[HN Gopher] Zoom fatigue unpacked
___________________________________________________________________
Zoom fatigue unpacked
Author : ochronus
Score : 98 points
Date : 2023-07-16 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (leadership.garden)
(TXT) w3m dump (leadership.garden)
| cubefox wrote:
| One thing I also noticed is that good audio quality really
| improves things. Even if the current audio quality doesn't
| consciously register as bad, low quality leads to much more
| exhaustion over a longer period of time. This can be observed
| when someone switches from a bad internal laptop mic to a high
| quality headset. The voice is so much more easy to listen to.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| It's much more important to just ban Bluetooth. And also wired
| Jabra headsets that inexplicably still sound like Bluetooth. No
| more tin can sound, no more dropped words when someone starts
| talking. Yes, even an internal mic is better in this regard,
| though it will have problems with echo cancellation.
| folkhack wrote:
| > It's much more important to just ban Bluetooth
|
| In addition to audio quality, people have _constant_ problems
| with their audio setup across all platforms when using
| Bluetooth. I've gotten to the point where I will just
| outright buy someone a plain USB mic just so I can
| consistently get them on a call without 10 minutes of
| fumbling audio interfaces.
|
| Unfortunately, even after buying them a USB mic + explicitly
| banning Bluetooth on calls I still catch devs trying to use
| their fancy Bluetooth gaming headset (or whatever) which can
| easily push meeting start times back by 5-10 minutes.
| xgkickt wrote:
| I know a lead who uses their vacation to be able to work from
| home with a week free of scheduled meetings.
| iknowSFR wrote:
| Is it possible to organize productive work conversations in the
| format of HN threads? Not Zoom meetings, not Slack, not emails.
| Why would this work? Why would it not?
| clolege wrote:
| I read over the pandemic that dogs are hyper-sensitive to space
| [1], and I believe that humans are too. Much more than we're
| aware.
|
| And while bad internet connections, mics, webcams, etc all
| contribute to a _less enjoyable_ time collaborating with
| colleagues, I believe they are all trumped by the fact that video
| conference absolutely shatters the evolutionary understanding we
| have of space, and how to navigate it to interact with others.
|
| This is why audio-only calls feel so much better. It's basically
| just like talking to your friends at a sleepover with the lights
| out. It's not quite the same because you can't get closer or
| further from specific individuals, but for smaller groups it
| works pretty well.
|
| But when we turn video feeds on, things get very strange. Zoom
| puts everyone into the same exact chair, staring at a mirror
| where they can see everyone else in the reflection.
|
| This makes it seem like everyone is staring directly at you. And
| they are very close, sometimes even in your lap.
|
| Keith Johnstone's book _Impro_ says a whole lot about space,
| including:
|
| > If I stand two students face to face and about a foot apart
| they're likely to feel a strong desire to change their body
| position. If they don't move they'll begin to feel love or hate
| as their 'space' streams into each other. To prevent these
| feelings they'll modify their positions until their space flows
| out relatively unhindered, or they'll move back so that the force
| isn't so powerful. High-status players (like high-status
| seagulls) will allow their space to flow _into_ other people.
| Low-status players will avoid letting their space flow into other
| people. Kneeling, bowing and prostrating one-self are all
| ritualized low-status ways of shutting off your space. If we wish
| to humiliate and degrade a low-status person we attack him while
| refusing to let him switch his space off. A sergeant-major will
| stand a recruit to attention and then scream at his face from
| about an inch away. Crucifixion exploits this effect, which is
| why it 's such a powerful symbol as compared to, say, boiling
| someone in oil.
|
| All this is to say that I believe that the Vision Pro has a lot
| of potential to be a game-changer for remote conferencing. It's
| focus on "spatial computing" makes it so that we can flex those
| evolutionary muscles around space again.
|
| [1] _Let Dogs be Dogs_ by the Monks of New Skete. Great book
| throwaway23v3n wrote:
| I avoid all of this by not owning a webcam.
|
| I don't have video of me broadcasting because I simply can't, and
| nobody ever questions it because they don't really care as it's a
| non-essential component.
|
| I do make heavy use of visual aids & other screen sharing, so
| that people can look at what we are discussing, not me.
| skinner_ wrote:
| My Macbook Pro's webcam went wrong in 2020. I haven't had it
| fixed yet, because I hate Zoom video. Nobody ever complains.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I just tell people I'm on my desktop. They call you on it if
| you have a laptop, because they all have webcams these days.
| chewbacha wrote:
| I've personally opted to simply turn off my video in all calls
| and force them to be audio-only. I do this for the reasons in the
| OP but also to subtly encourage others to opt for audio-only and
| to make the space more equitable for all.
|
| Sometimes I'm the only one without a video but it doesn't seem to
| bother those I work with so I keep doing it. I find this to be
| best, tbh.
| blt wrote:
| A huge contributor they missed: technical faults. Between glitchy
| connections and people's inadequate microphone setups, everyone
| is constantly asking each other to repeat themselves. This is
| exhausting to me.
