10 ms·

How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)

109 points by kuahyeow 2y ago

forgetfreeman 2y ago
stop having them and rely largely on email for communications that should in fact be email.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  Okay, this may sound nuts but I think the only issue with your proposal is that it doesn’t address the reason that this doesn’t happen. Our colleagues do not or do not want to read business communications for the purpose of comprehension for the content of their own work or communication with their colleagues. I genuinely propose a three strike policy where professional employees are to be fired after three occasions where they demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to read and comprehend important business communications less than two pages or 6 paraphrases in length. This includes emails and internal publications, but not async communication on platforms like Slack, Teams, or non-recorded verbal meetings (digital or otherwise), nor does it include verbal conversations with colleagues in person or otherwise. I freely admit to wanting a business environment where email communication and content is considered sacred in commercial contexts. Where it’s unacceptable to not only be familiar with but understand well the contents of an email that is now the subject of a meeting or otherwise directly important the content of one’s work. I’ve tried to right this “meeting should be an email” battle but the reality is shocking: nobody reads anything, for the most part, and when they do, they act like they didn’t. Reading compression is a faux pa, better to get the accreditation that comes from an in person discussion. This is the sort of rant that I’m sure I’ve run afoul of as well. But I stand by it regardless. The reason that we have meetings instead of emails is incredible simple: people do not read and comprehend emails.
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    > "This includes emails... but not async communication." Your failure to communicate clearly here is one of the most ironic and (presumably unintentionally) hilarious things I've read in some time.
  - crngefest 2y ago
    I ran into the same issue but I’m curious >people do not read and comprehend emails. Why do you think that is the case? It seems like a simple thing to do
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Too much email spam from the company, including fake phishing attempts, to take my inbox seriously. It's a noisy channel. Email is also slow. Instant messaging is where it's at, but most people's reading comprehension and writing are not at the level where that's the only viable medium.
    - RHSeeger 2y ago
      Depends entirely on the context. There are plenty of cases where email, _especially_ when it comes to taking the time to sort out your thoughts and then format them nicely, is better than instance messaging.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    > I’ve tried to right this “meeting should be an email” battle but the reality is shocking: nobody reads anything, for the most part, and when they do, they act like they didn’t. Exactly. "This meeting could have been an E-mail" is only true if people read and respond to their E-mail. I usually will try E-mail first, but if I don't get a response or if the expected action is not taken--I sigh and break out the meeting invite.
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    > nobody reads anything, for the most part, and when they do, they act like they didn’t. It's actually even more insidious than a lack of reading comprehension. It's a lack of retention in memory. People read an email, it blends in with all the other email they read, it lacks salience, it's the metaphorical "in one ear, out the other". Text lacks immediacy so it doesn't get attention, retention, or action. This is, needless to say, not a solvable problem within any given team, company, or industry. Edit: The irony of writing this in a HN comment does not elude me.
  - arp242 2y ago
    People not reading emails hasn't really been a problem pretty much anywhere I worked for the last 10 years or more. People not writing them has been a problem though. Maybe this was caused by people not reading them, but I've always suspected that a lot of people just don't like writing, and/or aren't very good at it. So it's easier for them to do an in-person meeting. And when no or very few emails get sent, no on really pays attention to them. I haven't even opened the company email in a week because there is never anything interesting there. I really wish writing would be emphasized more in job interviews. I have seen some that emphasise written communication, but it's relatively rare.
    - RHSeeger 2y ago
      > Maybe this was caused by people not reading them, but I've always suspected that a lot of people just don't like writing, and/or aren't very good at it. Writing an email tends is harder than having a meeting, because you (generally) need to understand the problem to talk about it. This is true of both providing information about the problem and for asking questions about it. Part of writing about something is taking the time to understand it. It can easily take me 20-30 minutes to write an email about something. But, especially in the case of asking for more information about something, it _also_ results in me having a clearer understanding of the topic; because I needed to identify what questions to ask. However, me spending 30 minutes on writing that email means - I understand the problem better (as noted), AND - Multiple _other_ people don't spend 15 minutes in a meeting while I solidify my understanding enough to ask the right questions. And that saves a lot more time overall. That being said, sometimes meetings are the right answer, because there's a gap somewhere and people just don't know what questions to ask; they need to get together and just talk about it.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I think it depends on corporate culture. I have >8,000 unread emails in my corporate gmail, and it only has a 2 year retention policy. Some companies overcommunicate, and email can essentially be unusable due to noise. it can be a huge issue if there are multiple modes of communication. I get communication through email, chats, groups, google doc comments, smart sheets, 3 quality systems, and workday. As a result, it can take a while for me to circle back to my email inbox and give the messages thoughtful consideration.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    I feel like unrelated issues are being conflated here? The issue of one on one interpersonal communication should be a solved problem given email, text, phone, video call (one on one video calls don't suffer the same flavor of hideousness inflicted when the headcount starts to grow). By comparison large headcount meetings are gross sadistic and pointless in person regardless of communications format selected. Either they're intended to let a small number of individuals convey information to a larger group (send a goddamn email already, if you're really fancy video your canned remarks and send a link to the video in the email), or they're intended to elicit some kind of exchange among a large group, at which point you end up with an hour and a half of nothing of substance being accomplished while some/most/all of the meeting participants are sitting there fighting their soul's urge to simply vacate their body on the spot. Then there's the ever-popular multi-departmental standup meeting, in which a bunch of people convey pointless detail at length about shit that is wildly irrelevant to the jobs of most of the other attendees to no obvious purpose. Full Disclosure: I intentionally ignore my email under the assumption that if it's really important someone will pick up a phone and call.
