This is my life. From 9-4 i'm in meetings, and from 7-9 and 4-whenever I do "actual" work.
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I know some people hate meetings but I love meetings and I wish I had a job that was just meetings
- Thread starter Sheentak
- Start date
This is my life. From 9-4 i'm in meetings, and from 7-9 and 4-whenever I do "actual" work.
I love meetings where:
- I don't have to contribute anything
- I don't have to say anything
- I don't end up with any "todos" when it's finished
I was a project manager at a major utility company for a few years. I know a few things about meetings.
If a meeting is to set up the initial, vague outline of a project or to solve a problem that no one person could do without input from others (ie: a certain engineering problem might need a multidisciplinary team), then it's probably an okay meeting.
If you're training somebody on something new, then a meeting may be great assuming you already sent them very detailed training guides and just want to go through it step by step to see if any questions come to mind.
If you have a meeting to demonstrate a new prototype or a revision to some report, then it's probably not the best use of time unless something weird or complicated changed. Usually it's better to communicate iterative updates by email or Slack so you have written records you can easily reference.
Any meeting that is scheduled daily/weekly is useless and must be cut. In my experience, a lot of these types of meetings are scheduled by people who want to brown nose or be mini tyrants.
When it comes to pointless meetings, do not show mercy. Do not hear their cries. This is not a fight you can afford to lose.
If a meeting is to set up the initial, vague outline of a project or to solve a problem that no one person could do without input from others (ie: a certain engineering problem might need a multidisciplinary team), then it's probably an okay meeting.
If you're training somebody on something new, then a meeting may be great assuming you already sent them very detailed training guides and just want to go through it step by step to see if any questions come to mind.
If you have a meeting to demonstrate a new prototype or a revision to some report, then it's probably not the best use of time unless something weird or complicated changed. Usually it's better to communicate iterative updates by email or Slack so you have written records you can easily reference.
Any meeting that is scheduled daily/weekly is useless and must be cut. In my experience, a lot of these types of meetings are scheduled by people who want to brown nose or be mini tyrants.
When it comes to pointless meetings, do not show mercy. Do not hear their cries. This is not a fight you can afford to lose.
I think like 75% of meetings I've been in could have just been a one or two line email. In a large company they just end up being a place for people to try and shout the loudest and get noticed.
My favorite part is when at the end, the meeting lead says "looks like we're done early, I'm going to give you back 5 minutes" and they mean it.
Not true. As people have already mentioned, project management is all about meetings when it's going well.
my department director is on vacation this week and next week so i am saved from meetings. i usually have a few a day. i kind of miss them.
No thank you. I get sick of the number of pointless meetings and things that could be a less than five minute email or IM suddenly turned into meetings. What's even worse is every once in a while we have an entire week of all day meetings, and that is the absolute worst, especially on my ADHD, but even to people that don't have ADHD I can't imagine it's great.
My job requires me to be in meetings all day because my team provides data services to internal customers. Many of the meetings are necessary because people are incapable of articulating what they want/need in writing. I wish I didn't have to be in so many meetings.
That's a great point Diane, lets take this offline and have a drains up on it.
I feel you. Exact same for me. 8+ hours of meetings a day. I'm typically double or triple booked for 25-50% of those meetings and I even try to double duty meetings when I can. The closed caption option is amazing for zoom and google meets. You can close caption one meeting and listen to another.
This is the correct answer. But a good project manager makes those meetings worth the time.
Love:
- Programming
Hate:
- Pretty much everything else (meetings, progress reports, managing other people, extensive manual testing, etc.).
I'll happily trade your meetings for more programming time.
- Programming
Hate:
- Pretty much everything else (meetings, progress reports, managing other people, extensive manual testing, etc.).
I'll happily trade your meetings for more programming time.
I'm in meetings all day, every day. Yeah it rocks. Especially now when it's all at home.
Used to be a craftsman (working with my actual hands) - fuck that live. Going back to university was the best choice I made for myself.
Plus, I can actually mentally shut off from work, on the spot. Like it's not even an inconvenience doing it.
Used to be a craftsman (working with my actual hands) - fuck that live. Going back to university was the best choice I made for myself.
Plus, I can actually mentally shut off from work, on the spot. Like it's not even an inconvenience doing it.
I'm in a meeting right now and I could not disagree more.
I hate all meetings that keep me from working, but especially those kinds of meetings that are over after 15 minutes but everyone stays just to chat, and no one wants to be the first person to leave so it makes a 45 minutes meeting out of a 15 minutes one. I don't know if anyone else experiences this.. haha
I hate all meetings that keep me from working, but especially those kinds of meetings that are over after 15 minutes but everyone stays just to chat, and no one wants to be the first person to leave so it makes a 45 minutes meeting out of a 15 minutes one. I don't know if anyone else experiences this.. haha
We put stoners in jail yet these people run free ruining everyone's
It's not the meetings that suck, it's the consequence of being in meetings all day. Regular work all gets pushed back because the meeting is deemed more important.