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| GREAT article. Recommend to everyone to read it in its entirity
| plg wrote:
| It's people! Zoom fatigue is people!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Less meetings / more async isn't always the best answer.
|
| Most people are _terrible_ at written communication, and much
| better at spoken (which makes sense since most speak more than
| write).
|
| So even though it's terribly unfortunate, for the masses, more
| times than not - meetings have a total net-gain effect vs async
| written.
| turnsout wrote:
| Yeah the answer is actually MORE meetings which are shorter and
| have 5 or fewer participants. I can't tell you how many 1 hour
| meetings I've sat through with 20 people, only 2 of whom are
| talking.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I "love" meetings where they just recite word for word cells
| from an Excel spreadsheet for an hour.
| esafak wrote:
| Or Scrum "stand-ups" reciting the Scrum updates in a Word
| document.
| shrimpx wrote:
| By the way, since the beginning of time, open source was
| happening asynchronously on email and IRC. Linux, one of the
| most complex and most useful pieces of software that exists,
| was done over asynchronous text. There are innumerable examples
| of builder success when working async. The synchronization
| obsession comes from managers and execs.
| jayd16 wrote:
| How is this compelling compared to the countless projects
| that used meetings? All it proves is both can work, not that
| one is better than the other.
| shrimpx wrote:
| We have plenty of proof that you can build successful
| large-scale software without synchronization or zoom or in-
| person meetings.
|
| By interspersing synchronization, you're not proving that
| synchronization by itself is successful. At best you're
| proving that synchronization may not destroy the craft
| entirely.
|
| I admit that synchronization may add something to the
| development of business software, but we have plenty of
| business software that doesn't use synchronization, like
| Gitlab, Tailscale, etc.
| esafak wrote:
| We must stop constantly lowering the bar. Let them learn to
| write, or don't hire them in the first place. Communication
| skill is a good hiring criterion.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| That's much easier said if you work for a startup.
|
| But if you work for either a large organization or a company
| that's been around for decades, you influencing that kind of
| change (across departments you don't own) is virtually
| impossible unless you're the CEO. And even then, extremely
| difficult.
| esafak wrote:
| If a company as big as Amazon can pull off mandating
| writing standards so can yours. I understand that many
| companies just don't care. They tend to be run by steward
| CEOs and mercenary managers. I simply avoid them.
|
| https://rahulramchandani.com/writing-culture-at-amazon/
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Bezos pulled it off by starting that practice from
| immediate onset of founding his company (hence my startup
| comment).
|
| It's not like 20-years into Amazon, he then decide to
| implement that practice.
|
| Also, people misconstrue Amazon as being an async
| culture.
|
| That's incorrect.
|
| Amazon is actually an anti-PowerPoint culture. So when
| meetings need to happen, you need to convey your info in
| long form writing since PPT isn't allowed. That doesn't
| mean the culture is async.
| esafak wrote:
| I did not say it was async, I said they were expected to
| write well. I don't think it matters when the practice is
| introduced. If the CEO mandates it that is all it takes.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yeah, like how alcohol consumption totally stopped in the
| US with the passage of the 18th amendment.
| watwut wrote:
| I would not call it lowering the bar. People were always vad
| at writing. It is more of not raising the expectations too
| much.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Take notes: Taking notes can help you remember important
| points and reduce cognitive load._
|
| I often do this in online meetings, but have two not-entirely-
| solved problems with it:
|
| 1. People might think I'm not paying attention when I am,
| especially in 2-person meetings. (They might hear the typing, and
| my gaze might shift at times. When I do need a sec to type an
| action item or something that takes longer than a pause in a
| 2-person meeting, I can say that. People also don't know that I'm
| only typing notes for the meeting, not, say, processing other
| things, until they know me well enough to know that I'd say if I
| had to respond to an urgent Slack message or something.)
|
| 2. People don't always want everything recorded/documented. Say,
| a concern about personnel, or how some dependency is going,
| morale, or a personal challenge affecting someone's work. In an
| in-person meeting, if I've been taking notes and want to signal
| that something is more off-the-record, I could put down my pen,
| take hands off the keyboard, or close notepad portfolio. In
| videoconf, when they can't see my typing hands, there aren't as
| good subtle signals, and I might have to verbalize somehow that
| I'm not taking notes.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Hey regarding the first "problem" I'm the exact same.