- nlawalker 2y ago
  For people who are good readers and writers of email, there's a winning strategy that gives everyone what they want. On the receiving side: information-delivery presentations are async communications, it's just that historical precedent demands that everyone get a calendar invite to the live taping. Not everyone wants to write and send email, and with the options for consuming recorded content now, that's fine. You can read their slides, watch their presentation at 2x, fly through the transcript, read the AI summary, etc. on your own time. On the sending side: next time you write a really great email, don't send it. Send a meeting invite so people can watch live while you record yourself reading it to the camera while displaying slides with a bullet-point summary you can have ChatGPT generate for you. Get good at it and you'll quickly get a reputation for being a great communicator - people will genuinely be impressed at how prepared you are and how clear your thinking is.
User23 2y ago
[flagged]
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Every meeting starts with an agenda and ends with minutes or don't bother showing up Or admit that their de facto purpose is to socialize on company time, which is something that should be done but is hard to quantify
stavros 2y ago
This article keeps talking about "the caucus problem", but never actually defines it. I couldn't follow the post at all because every problem kept ending with "but this isn't the real problem, the caucus problem is".
- crngefest 2y ago
  Same. I searched a bit online but it doesn’t seem to be a well established term
  - MichaelRo 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      Caucus is also one of two ways state branches of political parties can nominate a person to be a candidate for election (the other being a primary). The author likely lives in a state where such a thing happens (both parties use primaries where I live, but the term is not unfamiliar at all). https://th.usembassy.gov/primaries-caucuses-differences/ https://th.usembassy.gov/primaries-caucuses-differences/ You might want to tone down the hyperbolic aggression. It isn't the author's fault for using a word in a fitting analogy just because you're not familiar with it.
    - arp242 2y ago
      This is the third article in a series, and the term is fairly clearly described in a previous article, linked at the top. Missing that (and thus the question that started this thread) is okay. Your aggression is not.
- goldfishgold 2y ago
  A caucus is defined and discussed in the previous post: “A caucus (and specifically an unmoderated caucus) is a type of meeting with no rules about who talks in what order or for how long.” Agreed the post is confusing and could have used a summary of the preceding piece to be intelligible. https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-suck-so-much/ https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-su...
sublinear 2y ago
> So the thing is, human social relationships demand structure. This is the part I agree with the most. I'm not sure about the rest. I can only speak from the perspective of a software engineer. Many meetings, especially daily standups, do not prioritize and filter out user stories and tasks causing them to take way too long. People zone out making the meetings less effective. It's basically weaponized on some projects especially when the management doesn't have a clue what's going on. It enables the blame game e.g. "well why didn't you say something during the meeting?" It's usually pretty clear what should be discussed, but it's rare to see a project manager who looks at the activity stream on Jira or equivalent. There's usually a huge disconnect between management and dev teams in general, even on a relatively "well run" project where everything goes as planned with minimal friction. Devs wind up picking up a lot of slack and just have their own informal meetings amongst themselves to remedy it. This is terrible long term. Every project I've ever been on inevitably hits a snag and all this unravels into management going into freak out mode when they realize how big these communication gaps have become.
gonzo41 2y ago
Make them shorter and more focused.
wvenable 2y ago
In our organization, remote meetings don't suck. It more or less just happened organically because we are a fairly flat organization but in a traditional industry. Mostly no cameras. I don't even own a webcam. A meeting is called for a reason (even if it's recurring). We have no "this is the morning meeting" kind of meetings. There a single person in charge of the meeting. This is most often the person who wants to get resolved the thing the meeting is about. This isn't enforced it's just a natural consequence of someone booking a meeting. Most meetings are between 2-5 people. Large recurring meetings are maybe max 12-15 people. In the large meeting, there is a rough agenda and everyone speaks to their part of the agenda in turn. Anyone can speak up if they have something relevant to add but otherwise they are muted. This is usually when I get my laundry folded.
