Percent of my work life spent in meetings:
Displaying poll results.19732 total votes.
Percent of my work life spent in meetings:
Make it right before you make it faster.
Make it right before you make it faster.
I know I shouldn't complain... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the poll is missing > 100
(Or maybe it just feels that way. Without a laptop, WiFi, and privacy screen, I'd never have time for any actual work.)
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Been there, done that (Score:2)
I was once working on a project where we had four or five large companies working together to bid on it, with about fifty people at the prime contractor's location. At one point we noticed that there were more than forty hours a week of scheduled meetings. This was actually quite liberating - it was obvious that if you went to all the meetings, you wouldn't have time to get any real work done, so it was ok to blow off anything you didn't really need to be at, except for the daily status meeting which usu
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heh - that was my former boss - double booked meetings 60 hours a week. No idea how she ever got her job done on top of that, but she did. Good manager, but left because it was too much work and they weren't offloading it. Now that work is sanely done by at least 3 people instead of one (due tor a reorg and me being moved to a different group, I'm only aware of the projects I used to be responsible for because they contact me often).
They never invite me anymore... (Score:3, Funny)
...you insensitive clod.
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They never invite me anymore...
If that bothers you, then the last option is your obvious choice. If you're happy with that state of affairs, though, I agree that you've got no valid options on this poll--a fact I was about to point out when I spotted your post.
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They never invite me anymore... you insensitive clod.
The second last option, "I don't go to meetings, by choice.", is obviously the one for you. Nobody said the choice was yours. You don't go to meetings by the choice of those who did not invite you.
Including calls and casual discussions? (Score:1)
I'd say about 8% - 10% of my time is in meetings. More if you count conference calls that don't really pertain to me but someone things I just have to be present for... I don't count myself as present, as I'll be there but only pay enough attention to catch any relevant parts while I'm mostly focusing on work.
What about when you're walking through the building and run into someone, where a quick couple minute conversation turns into a longer more detailed informal "meeting". I didn't count these, but they
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What about when you're walking through the building and run into someone, where a quick couple minute conversation turns into a longer more detailed informal "meeting".
Yup. Where I work this is how a lot of stuff ends up getting resolved. It's good in that it's quick and stuff gets resolved "right now", but it's bad because stuff gets out of sync, and there is always someone who really should have been involved in the discussion and you always feel like an ass sending a "hey man, Bob and I talked and decided we should do things this way" email afterwards.
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Hey, that's how a lot of real stuff gets done.
If there are too many people involved, you both just chat to your own bosses about the "agreed upon" direction, the two bosses talk to each other and are happy "everyone" agrees on the plan, and you're done. You even get bonus credit for calling up the third parties and "letting them on how the bosses are going to proceed."
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Management Consultant (Score:3)
As a management consultant, I'm sad to say at least 50% (of my life, which is a lot). Fortunately, I've also found ways to be productive in meetings without being disruptive, and to turn down meetings longer than half hour (with very, very few exceptions).
Meetings are like a necessary evil, especially in a social, consensus-driven society like ours. I wonder if societies that are less "democratic" have any fewer meetings than ours.
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I am starting to wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Lately I feel these polls are more data gathering for Slashdot then the humorous/insight polls they use to be. What are the editors really up to? How many printers, how many screens (ui devices), how this how many that? No taco options or Cowboy Neil options....Were my tin foil hat on I'd speculate they are just a poor mans version of the marketing bots attached to almost every website around. "Want to know the demographics of /.'ers, we've got data for you".
As to meetings, they are a dirge to forward progress of development if they take more then 30 minutes in a day. I don't feel design discussions are meetings if there is a clear goal to be achieved. Status updates, reviews...these take way to long for their contribution to the overall project. I can't wait for the 22nd century so we can finally use this great 21st century technology to communicate and track projects. Lets begind the meme "I am the Office" and suffocate the idea that we need to actually get in a vehicle and drive to do actual work. Oh yeah, wont be around then...damn!