|
| If it's someone new to me who doesn't know me I'll often slip
| it into conversation that I'm taking notes;
|
| "So you're saying that the xyz project is going to need abc? Ok
| cool, I'm just gonna add that to my notes here real quick" -
| I'll do that early on a call.
|
| Or I'll read back the important points I took in a real obvious
| way.
|
| I think I do this because it bothers the shit out of me if
| someone is obviously typing away on slack or whatever and not
| properly engaging in the meeting and I don't wanna be seen as
| that guy
| neap24 wrote:
| I'm a big advocate of reducing Zoom/screen fatigue by doing
| manual labor after the work day. Do a home maintenance project,
| throw a ball with the kids in the backyard, etc.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The hard part is to start, but once you have done it, you feel
| better.
|
| Even a simple chore like cleaning will help. Going to the
| supermarket will not, since you can get quiet and focused on
| the physicality.
|
| Just walking outside will do it you have nothing to do.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I have a mini trampoline type swing hung under a tree.
|
| Long day = taking a break at lunch and after work to just lay
| on it, look up into the leaves, and listen to the wind in the
| tree
| brnt wrote:
| Ah, the joys of not having to pickup children from daycare
| :/
| ethbr0 wrote:
| School lets out about midway through my work afternoon.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Oh man the struggle in the real. I quit zoom at exactly
| 5pm and run downstairs and out the door for daycare. I'm
| at daycare around 5:20 and to pick up the little one to
| come home, cook, eat, bath and bed time.
|
| The lack of time to decompress after the day (like
| commutes used to help with before I went fully remote)
| can be gruelling at times
| trillic wrote:
| Kids have recess. Why not adults too?
| metadaemon wrote:
| When it's not blisteringly hot out we actually will take a
| 30-45 minute walk around midday. Helps a ton and has a side
| effect of allowing my subconscious to solve the problems
| I've been stuck on.
| nine_k wrote:
| When kids have a recess, they are cared for by the adults.
|
| When adults have vacation, they are usually cared for by
| themselves, or have to care about the kids who are having
| their recess :)
| selectodude wrote:
| I get an hour for lunch where I'm pretty much expected to
| close my laptop and not be available. Pretty similar to
| recess time wise.
| the_snooze wrote:
| What kills me is the problems with audio and its effects on
| conversational engagement. Online calls are laggy, and
| participants aren't all on the same volume level. It's incredibly
| frustrating when I speak and someone says that my volume is low,
| so I should repeat myself. And the lag makes turn-taking very
| unnatural---in meatspace conversations, people interrupt each
| other and cede the floor all the time. You can't do that in a
| Zoom call.
|
| Taken together, Zoom is a deeply frustrating experience because
| the limitations of the technology get in the way of having normal
| human conversations. It _looks_ like it should work, but it doesn
| 't.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I got used to platforms like TeamSpeak where everybody had
| individual volume sliders. It was excellent. Whatever Zoom does
| to automatically adjust everyone's volume is a poor replacement
| and it leads to exactly the issue you describe. Sure it's
| cheaper than sending out a bunch of individual audio streams or
| doing multiple transcodes server-side, but we've lost a lot of
| flexibility. I'd quite like P2P systems like Jitsi to bridge
| the gap.
| [deleted]
| shrimpx wrote:
| Fuck Zoom and the never-ending array of torture devices the
| executive class uses to keep people loathing and afraid. Your
| Slack indicator must be green 24/7. You must be living
| permanently in the Zoom uncanny valley. And it turns out that's
| not enough, so back to the office!
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| [dead]
| dtx1 wrote:
| The whole mirror fatique thing is really interesting. I get
| enormous social anxiety on virtual calls and am constantly
| checking my mirror. I hate teams for that reason, i can't
| properly see what I am transmitting while Google meet is showing
| me Exactly what I'm sending in HD. I think I'll have to
| experiment with removing that and see if it reduces my anxiety
| shortcake27 wrote:
| It's a catch 22 for me.
|
| When it's there, I can't stop looking at it to ensure I look
| ok.
|
| When it's not there, I'm stressing because I don't know how I
| look.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I feel like a halfway is needed. Maybe a virtual silhouette
| that shows my err blocking within the shot, while obscuring
| more detailed mirroring. Wonder if that would help.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Ha ha this is me. I tried to hide my face on the call before
| but then I'm nervous that I might have sauce on my beard or
| something
| rr808 wrote:
| I'm back in the office 4 days a week. I thought I'd hate it but
| talking to people IRL is actually pretty great.
| ehnto wrote:
| I turn my camera off on big calls and it helps a bunch, there's a
| process running in the back of my mind when it's on that is
| constantly screening what I am doing just incase it looks stupid
| on camera. It feels like being in a panopticon. You never know if
| someone is looking. It's very tiring.