- jaggederest 2y ago
  Very close to my own rules for meetings. - Meetings must have a purpose. (to echo you above) - The meeting must have a result, some sort of action or next step. Only one. - When the meeting has created a result to address the purpose, the meeting is over. - Someone runs the meeting. They decide when the result has been achieved. (to echo you above) - Someone (explicitly not the meeting runner) takes notes, action items, etc, and records the purpose and result. - The rule is, you invite people who are required to achieve the result. Other people, marked as optional, may attend if they feel they are necessary. Otherwise, optional attendance defaults to not attending. - No recurring meetings, no "informational updates", those we call something else. A hangout. A discussion. A presentation.
- bruce511 2y ago
  Typically I leave my camera off during meetings. (Well, the boring ones anyway.) Which means I just keep on working during the meeting listening with half an ear. This is especially applicable to reoccurring meetings where the manager is talking to the team, getting progress reports, working through the jira list and so on. This actually makes for a really productive meeting. I can fill the dead time with admin tasks, but I'm also somewhat aware of what else is happening. Last month it became clear one team member was struggling (for days) trying to do something outside their experience. I offered to make an example, and got him onto the right track. It's taken a long time to get used to these regular progress meetings (and I imagine pre-covid they were done in person and insanely frustrating) but now I gave the rhythm of them I just keep working. One tip I noticed, if Roger should comment on what I'm about to say then say "hey roger" at the start of the piece not " what do you think roger" at the end. :)
throw_that_away 2y ago
hint: It's the company that sucks not the meeting :/
goldfishgold 2y ago
(2018)
agentultra 2y ago
> if the goal is instead to deliver info to the attendees, your meeting should be an email If we just stuck to this rule I would have hours of more time to do actual work. So many “meetings,” are listening to folks um-and-ah their way through their slides. They read the exact text they wrote. Slowly. It’s painful. Just send an email. If this happens in recurring meetings, make an email digest.
- cpeterso 2y ago
  The flip side of “this meeting should have been an email” is that people need to read their email. I think Slack, always on and always interrupting, has eroded thoughtful email habits.
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  As I grow older, and perhaps comfortable in my skin/being fired/whatever, I will actually just ask for the document to be shared before leaving the meeting in these cases
  - bradknowles 2y ago
    This is one of the few things I actually liked about the way Amazon did meetings. The standard was to distribute the document first, or in the event that couldn’t be done, to provide a link to the document at the very beginning of the meeting. You’d spend the first part of the meeting with everyone reading the document (and maybe commenting on it, if you gave them the link), and then once everyone had read the document, you could start discussing it. They made heavy use of “Quip” as a shared document writing/commenting system for anything that was still being worked on, although official documents would need to be in Microsoft Word format.
- blitzar 2y ago
  For the meeting class of employees it would take them longer to write the half page memo than to have the hour long meeting.
  - 2y ago
cyrnel 2y ago
I appreciate the attempt to bring structure to meetings. I agree structure is necessary, but I feel like the article is committing the same sin that it decries: "rewarding A but hoping for B" If you blindly rebalance meetings based on "caucus score", you'll get less ideas from the loud people and more ideas from the quiet people ("A"). You won't necessarily get better ideas overall ("B"). IMO, the "floor" should be given primarily to people with a track record of clearly and concisely expressing novel and good ideas, no matter how loud or quiet those people are. Figuring out who those people are is hard and probably can't be nicely described in a blog post. No one has a meaningful contribution for every topic, and most people don't have the self-awareness to know whether their contribution is meaningful or not. Any good meeting structure has to be able to handle that common situation in a safe and healthy way.
smelendez 2y ago
The main issue that this gets at is that meeting time is a valuable company resource and a contentious resource for employees and should be managed as such. People shouldn’t feel free to chime in with half-baked ideas in meetings or call meetings willy-nilly any more than they would play horseshoes with equipment from the supply closet, use the company credit card for grocery shopping, or call in sick to play golf. What appropriate policies look like probably do vary by company and team but the policy shouldn’t just be that anyone with access to the calendar software can call a meeting or that anyone in the meeting can speak at any time.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  I think I agree. And this may be why there is so much variance. What worked with one team, vendor, group, might not work well with another. I am just about end a very unpleasant project about to go-live and has been something of a shitshow from the beginning. The one recurring theme throughout that we had no one person in charge, who could (edit: nicer phrasing ) help guide the conversation. Post-mortem will not be fun for anyone. The lack of structure can be a benefit; it can work, but not when the project requires close coordination. On the other hand, stupid policies can easily hamstring PMs.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  > call in sick to play golf If someone really doesn't want to work, I think from the employer's perspective it doesn't make a difference. We could argue physical and mental inconveniences could be seen the same. I guess there will be places were there's a legal split between the two kinds, but I kinda wish there wasn't. (I'm assuming there's a finite number of days either way)
skywhopper 2y ago
Latency is the killer for me. Both with video calls and even just with cell phone calls. Old school phone calls could be spontaneous and collaborative almost as good as meeting in person, because latency was as close to zero as possible and you could properly hear both people talking at the same time. But the delays and lack of good audio mixing in cell and video-call tech mean it’s impossible to use in the same way. Given the fundamental differences, then, the better solution is to use video calls only for highly structured meetings and to use other tools like chat and email (gasp) for remote collaboration.