One and done.
But OP, also don't create meetings that are pointless and don't be an in person only middle manager. My current manager is fantastic but also loves meetings, he'll schedule goals meetings and we'll interactively update and plan goals and he understands what's going on and isn't obsessed with work item velocity metrics.
For me it makes a big difference who is scheduling the meeting.
If its a meeting scheduled by people above you and you just have to listen to them talk for 30+ minutes that is always kind of boring and the less of those the better.
If its something where you get to participate in or are actually planning something yourself then I agree with the OP.
If its a meeting scheduled by people above you and you just have to listen to them talk for 30+ minutes that is always kind of boring and the less of those the better.
If its something where you get to participate in or are actually planning something yourself then I agree with the OP.
I've only had to do a handful of meetings and each one of them sucked. Just give me a handout or whatever and I'll read that shit in a few minutes instead of listening to someone prattle on and on, thanks.
PMs who spend 100% of their time in meetings are not doing a good job planning their project(s). There are plenty of PMs who are plastering their calendars with meetings because they didn't manage to plan or consider their risks until things start exploding left and right.
People being in meetings constantly can also be a symptom of a poor organisational culture or difficult clients. Its not necessarily linked to a specific job type.
Had many different managers over the years, some wanted several hours of meeting everyday, some wanted none and we would go for months without having one. Right now it is kinda a happy medium, just one hour with our team a week and one hour with development. I really can't stand them and even remote struggle to get anything done during them even if I'm listening.
This is true, the bad PMs I've worked with either try to spam meetings to hand off their work to others or because they spent a few months dicking around (probably in meetings) and now everything is coming due at the last second.
I work with several PMs as well, as a software engineering manager. This isn't my experience.
I think this kind of meeting might be nice now and then as a sort of break if I'm burned out, but I'd hate it if I was doing these meetings all day every day. After a certain point, I feel like my life is wasting away in them because of a combination of boredom and feeling useless.
I completely agree, OP. I like meetings, the problem solving, and trying to set a course for the organization. My long-term goal is to get into a position where I can do less of the daily grind work and more of the management.
(Who am I kidding, I'll probably end up hating that, too.)
(Who am I kidding, I'll probably end up hating that, too.)
I used to be like that when it was working in office, but then once I started working from home 6 years ago, I could intensely focus and get more done in 4-5 hours per day than I ever did in office and then use the remainder of the day to do house chores, cooking, and fitness.
The caveat before COVID is that knowledge sharing and working with colleagues was worse.
But now that there's tools like Microsoft Teams where everyone can instantaneously join a meeting without waiting for people to arrive, without figuring out conference room equipment, and people can immediately share their screen and show code or give links real time rather than (let me jot that down on paper and get back to you later today), and people can all reference the same contextual meeting notes, everyone is more efficient. It's a game changer, and companies that do not adapt will lose talent and operations will be cost prohibitive to compete with companies that adapt.
It's kind of hilarious how much things have changed. 10 years ago I remember meetings where the manager literally just had Microsoft word open on a PC connected to a projector and would go around and ask 20 people 1 by 1 what they're working on and then email out the word document. Took up to 1.5 hours. Every fucking week. Such a god damn waste of time. Now everyone just maintains their own tasks/stories on AzDo boards and if you want to see what people are working on just go to AzDo boards and filter by name.
A good project manager respect other people's time and don't schedule too many meetings.
There is an inverse correlation between how good a PM is and how many hours of meetings they schedule per week.
Like yeah, I suspect OP will enjoy being a PM, but I also suspect most of the people who work with him will hate this.
I just don't get how denigrating an entire career like this thread is doing is at all reasonable, healthy or even a good discussion. It's also weird that mods are the ones partaking in it, tbh.
I used to like the idea of meetings and then I had to experience them. I am currently ghosting a meeting.
Product Marketing Manager too.
It was so bad at my old company that I had to start convincing people that they did not need to meet with me about everything and I also started limiting meetings to 15 minutes unless important.
Nothing drives me crazier than a co-worker booking a meeting with me for an hour and then proceeding to make small talk for 30 minutes, have nothing prepared and then the meeting ends with me giving them a game plan of what they need to come back with for a future meeting.
Literal worst.
Huh?
I used to be a project manager, my job is still kinda involve those responsibilities.
I don't "denigrate an entire career", I am talking about tendencies that exist with bad PMs (and bad middle management).
It's actually a trap especially for technical leads. I had a mentor who had meetings all day but had to stay very late everyday to catch up on real work.
I was a project manager and it was hell on earth. Literally 6 to 8 completely unnecessary meetings a day that ate into your schedule so badly you had no choice but to work extra hours just to get your actual projects done.
Just my personal experience.