|
| I don't have the same issue in person because you know when
| people are looking at you in person and there's heaps of context
| for everyone.
| j-bos wrote:
| Agreed for big calls. For smaller calls, I try to turn on my
| camera if someone of equal or lower rank has their camera on,
| and for anyone who has theirs on in a one-on-one.
| arp242 wrote:
| I've gotten myself fired for doing this. I kid you not, but
| they took it as a sign of disinterest and somejow never thought
| to bring up "yo Martin, what's up with that?" 100% ridiculous
| childish twattery, but just sayin' ... you can end up in
| trouble. This was literally the only thing they brought up as
| "evidence" for my alleged "attitude problem".
|
| (I can foresee "dodged a bullet" responses, so just to pre-empt
| that: I didn't. I actually enjoyed working there, and being
| fired led to significant financial troubles, and even greater
| mental health problems. I got hit by a bullet and didn't dodge
| anything.)
| grimjack00 wrote:
| I am so happy my team, and most of my company as a whole, has
| an unstated "camera off" custom. There are a few
| project/product managers and higher-ups that like to be seen, I
| guess, but there's never been anyone announcing "Please
| everyone turn on your cameras".
|
| It's interesting when we have meetings with external partners
| that appear to have a "camera on" policy, and they are the only
| people with their cameras on.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| I always keep my camera off unless it's a handful of
| situations, like meeting someone for the first time, or making
| a big presentation and introducing myself. Turning the camera
| on is more the rare thing.
| stndef wrote:
| I discovered the same as well, highly recommend turning off the
| camera.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I do it very often because I often walk around my office or
| play with toys in my hands when I am collecting my thoughts
| or focusing on listening to people. Also help not feeling the
| urge to multitask and do other things on the computer.
| noman-land wrote:
| I want you and everyone else to know that sometimes on large
| zoom calls I will "pin" one person in the call and stare at
| them for multiple minutes in a row on fullscreen. I do this all
| the time.
| j-bos wrote:
| This is a wild play if you wear glasses.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Mother of God
| [deleted]
| mcronce wrote:
| You woke up and chose violence
| rightbyte wrote:
| Hah. I wouldn't say that it is creepy but I get a bit uneasy
| thinking about it. Ok so I judge people on what they have in
| their basket in the store. I am not a greater person.
| GravelRocks wrote:
| I do this too. I usually cycle through a few people if
| multiple people have their camera on. I also take snips and
| draw mustaches/glasses/graffiti on them in paint during
| really boring meetings.
| politelemon wrote:
| It would be hilarious if you suddenly or accidentally
| shared the screen with that artwork ongoing
| sureglymop wrote:
| Something like this recently happened in one of my
| university classes. We had a remote class in the evening
| on Teams. One of my buddies felt very tired so he thought
| he'll zone out for a bit and mute the call. After he
| proceeded to mute the call he realized that he'd actually
| muted the teacher for the whole class. It was hilarious,
| especially when he told me after. :)
| politelemon wrote:
| Sometimes on a call where I'm familiar with everyone, I'll
| pretend my internet connection is being flaky and ask everyone
| to turn cameras off. I'm well aware I can just turn incoming
| video off, but most people aren't.
| codingdave wrote:
| Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop
| having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working
| remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use
| async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really
| never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to
| remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day
| came up... and it still confuses me. It isn't effective.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| From my experience, a "culture of meetings" was ever present
| when working at the office. It did not go away when everything
| went remote by necessity.
|
| And now maybe the "original remote workers" are affected, too.
| symfoniq wrote:
| > And now maybe the "original remote workers" are affected,
| too.
|
| I think there's a lot to this. Those of us who worked remote
| for many years before COVID probably developed more efficient
| ways of working over time. Then the pandemic hit and we were
| suddenly vastly outnumbered by newly remote folks who didn't
| actually know how to work remotely.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Managers who didn't want to go remote were forced into it and
| decided they needed to force as much face time as possible.
| TillE wrote:
| Yep, I've been working remotely for 20 years and meetings have
| always been super rare.
|
| We have better text-based work communication tools than ever,
| there are so few good justifications for getting large groups
| together at the same time.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Sadly a lot of people don't produce directly but do so
| indirectly. When they could been seen sitting at their desk
| clicking on something by everyone, everyone knew they were
| doing "something," even though it was immeasurable (because it
| was often nothing). Without that ability to signal productivity
| they need to be seen in meetings on zoom. This isn't fair of
| course, most jobs probably don't legitimately have 8 hours of
| busy work attached but yet we expect them to work 8 hours. The
| jobs still important for the hours of actual work they put in.