- stavros 2y ago
  VoIP phones have excellent latency nowadays, much better than a call. It's possible to have a normal conversation on them.
  - kkfx 2y ago
    It's not much the phone but the network. How many insist using craptops with crappy softphone webapps connected via crappy wifi because they think a damn desktop with a normal cat6 to the router is "an old thing"? How many even try to attend certain meetings on the go on crappy mobile macrobugs AKA smartphones on mobile networks?
    - dbalatero 2y ago
      I think a laptop with cat6 would be sufficient.
      - kkfx 2y ago
        Technically yes, but a laptop as a desktop replacer is sound only if you need to use it also on the go and most of the time you are on the go. Otherwise a desktop is much more sound: while some laptop can be docked (any most can be used as docked even without a proper station) it's a nonsense setup if you aren't really "on the go". A desktop is cheaper, easier to maintain. My main point is simple: hybrid work is dumb: you still need to be near the office, witch typically is in a dense city, where accommodations tend to be tight, so WFH there is not cheaper than the office nor much comfy, you reduce commuting but still need to commute in a dense so unpleasant environment, and you do not have the advantage of single family homes in most cases where you have room for many things at home, from freezers to p.v. and so on. Also offices are even LESS utilized, we already have in cities big buildings used for less than 12h/day with hybrid "home" usage climb but still less than full remote and office usage plunge even more. You need laptops or double desk setup, again wasted resources and/or reduced comfort for what? Just to get physical ads (shops windows) while commuting, the need to commute more simply because being in tighter places you can't stock much at home, all just to make the finance capitalism, the surveillance capitalism to survive a bit more? NO THANKS. There are some jobs who need desktops and can't be from home, so laptops do have a reason to exists, but they should be niche products not mainstream desktop. So far the idea "a real desktop for anyone is too much resources, while mobile devices, subnotebooks can be given to anyone" prove to be PR bullshit because it sound logic, but given the little useful life of such devices compared to desktop (few years against 8-10-12 years for a personal generic desktop that can still be upgraded partially) and the nearly no recycling prove we waste MUCH MORE resources in building crap: smartphones, tablet, smart watches, TV, ... instead of a single desktop per human. So if we can give a mobile device to any humans we can give a desktop to anyone, if we can't we MIGHT still be able to gives desktop. Mobile is needed in most cases for slavery, the rest is just a niche. It's about time to understand that, stop the utter style of a desk with a small laptop and a smartphone and a smartwatch and some all-in-ears battery powered crap to have a simple desktop, with a good monitor, a good "conference style" combined device (mic+speaker+cam), a damn trackball and mechanical keyboard. Things built to last at least 8 years for 99% of the people. Less integrated as possible to be less hard to recycle and easier to partially upgrade.
dhosek 2y ago
It seems to me that the problem isn’t that remote meetings suck but that meetings suck. My writing group meets remotely because (a) covid and (2) one of the members moved to Ohio from Chicago. We manage not to have the issues about people interrupting etc., likely because we (a) care about what we’re doing and (2) actually that caring about what we’re doing really covers it. We do have structure in that we’re workshopping 2–3 stories per session and we have a four-part agenda for each story (aboutness, likes, suggestions, questions). Everybody has done the necessary homework before the meeting (in this case read the stories and written up their notes), but the structure means that we avoid a common workshop trap of everybody just reading their notes to the group and since you know your notes will go to the writer, you don’t need to feel obligated to say everything you’ve written down. Thinking about this, I can see pretty clearly how this could be translated into work meetings pretty easily and fits with a lot of the other commentary here. But bottom line, either the meetings will suck or they won’t and what matters is not whether they’re in-person or remote but how they’re run.
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  > ... (a) covid and (2) one ... > ... because we (a) ... and (2) actually Why are you (consistently) follow "(a)" with "(2)"? Is this an AI thing?
  - tired-turtle 2y ago
    I suspect to emphasize enumeration so readers don’t incorrectly parse the sentence. But the text would be even clearer had these speech patterns been omitted altogether.
    - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
      I'm way more irked by (2) following (a). It's (a), (b), (c), or (1), (2), (3), or (а), (б), (в), but for chrissake, don't mix the styles.
      - dhosek 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
(2018) Related from earlier: Why do remote meetings suck so much? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953914
kjkjadksj 2y ago
The closer meetings are to a conversation with a couple people, the better. No one likes the one presenting to twenty slog. That sort of meeting always could have been an email because there isn’t enough time for everyone to have meaningful back and forth conversation or give good feedback.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anotheryou 2y ago
purely technical, but lower latency (even at the cost of crackles), make everyone have a good mic, emulated spacial audio. I think these things would help so so much. I wonder if there is any research on the impact of these.