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Status updates, reviews...these take way to long for their contribution to the overall project.
Well, I guess you're right that doing your status updates during meetings is bad. Then again, Facebook has always been the biggest productivity killer known to man.
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What do you think is Slashdot doing with the data collected from polls?
- Sell it to Facebook
- Sell it to Google
- Sell it to Microsoft
- Sell it to Richard Stallman
- Sell it to bank investors as small packages of debt
- It's a CowboyNeal's erotic fetish
Another sea story (Score:2)
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Observations (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been in this IT business full-time for 22 years. Both as an employee and as a contractor. My experience has been that the number of meetings I am asked to attend is directly proportional to my pay.
I had 19 meetings last week. Somewhere between 15 and 22 is a typical week for me. And not a week goes by that I don't wish I could give up the money and go back to some quiet uninterrupted hacking. But I'm afraid that I'm not as sharp as I used to be. And the golden handcuffs are very strong.
Bottom line: If you're a geek, and you're happy, don't let them suck you into responsibility. Biggest mistake I ever made was cutting my hair. If I had to do it all over again, I'd stay the socially inept technical genius. Fuck them. Money isn't everything.
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I found the opposite. When I was hacking for work, all I could do when I got home was get away from the computer, get away from email, and rest my hacking mind. I *wanted* to bimble about on my own projects, but the mindspace I had was filled with work. All I could do well was exercise my social side.
Now I'm in meetings more than 50% of my working life, I'm earning three times my all-day-hacking pay, and wouldn't you know, I fucking LIKE it. I get to tell people what to do, I got to pick my team, and they'r
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"But I'm afraid that I'm not as sharp as I used to be."
Try it. I have recently stopped full time work after 25 non-stop years in IT, mostly as a systems designer / team lead / architect. Apart from a few short consulting gigs I have spent the last year coding. Working on a game I originally started back in 1989 (written in Turbo Pascal 6 / ASM back then). It has been fantastic.
The most amazing thing is how much you can get done on your own with modern tools.
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The most amazing thing is how much you can get done on your own with modern tools.
And how little you can get done with modern management techniques...
The VPRI guys estimate that good tools make about a factor of 100 difference to the productivity of individual coders. Various people estimate the difference between a good coder and an average coder as a factor of somewhere between 10 and 100. This means that a good developer with good tools can be as much as 10,000 times as productive as an average developer with poor tools. And yet, management in a lot of companies is unwilling to pa
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Except for the hair bit (mine went grey and fell out), your story is similar to mine. I ended up in management a few years ago and all the joy (really) went out of my working life (whilst the salary grew to 'more than I need'). It got to the stage that my health suffered due in part to general stress, but in particular the number and length of meetings, along with the number of people in them (guess my health problem, amateur psychologists!).
So I gave up the money (sort of) and went back to quiet uninterrup
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Amen, brother. I wish someone had told me that when I was younger.
The problem is that once you're used to a better pay and a better lifestyle, going back is not really an option.
So, you put up with it. But as you get older, you get more and more tired of the bullshit until you realize that money really isn't everything -- there's something to be said about happiness and peace of mind.
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The problem is that once you're used to a better pay and a better lifestyle, going back is not really an option.
Why not? My wife and I wanted to be able to see each other on a regular basis so we moved into a smaller house and now work part-time. We certainly had to make some cutbacks, mainly to travel and "entertainment" (TV, eating out, fancy computer parts, etc.), and money is sometimes tight but we're living the life we love.
When I was working the high pay, high stress job I envied the kids who didn't have to think past when to flip a burger; I don't miss any of that.
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We really don't have much in the way of ancillary expenses (we cook, don't have a tv, no loans etc), but my wife is in school and won't be done for a while. Plus, I'd like to eventually do a PhD as well, and would Iike to have enough savings to sustain a good enough lifestyle (comfortable, without having to worry about splurging on the little things). Plus, there's always the next generation to think about. I don't have any kids yet, but I'd certainly like to ensure that they have the best (at the very leas
0% (Score:3)
I'm unemployed, you insensitive clod.