| That's not their fault, but they're still left with figuring
| out how to seem like they're working 8 hours when they are not
| and never were. The buying of their body in a chair was a proxy
| for that, and now they need to figure out how to make people
| see them sitting in a chair.
|
| One thing I found worked, and Zoom has apparently added as a
| real feature, was to have a standing meeting room that was just
| always open. We had a conference room in the office signed in.
| People could just hang there. Usually you just heard typing and
| occasional questions. People usually had their camera off but
| not always. But it seemed to appease the need to be seen
| without inducing anxiety provoked meeting proliferation.
| throitallaway wrote:
| The culture at our company is Slack + meetings. Slack drives me
| crazy because there's SO MUCH in there that it's hard to
| navigate and search. I'm probably a member of 250 channels.
| Meetings are ephemeral; I prefer written communication for
| future reference.
| technological wrote:
| One thing people need to stop is having office hours where
| people just join the meeting and do their work. Anyone
| interested will be looking at it
| neilv wrote:
| Yes, I was working remotely for a decade, we were hyper-
| effective, and I'd only met 2 of the people in person _once_.
| Most communication was email, and there was the occasional
| phone call. So productive.
|
| At another place, we used a text chat SaaS to be super-
| effective, and usually the only internal routine videoconf was
| for whole-company sync-up and personalizing. Text chat for
| effective async/real-time (in addition to docs), and occasional
| videoconf as needed. So productive.
|
| I've also seen places where people did meetings because they
| didn't know how to collaborate effectively, and there were
| barriers to learning that. One of the places, it seemed
| meetings were approached much like they approached coding or
| documenting: being able to say you performed that proof-of-work
| was the end goal itself, rather than the meeting being costs
| invested smartly towards some actual shared goal.
| chrismarlow9 wrote:
| Agreed it is the weirdest thing ever to me that people don't
| email anymore. Just send an email. In an email it's written
| down and I can search for it. In an email I can think at my own
| pace and respond without worrying about trampling others. In an
| email people can't ramble on and on and if they do you can just
| not read the email. And if it's work to be done, just make a
| ticket.
|
| The amount of meeting time waste baffles me. And then you try
| to make them productive and include information in the invite
| and you show up and nobody read it. So now you have to waste
| more time when you could have just gone directly into
| brainstorming.
|
| At this point I kind of just give up. I make my suggestions to
| make things more efficient and try to remember that even if the
| work gets done sooner I won't be working any less.
| baxtr wrote:
| Agree.
|
| I'm shocked by how much some people despise email. "You still
| use email?" Yes, I do, and I believe it is really
| effective...
| luckman212 wrote:
| Same as the "you still use a desktop computer?" people.
| Yes, my dual 4k screens, ergonomic desk, wired Ethernet
| connection and powerful CPU do in fact make my life easier
| and my work faster than hunching over a butterfly keyboard
| and squinting at a 13" screen in a noisy coffee house.
| icedchai wrote:
| Some people use Slack for things that should be an email.
| 50+ line messages, unnecessary notifications, scheduled
| messages.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Lots of people are incredibly bad at written communication.
|
| My theory is that people who worked remotely pre-Covid were
| selected one way or another to have above-average written
| communication skills.
|
| Covid suddenly brought everybody remote, and naturally the
| average communication skills for remote work dropped.
| throitallaway wrote:
| "My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?"
|
| OK, which pipeline, what errors are you receiving, when did
| it last work, any changes since then, etc.? A lot of people
| aren't good at communication, period. It's like pulling
| teeth sometimes.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >"My build pipeline is failing. Can you help me?"
|
| Even that is better than someone pinging you "hi." It's
| such an immediate red flag in communication skills.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| Slightly off-topic but using coworking spaces pre-Covid was
| also a different experience. They seem to have turned into
| call centres nowadays. I find it pretty hard to find a
| silent spot to work without having someone borderline
| scream at their screen next to me.
| drozycki wrote:
| I don't use email at work anymore because it is siloed to the
| original participants. Someone on the inside needs to know to
| forward the whole thread to anyone who needs the information
| after the fact. This info is lost forever when participants
| leave the company. With Slack I can search through
| conversations where the participants are long gone. It is not
| the end all be all of communication, but the auto-
| documentation aspect is way improved over email.
| xemoka wrote:
| I often thought a private, indexed, and archived, mailing
| list is best of both worlds. I've had trouble getting buy
| in though.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Until you stop paying. Not a good place to lock up
| communication. Zulip might work, but better to move to
| docs/wiki as needed.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| > I don't use email at work anymore because it is siloed to
| the original participants.