- AnthonBerg 2y ago
  Emphatically agreed. I’m sure there are some research results on how high-quality audio improves meetings – or conversely, how degraded audio degrades communications. Those research results might not be trivially easy to find however. And I’m sure there’s been less of this kind of research than we’d like. However! I’m fairly sure that a pretty convincing picture can be assembled through looking at things from different fields of study. As far as I know, the brain processes any incoming signals. There’s all sorts of filtering going on to extract the meaningful signal. I’m fairly certain that degraded input costs much more brain processing than clear input, probably measurable by MRI or fatigue tests or calorie consumption, if not directly by performance testing on accuracy or response time. I’m also curious if the field that studies turn-taking in human speech communications doesn’t have something to say about unnatural latency between speakers. Cognitive efficiency and communications efficiency are surely measurable there. Psychoacoustic neuropsychology? idk. And then I wonder if the entertainment market hasn’t done some research on high-quality reproduction in, say, cinemas? Almost certainly the investment into elaborate audio/video reproduction equipment is data-driven, backed by measurement of audience immersion. Probably there’s something on high-precision work like remote surgery too. It’s all valid, it’s all applicable. The other side of the argument is that humans tend to be argumentative, judgemental, dismissive, and unaware of the extensive refinement and reshaping of sensory inputs that goes on in their heads. So they’ll tend to dismiss inquiries into this, in my experience. It has to be tediously crafted as a suitably high-status pursuit but not too high.
  - anotheryou 2y ago
    one interesting part to me is: I don't think we need 3D VR. Movies, even on a small screen can be totally immersive.
knappe 2y ago
This article may be 6 years old, but it jives with my experiences having worked remotely for a variety of companies and in a mix of remote/onsite organizations for 11 years. In fact, the moderation suggestion is exactly how I've solved the caucus problem without actually being able to name the problem or the solution. This article is going to be my go to for referencing how meetings ought to be run and why. The only other article that really feels like it nails a nagging problem that I've never been able to articulate but stumbled across often is "Why developers don't water the plants" https://yorkesoftware.com/2017/05/03/why-dont-developers-water-the-plants/ https://yorkesoftware.com/2017/05/03/why-dont-developers-wat...
peterbozso 2y ago
Answering the title: like we do at GitLab. https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/meetings/ https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-rem...
- el_duderino_ 2y ago
  Is working with GitLab as nice as it sounds? Every time I read the employee documentation I get the feeling working there would be a great experience.
  - acheron 2y ago
    Doesn’t Gitlab blatantly discriminate in salaries?
    - peterbozso 2y ago
      I don't really know what you mean by that. Yes, the salaries are tied to locations [1]. But I get compensated well above the average compared to doing the same job at other companies (including international ones) in my country (Austria). [1]: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/compensation-calculator/#the-compensation-calculator-formula https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensat...
    - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      It seems ridiculous to ask this question without clarifying what sort of discrimination you are asking (implying) about.
  - peterbozso 2y ago
    If you can be a manager of one [1], then absolutely, yes. If not, then I can imagine it being really frustrating a lot of times. Based on my past work experience, working at GitLab is more similar to being a freelancer in terms of freedom and flexibility - with all the benefits of being an employee (professional community, job security, etc.) too. [1]: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/#managers-of-one https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/#managers-of...
sriram_malhar 2y ago
Fully agree with the article's focus on proper meeting discipline. This can be coupled with Edward Tufte's suggestions on how to present at a meeting. To summarize, he says that there is no point sending a presentation in advance .. most will not read it anyway. Instead of a presentation, write about 5-6 six pages of prose and hand them out at the beginning of the meeting. Every one will scan the document in their own ways and write up questions. After 20 minutes or so, start discussing the document. This way, the presenter doesn't have to drone on about things that everyone knows, and one can focus on real questions. https://www.edwardtufte.com/files/Consume_Produce_14_15.pdf https://www.edwardtufte.com/files/Consume_Produce_14_15.pdf
- xingped 2y ago
  Haha, you say that, but from years of personal experience with this meeting style, what really happens is you end up getting a lot of questions which are clearly answered further up/down in the document or questions which are completely pointless or nonsensical to ask but people like to just be heard and make themselves look good for having something to say.
