions could’ve been answered in a discussion or email thread.
And the counter point, is where we wasted days in an email discussion thread when a 30 min meeting would’ve been as effective.
Internally you have clients, they are the stakeholders such as your boss or product managers.
Also customers can waste your time!
Based on the example gif in the repo I would definitely agree - any meeting with 127 participants is pointless. Or it's not a meeting. Maybe it's a lecture or an announcement instead.
Wait till they use it to show the cost of your time spent on HN, or gabbing while refilling your coffee cup.
Or one where they show the cost of sleeping, cuddling on the couch, holding your newborn, getting vaccinated, attending church etc.
I'm waiting for the meeting that helps engineer fight back against pointless apps
Simply announcing the cost of meetings afterwards would have a similar long term chilling effect without being the stereotypical passive aggressive engineer.
Good luck. There are some people in organizations whose entire job is to schedule and attend meetings.
No matter how you say it to those kinds of people, expressing that meetings are keeping you from getting engineer-related work done will be viewed extremely negatively.
I’ve been in IT decades and still don’t know what the best answer is.
Our CEO requires every meeting to have an agenda sent out the day before which goes over the background for the meeting, any metrics/dashboards everyone should be familiar with, and what should be discussed in the meeting.
If the person who schedules the meeting does this, it opens up a conversation where you can say "I read what you sent out - everything looks good and I don't think I'm needed for this meeting".
Fire those people.
Those are generally at the top of the structure.
True. Not saying it's usually practical. But still would be best to fire them.
My biggest gripe is "all-hands" meetings that often run over an hour. I'm pretty sure it's just upper management stroking their egos. I have no power in the decisions that have been already made, and are then relayed in these meetings. This crap could be summarized in a couple of paragraphs in an email, and I can read faster than they can talk.
I like all hands as they give you a great idea of what is going on at the company, how you fit in and you get to ask questions
I would get crucified at my org if I put that on my feed/screen.
Wouldn't want to work at a place with a culture like that.
Looks interesting!
You may want to consider renaming the tool, it's overlapping with getclockwise.com, which is quite popular.
How popular is it? Considering working there.
I only know anecdotally that we were rolling it out to engineering at Uber, and I see it at my current company as well. It has good selling points for management to "improve productivity", and usage spreads easily once someone in a team starts using it.
To actually help make meetings more productive, I highly recommend the book "The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance" [1] ("One of the top business books everybody will be reading in 2019" — Business Insider). For a quick summary, watch the author's webinar "The Surprising Science of Meetings: Evidence-Based Insights Leaders Need to Gain a Competitive Advantage" [2].
If you think a meeting is pointless, say so. And don't attend.
Yes, sometimes that's hard due to being in a toxic environment, but in that case, a passive-aggressive measure like a meeting cost calculator will go over like a lead balloon too. (Source: I tried ;)
Same goes for "multitasking". If a meeting doesn't have value, don't attend, or leave as soon as that's clear.
If most meetings have no value to you, have a hard look as to why. Sometimes, it's because there's a meeting culture. But sometimes, it's because you're missing the point. (for meeting organizers: Spell out the damn point in the agenda, will you? You have an agenda, right?)
These kinds of snarky calculators actually make meetings worse, I think.
There’s lots of people who I think enjoy meetings because it demonstrates power. Calculating how much their meeting costs will make this worse because it’s easier to see how powerful a meeting is.
Separately, I don’t think that time consumed as a cost is unknown to participants so quantifying it doesn’t help much. Kind of like how calories on the Burger King menu doesn’t result in fewer double whoppers with cheese ordered.
To help prevent pointless meetings, what I do is reject meetings that don’t have agendas or clear objectives. I explicitly decline and say “I don’t know what this is for” and sometimes I find out what the reason is. Sometimes it changes my mind, but usually blank invites mean not so great meetings.
And then, I try to never schedule meetings unless there’s no other solution. And I send simple agendas, and if necessary, homework with a time estimate needed to process (eg, read this background before we meet). Sometimes if I’m feeling froggy, I’ll actually mention something about how it’s a 30 minute meeting with the context and background done beforehand or a 60 minute meeting if we want to walk through everything together.
I’m not sure how objectively valuable this is to the org, but it makes me feel better. And I’ve had multiple people comment that they appreciate it and use my reputation and approach in deciding whether to attend in my meetings.
The only thing that really gets to me is when the person leading the meeting shows up 20 minutes late as a show of their power.
Ten people losing twenty minutes sitting there waiting.
I would love to see a feedback feature (not necessarily for this app but just in general) where meeting participants can answer: 1. Did I learn anything new at this meeting? 2. Did I talk at all during this meeting? 3. Would I have gotten the same value from some asynchronous shared doc, etc etc.
So many meetings have so many people that just lose time by going to the meeting and provide no updates or don't receive any new info just because the meetings are big and unwieldy
This is an awesome feature request. Thank you!
a few of our team meetings people do a small poll with asking questions like this
These employees are salaried. They are not paid in 500ms increments.
This is incredibly passive aggressive lol.
I call it RDD: Rage Driven Development.
There is also a "smart assistant" rescheduling service by the same name[1] that I used to great effect at my last employer
I worked for someone in the 90s that came over from Disney and he mentioned they had a similar system but with the dollar amount in huge type on the screen. I can't imagine what some of those Disney executive meetings cost.
Meetings are awesome because I get to do nothing, get paid for it, and everybody agrees I did something that took up time and was work related. What is there not to love?