|
| For many people that's a selling point. I practically beg
| my teammates to ask questions in the team slack channel
| instead of DMing me, but they never do. I think it's stage
| fright and wanting to reveal ignorance to as few people as
| possible amplified by various higher up people joining the
| channel. Also compounded by tons of people from other teams
| joining our channel and no one pushing back because "we
| want to have an inclusive conversation" or similar
| platitude.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The stage fright comes from a place of lack of
| psychological safety. Too many mediocre managers see
| asking questions as poor performance.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I think it's pretty common to be drowning in both emails and
| meetings.
| [deleted]
| blowski wrote:
| Im not sure it came up in 2020. I've been at work since the
| late 90s and the same complaints were made then. The difference
| now is that everybody is also responding on Slack throughout,
| so it's like having double-density meetings.
| symfoniq wrote:
| Thanks for saying this. I'm strongly considering leaving a job
| primarily due to the meeting culture. It's just incredibly
| wasteful. We can spend weeks talking about things I would have
| knocked out in days in a previous role.
| verytrivial wrote:
| Robustly challenge what you think are unwarranted meetings.
| Preface your input in meetings that are silly but still exist
| with "Hi, I'll keep this concise because I know everyone has
| a lot of work to do ...", make a habit of reconfirming the
| value and purpose of the remaining meetings. Make it normal
| for meetings to whither quickly when not vital.
|
| I go further and simply don't attend meetings that lack an
| agenda or at the very least point out when there isn't one
| when the meeting starts.
|
| I don't spend much time in meetings.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I was complaining about this to my manager, he said
| attending meetings doesn't affect my perf and I just
| shouldn't go if I think it's pointless. So I stopped going
| to a couple. No one has made a peep. I need to start
| voicing for the smaller meetings tho. I've starting asking
| the groups "any agenda for today?" A couple hours before
| but I feel like the meeting organizer should really be on
| top of this.
| nimbius wrote:
| agreed. dont know who needs to hear this but if you're having
| more than 1 scrum a week its not devops, its micromanagement,
| and if youve got more than 2-3 meetings a week youre
| effectively doing your managers work.
|
| if it can be summarized in 2-3 lines in an email, dont accept
| the meeting.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Management is a skill and a lot of people get peter
| principled into it and don't learn or hone the skill set
| required.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Worse are meeting with just a vague title and not a well
| defined agenda. So many times I have to ask the organizer to
| add bullet points of the items to cover so I can at least
| join already prepared, can tell the organizer if I am not
| really the right person to join for the meeting and/or if
| someone from another team would be necessary.
|
| So many time is wasted on meeting because of off topic stuff
| or because the rights persons haven't been invited.
| skirmish wrote:
| Funny, just read an article on WSJ complaining how people take
| breaks during working time and then it is hard to schedule even
| more meetings on short notice ("is why so many managers hate
| hybrid work"):
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/work-office-coworkers-schedule-...
| lumost wrote:
| Problem emerges when there is at least one influential
| team/individual which is allergic to written communication. I
| work with one such team that avoids a written paper trail in
| order to avoid difficult questions. Once one such team exists,
| people start losing the time to thoughtfully perform async
| communication.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| This, thank you. I recently quit my corporate job and we
| started our own company with my wife... never been so
| productive. Meetings are truly productivity killers. Why hire
| smart people for a lot of money to then have them sit around in
| groups of 10+, half listening, half braindead?
| ryanschneider wrote:
| I think the problem is further compounded by team size and
| insistence on 40 hour work weeks. As soon as you have people
| on "manager schedule" that feel the need to look busy the
| number of meetings starts growing exponentially. I'm all for
| having enabling people on the team, just don't expect them or
| anyone else to meet an arbitrary amount of hours per week
| quota.
| caseyohara wrote:
| Exactly. Parkinson's Law states it best: work expands to
| fill the time allotted for its completion. A manager whose
| main function is to hold meetings will fill their 40 hours
| with meetings.
| jrockway wrote:
| > Why hire smart people for a lot of money to then have them
| sit around in groups of 10+, half listening, half braindead?
|
| Fear Of Missing Out. People don't want to be told what to do,
| but rather invest in an idea from its birth to its execution.
| That means there are going to be a lot of meetings like
| "which feature requests should we do in Q3". People want to
| justify, negotiate, compromise, and bounce ideas off of each
| other. Presumably some refinement and understanding comes
| from this process, beyond what one person spending a day to
| write a design doc would accomplish. (Do people like writing
| design docs for things that never get prioritized? You want
| to spend your time on things that are going to be shipped,
| minimizing the time spent on proposals that don't go anywhere
| because they don't have wide agreement.)
|
| HN's way of avoiding these issues tends to center around not
| involving any sort of multi-player action in their work. One
| person can do a lot in tech, so that can be a viable
| approach, but it's not the sort of business that people are
| hiring for. To do big things, you need a big team. It's
| always been that way. We didn't land on the moon through one
| individual contributor making a rocket and riding it there.