  - sriram_malhar 2y ago
    I hear you, which is where one needs a no-nonsense moderator who will say “that has been answered on page 1”, and who has the authority to shut down the high caucus noisy people
- spencerchubb 2y ago
  To my knowledge, the 6-pager was popularized by Bezos. It requires the document to be very well written, or else the 6-pager will be wasting the readers' time. It also requires strong reading comprehension, which frankly, most employees do not. It works well for Amazon execs because they are all sharp
- throwaway4aday 2y ago
  This is really just wasting 20 minutes, it's much better to have a clear agenda which is basically in the form of bullet point notes that most people would make outlining the important topics and questions. Then just go through the agenda providing a brief elaboration on each topic and take questions, get agreement, write down the conclusion and move on. If the meeting is purely informational then in most cases you shouldn't even have a meeting.
kkfx 2y ago
I suspect that most people have issue on mere work tools, they do know by names tools from another era, while they never really used them, but they do not know the modern tools, so they create in their own minds strange hybrids between the old tools they never used and the new one. In the past was common having meetings in a physical room, because the office was a needed tool due to paper-based workflows, and since attending demand certain time not only to meet but also to prepare the meeting, going to the right place and so on they was organized in certain formats. Things are, or should and must be different, but most fails to understand how to use new tools properly. In the modern connected world attending a meeting is damn cheap, but we also have other tools to collaborate and depending on the task such other tools are better. Having searchable text trails, developing certain topics slowly a message at a time, having few "spontaneous" meetings between only few, than openly discussing something often is much better. But you should know modern tools and all must use them seriously.
gumby 2y ago
We have a system that works well for our small founding team. Normally I am pretty hardcore that meetings need an agenda (can be loose) and intended outcome when the meeting invitation is sent out, or else I don’t attend. BUT our small founding team has an exception: we have a daily, morning, remote, agendaless meeting. It’s the opposite of a standup: you can talk about anything. Sometimes it’s things that have fallen through the cracks; I can’t help doing standupy things myself (“this is what I’m doing today in 20 seconds” but that’s just me;) we also hear that so and so’s daughter just got engaged, someone else will be busy coz their spouse will be having a procedure today and they want to drop them off/get them from the hospital, etc. it’s to provide the “water cooler” experience of in the office. Important things get decided too. And we skip sometimes, perhaps one day every other week, since it’s like a bus and will come around tomorrow again. We do overlap in person at times in the lab but they aren’t awkward because we all have a common social context. It won’t scale as we grow, unfortunately.
- soneca 2y ago
  We have that habit in the small company I work too, and it’s great. It does not scale indeed, and it only works if, outside of those, you only have very few meetings, but I enjoy having this more humane and organic connection with my coworkers
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups). As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  I agree completely. If a meeting is being held so that one person can present information to the group, that can be an email. If a meeting is held so each person can update a leader with his/her status, those updates can also be emails. If the whole group needs to see those updates, it can be a wiki or a shared document. A meeting should only be called when that group of people needs to discuss a topic together and reach a consensus or make a decision. If it's just for communicating information, there are better, asynchronous alternatives.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ebiester 2y ago
    I think the key problem is that you optimize for bandwidth over latency, and it ignores that a manager is often looking for symmetric, real-time information. For example, if I am presenting information for a group, and this is going to cause stress or discord, I need to know quickly how the group reacts so that I can either adjust the plan, clarify the communication, or know I have work to do to manage the relationship. Latency matters here because these delays can cause people's lives to be worse because I wasn't able to monitor body language. Status meetings seem like something that can be replaced by an email, but it turns a manager's job from coordination to task assignment. Example: "Who can help?" versus "Jane, go help John, and Ted, go review this code, and Jane, after that redirect to this customer support request." It may be that Ted already knows the answer, and that John knows how to quickly handle the customer support request, but that's not going to be resolved via email. And unless you have everyone wired to slack, it's going to waste everyone's time. (Wiring everyone to slack is the worst of both worlds.) The goal should be that the team is organizing around the problem, but that means that the team is talking in low-latency methods. Email does not get there. Latency matters. (So does bandwidth, but time spent on the wrong thing doesn't help anyone.)
j45 2y ago
Better meeting skills in person help make remote meetings better. Lots of great tips in the comments, for me it's making sure meetings don't become a timepass. Meeting cadence whtn the meetings are new is important. Often eaiser to have a regular meeting and a mini check in the frist while until things are going. Ongoing Cadence is important, too often or too little time to get things done can be hindrance. Days of week can make a difference too. Talk Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon to leave time for people to start dealing with their week, and also on Thursdays to have enough time to finish something for Friday. The later in the week a meeting is, the less that can be done about it that week and it can perpetually push into the next week. Group note taking and agenda - there are neat meeting management apps out there that make things more interactive like carrying forward agenda items automatically, sending out the agenda for you in advance, etc. Note taking - This has become easier with AI, but having someone still send them out is great. Depending on whether management wants, having an out line of people's tasks documented to them can make it easier, but everyone should be taking notes to not get dependent on this. If this can be available often meetings can be shorter. Agendas and concise materials before meeting- can help people catch up and prepare to help make sure the meeting is about decisions and discussions in support of a discussion, and not discussion for the sake of doing the work on the meeting itself. Juniors first - one for the best things Ive ever seen is having juniors offer their input and thoughts first, which can be followed up outside the meeting with ongoing mentorship with seniors. it can be as simple as this is what I have learned to understand about this, and the rest of the team learns that they can rely on this person more. From a tech side, something novel and fresh every so often can help. Learn to use Zoom/Teams/Mmmhmm and it keeps it visually interesting and easy to pass around updates.