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Then vote: I don't go to meetings, but I'd rather.
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I'm unemployed, you insensitive clod.
Then vote: I don't go to meetings, but I'd rather.
Gee, you're pretty cruel.
Re:0% (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you should be having many meeting.
Either to plan, talk to people, create more contacts, or go to the appropriate users group meetings.
When I was unemployed, I spent 20-30 hours in a meeting of some sort.
Meeting poeple is far more effective then sending resumes.
In fact, I would find a company that was hiring, and if they help user group meeting, I would go to those meet people and find a manager looking for someone.
Far, far more effective then HR; however if they didn't have user groups, I would contact HR talk to some one as high up as a could and ask what they look for. How much time per resume. That tells you how critical they view your introductions.
Hell, I know a guy who called a Jr. VP out of the blue, took him to lunch and schmooze a job that day.
That was 20 years ago, and he still works there.
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When I was unemployed, I spent 20-30 hours in a meeting of some sort.
In a row?!?
Try not to go to any meetings on the way to the submit button!
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When I was unemployed, I spent 20-30 hours in a meeting of some sort.
In a row?!?
Try not to go to any meetings on the way to the submit button!
Not only that, but he wasn't even supposed to be here today.
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The unemployment office is a meeting. So is an interview. So is being a bar-fly, if you ever ask yourself why you're there again.
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ITYM NaN (Not a Number: divide by zero error). I wonder if your faulty grasp of mathematics has anything to do with why you're still unemployed? :)
But seriously, the poll is about work life, and I don't think that time spent unemployed qualifies, even if that's your current status. Unless you've never been employed, you should be able to answer the question. (If you have never been employed, then NaN would be an appropriate response.)
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Hahaha whoops. >_> :P
Yeah, I see the word "work" now. Not sure how I missed that.
But yeah, I guess NaN would be a more accurate response.
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Excuse me? If you found "ITYM NaN" to be a humorless response, I think you may be on the wrong site. (The guys who were telling him to go to more interviews, you may have a point about, though.)
Meetings the alternative to work (Score:1)
I no longer have the option of refusing those meetings I am invited to,
One boss I worked for refused any meeting invite sent without an agenda,
Ahh meetings the useless alternative to work.
Poor poll design. (Score:4, Funny)
This poll's selections are clearly distributed improperly.
If you'd come to the meetings, that wouldn't have happened.
What's this "WORK" stuff anyway? (Score:1)
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Re:What's this "WORK" stuff anyway? (Score:5, Funny)
Just glad I don't have to play those wage slave games anymore.
Yeah - being free of a reliable income is so liberating.
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Retired but Still Attending Meetings (Score:2)
I'm retired. I don't have any "work life". But because of my volunteer activities, I spend about 2-4 hours a month attending meetings. Lately, I've also been working on a book with 3 other co-authors. This means about 5 hours of meetings a month.
When I did work, I had a manager who believed in "stand up meetings". Everyone had to stand during the meetings. He believed the meetings would be shorter and focus on being productive if our feet and backs hurt. This ended when a coworker became pregnant; af
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"This ended when a coworker became pregnant"
I guess everyone else standing hid the action from the manager.....
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That sounds great. My least favorite part of meetings is sitting. If I'm stuck sitting there for more than an hour I get antsy.
I can work during meetings if it would otherwise be a waste of time for me to participate -- and I've learned which meetings are actually important after a year on the job. But sitting for that long, even if its worthwhile, just drives me up the wall.
Meetings, Bloody meetings (Score:2)
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Avoid (Score:1)
I am really good at getting out of going to meetings "I can't or I will get overtime."
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Meetings (Score:3)
I'll never forget the day a government employee turned to me and said 'Can we cut out these meetings? Its such a huge waste of the tax-payers' money.'