| Rather, thousands of individual contributors were coordinated
| through, gasp, managers, and collectively they accomplished
| something no one person could do on their own. If you want to
| go to space, you probably need to have a couple meetings. If
| you want to rewrite `cat` in Rust, you can probably skip
| them.
|
| In the coming years, it will be interesting to see how AI
| organizes coordination. If AI 1 has 2 A100s attached to a
| robot arm and AI 2 has 2 A100s attached to Amazon Prime, it
| will be interesting to see if one of them says "hey what if
| we combined our resources and made X..." I also look forward
| to the first AI agent chilling in a $3000/month rack
| complaining about having to go to sprint planning meetings.
| So like us!
| MengerSponge wrote:
| None of us is as dumb as all of us
| lelanthran wrote:
| Not all of us is as dumb as all of us, if catch my drift.
|
| If someone wants to pay me $$$ to basically sleep with my
| eyes open, then that's on them. I'm smart enough to allow
| them.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yup. I shut off my camera and browse HN.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I fully agree and had a snide comment to add. However, I had a
| bit of a brainwave. Is it possible that this is being driven
| more by anxious employees? "How can I show that I am doing
| something when no one is watching over my shoulder? I know,
| dial into meetings all day so I can be watched again". It is of
| course even worse for managers as they aren't expected to do a
| lot of concrete work. However, I can empirically state that
| simply being in meetings all day does not guarantee employment
| (not me, fortunately).
| chongli wrote:
| _But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this
| culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses
| me._
|
| My pet theory (that in all likelihood isn't unique to me, but
| derived from things I've read in many other places) is that
| this is due to an existential crisis among the management
| class. Many managers who were previously used to managing
| people very directly, by looking over shoulders and such,
| realized that their jobs are unnecessary when they saw how
| productive people became during the pandemic's forced remote
| work regime.
|
| As a way of coping with the cognitive dissonance they began to
| schedule huge numbers of online meetings so that they could
| continue to feel engaged and "useful." This has turned into a
| very large "emperor's new clothes" situation, played out across
| thousands of companies. Hence the desperate moves by many
| companies to try to force workers to come back into the office.
| 13of40 wrote:
| > Many managers...realized that their jobs are unnecessary
|
| I hear this a lot in forums, but to me it rings out as
| something that perhaps-disgruntled workers want to be true
| about managers, but isn't really grounded in measurable fact.
| It's true that as a manager I don't produce a lot of code,
| but at the end of the day my job is to know who the experts
| on different topics are and to know what the zeitgeist (and
| maybe even plan of record) of the org is so I can get the
| right people in a room together to solve problems. If we left
| that up to each individual contributor, especially the more
| junior ones, we'd never be able to achieve a large scale
| goal. Imagine if you were trying to build the Golden Gate
| bridge but you eliminated management and just turned a bunch
| of workers out on the site to do whatever their skills and
| experience led them to.
| chongli wrote:
| I said many managers, not all managers. There are some
| highly skilled managers (likely promoted engineers) who
| know exactly what their teams need to be successful and
| also understand the big picture and where their team's
| project fits in. These are not the managers I was referring
| to.
|
| The ones I'm talking about are from "the management class",
| likely went to business school, and have no technical
| background at all, and occupy most of their days "walking a
| beat" around the office to look over people's shoulders and
| make sure they're busy. These are the Michael Scotts of the
| world, and they are the ones in crisis, not the skilled
| managers.
| qudat wrote:
| it's much easier to brute force through a multi-hour meeting
| instead of pre-planning and having clear objectives and
| outcomes.
|
| It's just easier to waste everyone's time and meander through
| it.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| I'll always remember when the company I work for now went full
| remote.
|
| I was already a remote worker, hired as a senior. Attended all
| my meetings over zoom.
|
| Suddenly, when the company went full remote, meeting load about
| doubled.
|
| My role/responsibilities didn't change. So either I was missing
| plenty of important meetings, or, there's a lot of useless
| meetings.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| I don't get fatigue at all, but always keep my video off and do
| other things if the content of the meeting isn't directly
| relevant to me.
|
| The idea that we shouldn't differentiate based on appearances
| doesn't jive with a world where we need video calling on. Either
| people produce or they don't. Nobody needs to be staring at the
| screen and considering their appearance for the duration of a
| meeting.
|
| And yes the majority of meetings tend not to be relevant for the
| majority of attendees most of the time. Responsible people know
| how to differentiate the two
| docheinestages wrote:
| [flagged]
| FpUser wrote:
| Did they mention general meeting fatigue? Just before covid I was
| doing some contract for org with many developers. Amount of
| meetings they had was staggering. I am an independent vendor and
| organize my time however I see fit but if I was forced to
| participate in the insanity I've observed I would go insane.