Seriously. Its not like alternatively I can code for 8 straight hours. I treat meetings like breaks for the most part.
Over the years I collected some general advice how to be productive in meetings, which worked out quite well for me. But it requires discipline, to follow the rules:
https://pilabor.com/blog/2021/04/tips-and-tricks-for-meeting...
Surely this is a guaranteed path to get nailed as a toxic employee. Conducive if the goal is to get fired and collect unemployment.
It's pretty crazy how expensive a simple sprint planning meeting really is if you have 5+ engineers.
What this clock does not compute, is how much money you leave on the table by reducing your meeting count/time and have your engineers/workers dive straight into the problem without talking enough to each other or with the stakeholders beforehand.
Sometimes it leads the death of many man-month projects, or worse.
If the requirements are weak. These meetings try to shore up weak requirements. If the requirements are strong these meetings are not important and wasteful.
ah yes. Because there is a direct and clear road ahead from requirement to implementation. Requirements don't change and if they do it doesn't have any impact on existing parts of the software. /s
My favorite is when stakeholders don't talk to devs to determine whether something is actually possible given the data we collect, but instead go off the recommendation of a technical manager who has never actually worked on the system or its data.
An assertive dev will look at the requirements, try to figure out how that fits, and then reply back to stakeholders if it's unfeasible. Everyone else will sit there for a week bashing their brains out against a keyboard and have continually increased anxiety because they've been assigned an impossible task. The time for a dev to be involved in the process is during requirements gathering as a partner to the process, not after a contract for work has been signed by the client.
I agree, but it's also expensive if you have those same 5+ engineers working on the wrong thing all week. Finding the right balance is hard.
That's not the point of this. You would use this for something like poor management (quite common) that had "stand-up"s on Zoom every day or couple of days that were dragging out and had too many participants listening to irrelevant updates.
Exactly!
Not to mention, depending on the size of the company / org, all hands meetings can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
... especially if you fly them cross-country and put them up in hotels. (I've read some stories.)
Technical solutions to social problems don't usually work, why would this be different?
I don't see this as a technical solution to a social problem. I see this as a technical tool to help with a social solution to a social problem. Specifically, finding a way to communicate the opportunity cost of a meeting, which is a social solution to the social problem, because I don't need this app to do it, but it could help.
> finding a way to communicate the opportunity cost of a meeting ... I don't need this app to do it, but it could help.
The terminal UI is one thing. From my personal experience, displaying the running cost of meetings in my Zoom camera would always be a bad idea. It's an optional feature of this program so it doesn't detract away from the entire idea, just saying that from my experience, managers already know that meetings cost money so displaying the cost of the meeting is pointless, you need to instead argue why your manager is wrong that the cost of the meeting is worth it.
Oh, I agree, I think it comes off as passive aggressive and wouldn't use it. But I also still don't see it as a technical solution to a social problem, which is what we see with the way certain tech giants are trying to handle content moderation.
I just ask up front whether we can accomplish the same thing without a meeting, and if we can, I just say no to the meeting. If I'm actually necessary, then it'll get done one way or another without the meeting. If I'm not, then it's most likely not my battle to fight. (Substitute "We" for "I" if I'm the manager or a mentor or tech lead or something.)
There are unfortunately a lot of people who are put in a bad situation by bosses despite having multiple people explaining the time is a waste. Including them.
So a little bit of passive aggression when someone is in that situation might help them fight out of it and give them a little breathing room. And the reality is that many jobs like that, if the manager reacts badly, it might actually be a relief for the person to finally move on to another job.
Unfortunately, the kind of place where such indirections are expected to work is the kind of place where feedback about meetings won’t be allowed (it is like this for a reason, maybe a top level prefers it, and _that_ is what needs addressing, IMHO)
You're not wrong, but middle management purposefully ignores cost of time so that they can provide a sense of false value to companies by running meetings. While I understand that meetings do offer a sort of corporate therapy for many of these managers, the company should be aware of the true cost of their work.
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This is fantastic but unfortunately it reveals compensation information for attendees.
As lead I tell devs: you dont need to attend any meeting that is not useful & cuts into your dev.
Some empowerment required, cross-functional explanations on my part.
Wow, I do waste a lot of company money by slacking off :)
We need to have a meeting about meetings that discuss the policy on policies to set some ground rules and then circle back...
there is already another calendar management app called Clockwise, maybe try a different name to avoid confusion?
This should really just be an outlook plugin that estimates the cost of a meeting at the time of scheduling.
Thinking the net cost of a meeting is just a sum of hourly wages is like complaining the iPhone costs 799 when the parts are 299.
Most consumers insist on knowing the cost of an iPhone before they buy it.
I think this problem is institutional rather than technical. But I could be wrong.
Wouldn't want a cost calculator when I go the washroom the clock
"averageSalary defaults to $150,000 and can be modified by using the set subcommand."
While in my country, engineers are paid around 50k$...
This is HN, what do expect? :)
Speaking of, could we just not with calling meetings "ceremonies"? It is so pretentious and pompous sounding.
By design, it is a term of derision.
Eh? 'Ceremony' is a word we normally use for important events. Weddings, funerals... that kind of thing.
Not in a sarcastic business-meeting context.
People do not use it sarcastically in my experience. Plenty of non sarcastic references like this
I guess it’s another word with multiple meanings, depending on whether you buy into suit-speak or not.
You could always use bufferi.ng
Should Zoom build this in as a feature? Why or why not?
Not in their interests to do so.