Meetings! (Score:4, Funny)
I'd kick off an "at" command just before a meeting that would page me in 10 minutes. I'd get the page and, if the meeting was typical (meaning useless), I'd look very concerned and quietly excuse myself. If I really needed to be at the meeting, I'd look at the pager, look relieved, and ignore it. Worked perfectly.
As a bonus, the bosses at the meetings thought I was very busy all the time.
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Works every time.
Ten percent at most (Score:3)
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When I ran gas stations I would have my staff meetings in the local lounge (pub to those in the UK). It was in the evening, everyone was paid three hours even if the meeting was only 15 minutes and it often served as a good team building exercise. Easy to screw over someone you see five minutes a day during shift change, not so much after you've gone drinking with them. And they worked as a great way to figure out who wouldn't last. If you didn't come to them (they were not manditory), it was pretty obvious
I have to attend right now one meeting a week (Score:2)
It's so I know what happens in the next change window. And then, a meeting about what is planned for the next month. That's all ok, but most of the meeting is about Windows servers which I have no responsibility for. /shrug I only have to know about stuff every couple of months.
Mythical Man Month (Score:2)
Meetings are a decent measure of communication cost, which the classic "Mythical Man Month" describes as an increasing drain on productivity.
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From my mother (Score:2)
Mom: "So, you fly around the country and meet with all these people, but what do you actually do?"
Me: "Uhhh.... I fly around the country and meet with a bunch of people. I don't know. I guess I am doing it well, I got a good review..."
Definitely a Dilbert moment....
Nearly none; my boss hates meetings (Score:2)
I go to two meetings on a regular basis:
The company-wide meeting is where they announce happenings in our industry and talk about upcoming events. This takes about 15 minutes every other week.
The IT department meeting is where we go around the room and talk about what we've been working on since the last meeting, and tell each other things like "my stuff is overlapping your project, and I'll need to meet with you soon to figure out how this one part is going to work." These last about 20 minutes, every othe
You know... (Score:2)
They stopped inviting me to meetings when I started blowing spit bubbles on the conference table.
Sleep (Score:2)
I sleep like a baby through meetings.
I wake up every hour screaming and shitting in my pants.
90+% of 8 to 5 (Score:1)
Problem with the poll is that it's 90+% during the work day - but during the 'work life' it's probably 60% - gives you an idea on how I spend my time..
A ploy that *sometimes* works (Score:3)
Try scheduling a "fake" meeting. Go into whatever calendaring application your organization uses and block out a few hours each day for a meeting with yourself that won't happen. You can even title the meeting with whatever you think you'll be working on (e.g., code review for new widget). If someone later finds you at your desk when said meeting was supposed to happen, you can always say that the other people couldn't make it but you decided to keep working on whatever it was at your cubicle.
I worked at a company in the mid-1990s that ran on meetings. No one did anything until there was a meeting to decided how something should be done. The only way to get anything done was to avoid enough meetings so that you could actually present a solution when the subject came up at a meeting you couldn't avoid. The technical people loved it but the bean counters, project managers and other non-technical folks hated it.
Cheers,
Dave
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As an solutions architect I found booking out either mornings or afternoons was the only way to get my documentation done. That or work very late.
I ended up doing both.
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It doesn't even have to technically be a meeting ... you're blocking out periods that you have to get work done, and most jobs have tasks that need some stretches of uninterrupted time to get them done.
My boss would go for it ... but unfortunately, the network we're on I don't think has access to the group calendar program, so people can assign me to meetings, but I don't think I can go in there and do it myself. (I *know* I can't go and reserve conference rooms, at least ... I think it's the same system)
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There was a culture of "meetings are more important than anything" where I worked that brought on the "book a meeting with yourself" ploy. If you just blocked out time, someone would pay you a visit and request that you come to a meeting. However, being booked for another meeting meant that they would leave you alone since they assumed the other meeting involved other people and therefore was important. On the other hand, getting real work done wasn't important.