dusted 2y ago
“The only winning move is not to play."
backtoyoujim 2y ago
"if we do online meetings all of you can work from home" any other questions ?
deathanatos 2y ago
The "caucus" format as the reason that remote meeting suck doesn't make much sense in the context of our thesis of "remote meetings" suck, since it's not unique to remote meetings. If we go with that conclusion, IRL meetings should suck, too, and the remote-ness is inconsequential. Though … IMO, that fits: remote meetings and IRL meetings suck equally to me, and the "caucus" reasoning seems to jive with my experience. Good luck fixing it, though; the ruling class of management is the ones with the authority to implement moderation, and AFAICT management as a profession is not convinced that meetings are bad. (Or at the very best, they're only convinced that everyone else's meetings are bad.)
jwsteigerwalt 2y ago
Culture is hard. The effort that executives and leaders in originations with good culture exert to maintain it is often underestimated.
NoPicklez 2y ago
Remote meetings and meetings in general are good when there is an outcome for the meeting, when there are only the people that NEED to be in the meeting, the meeting is short enough to create outcomes without blabbering on and the timeframe is adhered to. I cannot stand it when a 15 minute stand up, becomes a 30+ minute discussion that rolls into the next one and the next one.
xchip 2y ago
Remote meetings don't suck. They save time and resources.
black_13 2y ago
[dead]
zer8k 2y ago
I wish I could enforce meeting rules at work but they are dictated by TPTB. We recently had cameras forced on because management suspected people weren't paying attention. That is correct. The meetings are regularly derailed by someone, typically some kind of Product Manager, waxing poetic about whatever they think is important. Cameras-on made life even worse. Now I have to sit prim and proper in my chair for 30 extra minutes because no one will shut the malignant extrovert up. Work gets delayed, boredom sets in, etc. I don't even know who to blame for this. It's really not much better than it was in person. In person meetings sucked more, as you had to be physically present to be talked at, and at least with a remote meeting I can just minimize the meeting and try to get back to work. I would estimate 90% of my meetings are useless. 50% of the 10% remaining could be emails, and 50% are probably worth it. Why can't I just build software? Perhaps PMs and management should get their own meeting where they can just listen to themselves talk.

109 points by kuahyeow 2y ago

forgetfreeman 2y ago

stop having them and rely largely on email for communications that should in fact be email.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago
Okay, this may sound nuts but I think the only issue with your proposal is that it doesn’t address the reason that this doesn’t happen. Our colleagues do not or do not want to read business communications for the purpose of comprehension for the content of their own work or communication with their colleagues. I genuinely propose a three strike policy where professional employees are to be fired after three occasions where they demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to read and comprehend important business communications less than two pages or 6 paraphrases in length. This includes emails and internal publications, but not async communication on platforms like Slack, Teams, or non-recorded verbal meetings (digital or otherwise), nor does it include verbal conversations with colleagues in person or otherwise. I freely admit to wanting a business environment where email communication and content is considered sacred in commercial contexts. Where it’s unacceptable to not only be familiar with but understand well the contents of an email that is now the subject of a meeting or otherwise directly important the content of one’s work. I’ve tried to right this “meeting should be an email” battle but the reality is shocking: nobody reads anything, for the most part, and when they do, they act like they didn’t. Reading compression is a faux pa, better to get the accreditation that comes from an in person discussion. This is the sort of rant that I’m sure I’ve run afoul of as well. But I stand by it regardless. The reason that we have meetings instead of emails is incredible simple: people do not read and comprehend emails.
- chrisweekly 2y ago
  > "This includes emails... but not async communication." Your failure to communicate clearly here is one of the most ironic and (presumably unintentionally) hilarious things I've read in some time.
- crngefest 2y ago
  I ran into the same issue but I’m curious >people do not read and comprehend emails. Why do you think that is the case? It seems like a simple thing to do
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Too much email spam from the company, including fake phishing attempts, to take my inbox seriously. It's a noisy channel. Email is also slow. Instant messaging is where it's at, but most people's reading comprehension and writing are not at the level where that's the only viable medium.
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    Depends entirely on the context. There are plenty of cases where email, _especially_ when it comes to taking the time to sort out your thoughts and then format them nicely, is better than instance messaging.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > I’ve tried to right this “meeting should be an email” battle but the reality is shocking: nobody reads anything, for the most part, and when they do, they act like they didn’t. Exactly. "This meeting could have been an E-mail" is only true if people read and respond to their E-mail. I usually will try E-mail first, but if I don't get a response or if the expected action is not taken--I sigh and break out the meeting invite.
- jaggederest 2y ago
  > nobody reads anything, for the most part, and when they do, they act like they didn’t. It's actually even more insidious than a lack of reading comprehension. It's a lack of retention in memory. People read an email, it blends in with all the other email they read, it lacks salience, it's the metaphorical "in one ear, out the other". Text lacks immediacy so it doesn't get attention, retention, or action. This is, needless to say, not a solvable problem within any given team, company, or industry. Edit: The irony of writing this in a HN comment does not elude me.
