It was like reading Dilberts mind in this article. Meetings are just managers trying to show they earned their money by putting everyone else behind schedule which will require another meeting, but they'll never blame a 2 hr meeting on why they are behind more hours now.
I've had meetings every day this week so far, and yes with one tomorrow as well. The shortest meeting has been 1.5 hours, the longest was 3 hours. By tomorrow, I will have spent 12 hours this week in fucking meetings. For most people that is a fucking day and a half of work time where NOTHING was accomplished. Every single one of those meetings had one thing in common: I left all of them thinking "that could have all been communicated in an email that I could have read in 5 minutes".
One of my worst weeks we had ~30 hours of meetings. Over shit that didn't matter, shit I should not have even been there other than for the 15 minutes of "my part" and I was forced to be there anyway.
I am so fucking done with these people. I no longer attend a meeting unless I have to. If they pester me for not being in the call I ask them what I am needed for before joining. I am not joining your fucking meeting because I am on the list. Prove that you need me there.
[Edit] A few years ago my wife gave me a coffee cup that says "I survived another meeting that should have been a email". I intentionally put it on camera as often as possible in pointless meetings.
I was avoiding them all for almost 2 years. A VP came to me and said that "it has been noticed that you don't attend meetings and it doesn't send a good message to the people who aren't as far along in their careers as you". I told him that I am self employed and only under contract to use their product and services with my clients, these meeting take away from my time and ability to service my clients, who ultimately pay for all of our pay checks. They came back with some clause in my agreement that basically says I will represent them in a positive way at all times, and not showing up to their meetings is failing in that regard.
So I have been joining the meetings ONLY when there is a virtual option, and not turning on my camera. I will occasionally unmute my mic when I am talking on the phone so that they know I am actually there, and passively/aggressively let them know own that I think they are wasting my time and that I have better things to do.
My profile pic has just been the default stick figure head or whatever it is, I think I will change that pic to a picnic of your cup. Fuck them.
At one point, you use Malicious Compliance. Bill them for every single second and make sure to let them know how much money they wasted where you could have been earning them money. They won't like it but the higher-up's (assuming it wasn't the top VP) will see it and tell them to leave you the fuck alone. I have been in a situation like that, only once though.
I would say this is true in any activity requiring true brainpower. No one can “multitask” and do all tasks well, there is a cost.
Yeah, that is my thought as well. I don't know why someone would single out Dev's for that but anything that requires real focus would be harmed by this. Context switching dozens of times a day really screws up your flow.
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