Cheers,
Dave
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It doesn't even have to technically be a meeting ... you're blocking out periods that you have to get work done, and most jobs have tasks that need some stretches of uninterrupted time to get them done.
...
My boss would go for it
My boss has recommended such things. And one of the directors in the company blocks out noon-1pm every day so no one schedules him a day full of meetings with no lunch.
Most of my meetings are recurring meetings. I have 2/week with our vendor, 1/week with my boss and the rest of his team, one maintenance review a week, and generally that's it -- unless there's preplanning meetings for maintenances that I have to be part of, or we start on a new project (in which case, there's usually a 1 hour/week call)
I did this for every day of the week (Score:2)
So what I started doing was putting in fake meetings/events for all of those times. For 9 AM-10AM I'd have "Morning survey of all computers" or whatever. For 4PM-5PM I'd have "End of day computer checklist run through". I forget what I did f
Meetings done right... (Score:2)
I'm a programmer, and I find that far too many of my colleagues assume that any and all meetings are inherently worthless. I've worked in teams who got great value out of well-directed meetings. We avoid double-handling problems, we get better use out of the various experience our team members have... It can just work so well.
It's such a shame that so many places get it so wrong, and so much IT talent has never experienced the increased productivity you can get out of meetings done right.
Observations about meetings (Score:3, Interesting)
In 30 years of working in government contract aerospace, I learned a number of things about meetings. They're a social tool more than anything else.
I stopped attending as many meetings as I could avoid when I observed that the more meetings I attended, the more tasks I accumulated. I frequently found that I would leave a meeting more "behind" than when I entered it. I even drew a graph of "amount of work completed" on the Y-axis and "time spent in meetings" on the x-axis, with a y=1-x line to illustrate this.
Then I realized that the first order coefficient was greater than one, so that if one spent enough time in meetings, one would accumulate more work than one could perform outside of the conference room... so the curve became y=1-ax, with the axes conveniently labeled only at 0 and 100% so that I did not have to estimate the value of a (because that would be too much like work).
I also realized that the more people invited to a meeting, the fewer decisions would be made. I could tell this in advance, because if everyone showed up to a meeting with a large invite list, then everyone would want a voice, and consensus would be reached on fewer topics. If few people showed up, this was even worse, because no one would want to make a decision on anything without a quorum, even if the point was one of obvious consensus.
The exception to the above, however, was one in which one or more director level or above managers are invited. In this kind of a meeting, the object is not to build consensus, but to stroke the ego of the manager, or, if more than one is present, to allow them to engage in political sparring so that they may [re-]establish their rank order in the primate corporate hierarchy. If enough people did not show up to one of these meetings, they would task the people who did show with rounding up enough witnesses to their grandeur. But attending these meetings was risky, because if you showed up, you were likely to be assigned work if only to demonstrate your subordinate rank, but if you didn't show, you could be assigned the worst tasks as the beta primates laughed and said "We'll assign it to bughunter because he's not here," which was a means of demonstrating to the others that shit rolls downhill and they are on higher ground than you.
Now I work for a small company where meetings are unnecessary, I report to the CEO and he visits me twice a day to tell me I'm wrong even when I'm right. Meetings only happen when it's necessary to get the CEO and CTO in the same room so that they can compete for alpha male status. Otherwise, the company is small enough that they can visit every primate in their troop in a single day and throw shit on them personally; they don't need to gather them into small rooms and fling feces by the handful. But I do get a lot of work done.
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meetings ain't evil (Score:2)
The notion of the solo engineer solving the "hard" problem on their own is so rare as to be a myth (not withstanding Stallman, Torvald and Woz). Sure, there are simple tasks that can be solved by sitting in front of a compiler for 80 hour stretches and banging out Java/C++ code, but that's mostly grunt work after the big ideas have been fleshed out. The "big idea" work that drives the vision that spawns all the fun coding projects are the results of hours of collaboration in... meetings. There's nothing
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None of your examples count either. Stallman and Torvalds all excel at getting other people involved in the design and development. Woz always struck me as a bit more of a soloist, but even he was staying in contact with Captain Crunch, the Homebrew Club, people he knew at HP, etc.