| h4l wrote:
| Maybe it's obvious, but I find resizing the window much smaller
| helps a lot with the close eye contact thing. Slack's huddles are
| good for this -- their UI seems to be designed to be a small
| thing in the corner while you're doing other stuff.
|
| I also used to find it disconcerting watching some YouTubers film
| themselves with their face taking up the entire screen. I must
| have got used to that though as I've not noticed it in a while.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The perspective mismatch between desktop and laptop users can be
| a bit funny, laptop users tend to be close to the screen, so they
| take up their cameras' full field of view. Blown up on a big
| desktop screen it is like they are right in your face. It really
| can feel uncomfortably intimate, as silly as that sounds!
|
| Luckily my monitor was on an arm, so I could do one setup for
| Zoom, one for meetings.
| neilv wrote:
| I want to figure out a better way to do this. (The worst was
| when my extreme closeup was combined with some remote
| conference room that put videoconf people up on large wall
| displays. So, besides the larger-than-life HD pore inspection,
| it might've seemed I was glowering down upon them from above.)
|
| I use a laptop on a "lectern" standing desk that gets wheeled
| around for natural light, etc.
|
| I already use a corded USB camera, but if I put it on an arm
| rather than on top of laptop, there's even more eye contact
| disconnect from the laptop display.
|
| I probably have to get a big external monitor, so that I can be
| looking at it from greater distance. Which I'd guess means
| either a fixed location for videoconf (the monitor is in a
| fixed location, whether or not my standing desk is), or a much
| larger standing desk to wheel around.
| grokas wrote:
| I guess I was doing some these things already and didnt know it.
| Standing desk locked in the up position for zoom marathon days.
| Stepping back from the screens and camera when there isnt any
| reason to have hands on kb/m.
|
| I'm a usual pacer when on the phone so I'm not sure if that's
| instinct or habit but it certainly helps.
|
| Scheduling is also not mentioned surprisingly, but leaving 5-15m
| buffer gaps between back to back meetings I run is huge. When I
| dont do that I pay for it.
| fader wrote:
| I've tried leaving 15 minute buffers in between meetings. All
| that happens is that my colleagues schedule 15 minute long
| meetings in the gaps. It's exhausting.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| There's a concept called defensive calendaring I would
| encourage you to look up.
|
| I regularly schedule focus time or project time on my
| calendar and when I had days of stacked meetings, I'll fill
| in the gaps with focus time to ensure I'm not overbooked.
|
| I wouldn't be shocked if there's plugins or tools to help,
| though I do it fairly manually.
| skirmish wrote:
| What do you do when people just blindly schedule meetings
| on top of your focus time?
| croutonwagon wrote:
| Decline the meeting and say I have a scheduling conflict.
| helij wrote:
| You say no to them. I have a standing time reserved for
| school run. People regularly book stuff over it. I reject
| the meeting automatically. If I have 'busy' in my
| calendar because I don't want to be disturbed I first
| take a look what this new invite is and then decide on
| the spot with no or yes (no being the dominant response).
| Slowly over time people learn to email or Slack you with
| a few dates and times and life is good.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| if you have time booked on your calendar, no matter what
| it is, it's safe to assume anything else put on top is
| going to be declined, because you already have something
| scheduled.
|
| You can add a regular meeting for yourself too, instead
| of focus time, also set your calendar not to share
| meetings' details with other folks, so they will only see
| 'busy'
| cameldrv wrote:
| One other thing not mentioned is latency. Zoom does a good job
| with this, but there are fundamental limits.
|
| This makes it more cognitively demanding to find the right moment
| to jump in, and if two people jump in at the same time, they have
| to resolve the conflict, which is slower than in-person.
|
| This also tends to lead to a style of conversation where one
| person talks longer. It's a little like email vs. slack. The
| conversation is more synchronous.
| the_snooze wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. Turn-taking in meatspace (i.e., what
| every person has experience with since learning language as a
| child) is totally ineffective in Zoom-land.
|
| My view is Zoom cannot be a true substitute for in-person
| meetings until there's low enough audio lag that geographically
| distant musicians can perform live with one another on the
| platform.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I already usually have a difficult time jumping in on
| discussions in person. Zoom is SO much worse. This week I had
| wanted to point out that I already added a link with examples
| on something two folks were talking about on a doc, and after
| 5 minutes, I used the 'raise hand' feature, waited another 5,
| then just interrupted them because there was just no break to
| jump in, and no one noticed the raise-hand
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Zoom is of course the most terrible meeting app there is.
|
| With something like Jitsi it's already a lot more feasible IMO.
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