And consider that the best hacking efforts of the 20th century came out of the heavily collaborative Bell Labs.
Coincidence? (Score:2)
I don't have a job (Score:1)
you insensitive clod!
Bathroom (Score:1)
Option 1-20 (Score:1)
Excellent clients + bribery (Score:2)
Less than one percent, but not zero (Score:2)
Maybe one hour a week on average:1/168 = 0.595%
168 hour work week? (Score:2)
You might want to find some time to sleep somewhere in there. And set aside at least an hour a week for showering and washing your clothes. Your coworkers will thank you.
Not for work but.. (Score:1)
Obsolete (Score:2)
Right on the 20% border as of late... (Score:2)
But that's also defining "standups" as meetings.
Used to be under 1 percent (Score:2)
I went from about 1 productive meeting a year (anything with 4 or more people counts as a meeting in my book) to 3+ worthless meetings per week ranging anywhere from 1 to 4 hours each. Very few of the meetings went beyond "vision" and "concept" which is bad when my job is to implement. It makes little sense to have your "doers" in a conceptual meeting. If I'm not "doing" or at least discussing the specific details of implementing a project, I'm not doing what I'm getting paid to do and I'll be unhappy.
Re:Already Know the Outcome! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Would you count people who come to you to ask "How do I do..." Or one on one mentoring? Or somebody coming to you to talk about a bug they think they found?
By your definition those are all 'meetings', but I don't really know anyone who would describe them that way.
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Those are ad-hoc meetings. In a work context, the lone term generally implies scheduled meetings.
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I agree, I wouldn't call those meetings but I would call a brainstorming session a meeting. At least at my workplace you can pretty much define it as "any gathering that happens in a meeting room, or if a workspace has been obviously co-opted as such". That is, if people are generally ignoring that their computers are there and looking at some presentation / flip-over or participating in a discussion with at least three people longer than a simple question/answer. One on ones are generally not meetings, unl
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One on ones are generally not meetings,
[...]
can the three of us take...
Why don't gatherings of just two people count? There are plenty of things involving only 2 people which I'd still call meetings: annual performance reviews, work assignment meetings, some brainstorming sessions in small teams, ...
Just popping into your neighbor's office to ask a small question shouldn't count, but criteria should be formality/duration, rather than number of people involved.
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In the ideal world, maybe. I've never seen that work though.
Problem is, any time you get a number of people with differing (yet valuable) ideas together to discuss anything, even if it has already been discussed in morbid detail prior to the "formal meeting", someone will always bring up something new.
Best bet I've found is to come prepared, have your meeting, _take minutes_ to document what was finally agreed upon and email those minutes to everyone so if anyone wants to dispute what was said they can.
I th
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Never go to a meeting where the outcome is not already known.
If the outcome is already known in advance, why have the meeting at all, and why not just send around an e-mail enumerating the points to be made?
The goal ("what we want to achieve with this meeting") should be known prior to the meeting, or maybe most of the outcome, but there should still be room to hash out the specifics of what is going to be decided or agreed upon, or else why waste time?
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Friend of mine is at Intel as a Industrial Engineer, he says he spends 85% of his work week in meetings.
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I had a job working for a university where I worked the 7am to 3pm shift ... and I had only agreed to it for a semester, as I was planning on taking classes.
Well, my manager changed, and the new one wouldn't let me move. So I came it at 7am, worked 'til 3pm, then did my homework before my 6pm class ... classes 'til 10pm, go home, get 5hrs of sleep, then start the cycle again. (traffic was bad enough that it could be an hour to get into work, and once I got home, it'd take some time to crash.)
So one day, m