- arp242 2y ago
  People not reading emails hasn't really been a problem pretty much anywhere I worked for the last 10 years or more. People not writing them has been a problem though. Maybe this was caused by people not reading them, but I've always suspected that a lot of people just don't like writing, and/or aren't very good at it. So it's easier for them to do an in-person meeting. And when no or very few emails get sent, no on really pays attention to them. I haven't even opened the company email in a week because there is never anything interesting there. I really wish writing would be emphasized more in job interviews. I have seen some that emphasise written communication, but it's relatively rare.
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    > Maybe this was caused by people not reading them, but I've always suspected that a lot of people just don't like writing, and/or aren't very good at it. Writing an email tends is harder than having a meeting, because you (generally) need to understand the problem to talk about it. This is true of both providing information about the problem and for asking questions about it. Part of writing about something is taking the time to understand it. It can easily take me 20-30 minutes to write an email about something. But, especially in the case of asking for more information about something, it _also_ results in me having a clearer understanding of the topic; because I needed to identify what questions to ask. However, me spending 30 minutes on writing that email means - I understand the problem better (as noted), AND - Multiple _other_ people don't spend 15 minutes in a meeting while I solidify my understanding enough to ask the right questions. And that saves a lot more time overall. That being said, sometimes meetings are the right answer, because there's a gap somewhere and people just don't know what questions to ask; they need to get together and just talk about it.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think it depends on corporate culture. I have >8,000 unread emails in my corporate gmail, and it only has a 2 year retention policy. Some companies overcommunicate, and email can essentially be unusable due to noise. it can be a huge issue if there are multiple modes of communication. I get communication through email, chats, groups, google doc comments, smart sheets, 3 quality systems, and workday. As a result, it can take a while for me to circle back to my email inbox and give the messages thoughtful consideration.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  I feel like unrelated issues are being conflated here? The issue of one on one interpersonal communication should be a solved problem given email, text, phone, video call (one on one video calls don't suffer the same flavor of hideousness inflicted when the headcount starts to grow). By comparison large headcount meetings are gross sadistic and pointless in person regardless of communications format selected. Either they're intended to let a small number of individuals convey information to a larger group (send a goddamn email already, if you're really fancy video your canned remarks and send a link to the video in the email), or they're intended to elicit some kind of exchange among a large group, at which point you end up with an hour and a half of nothing of substance being accomplished while some/most/all of the meeting participants are sitting there fighting their soul's urge to simply vacate their body on the spot. Then there's the ever-popular multi-departmental standup meeting, in which a bunch of people convey pointless detail at length about shit that is wildly irrelevant to the jobs of most of the other attendees to no obvious purpose. Full Disclosure: I intentionally ignore my email under the assumption that if it's really important someone will pick up a phone and call.
nlawalker 2y ago
For people who are good readers and writers of email, there's a winning strategy that gives everyone what they want. On the receiving side: information-delivery presentations are async communications, it's just that historical precedent demands that everyone get a calendar invite to the live taping. Not everyone wants to write and send email, and with the options for consuming recorded content now, that's fine. You can read their slides, watch their presentation at 2x, fly through the transcript, read the AI summary, etc. on your own time. On the sending side: next time you write a really great email, don't send it. Send a meeting invite so people can watch live while you record yourself reading it to the camera while displaying slides with a bullet-point summary you can have ChatGPT generate for you. Get good at it and you'll quickly get a reputation for being a great communicator - people will genuinely be impressed at how prepared you are and how clear your thinking is.

User23 2y ago

[flagged]

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

Every meeting starts with an agenda and ends with minutes or don't bother showing up Or admit that their de facto purpose is to socialize on company time, which is something that should be done but is hard to quantify

stavros 2y ago

This article keeps talking about "the caucus problem", but never actually defines it. I couldn't follow the post at all because every problem kept ending with "but this isn't the real problem, the caucus problem is".

crngefest 2y ago
Same. I searched a bit online but it doesn’t seem to be a well established term
- MichaelRo 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    Caucus is also one of two ways state branches of political parties can nominate a person to be a candidate for election (the other being a primary). The author likely lives in a state where such a thing happens (both parties use primaries where I live, but the term is not unfamiliar at all). https://th.usembassy.gov/primaries-caucuses-differences/ https://th.usembassy.gov/primaries-caucuses-differences/ You might want to tone down the hyperbolic aggression. It isn't the author's fault for using a word in a fitting analogy just because you're not familiar with it.
  - arp242 2y ago
    This is the third article in a series, and the term is fairly clearly described in a previous article, linked at the top. Missing that (and thus the question that started this thread) is okay. Your aggression is not.
goldfishgold 2y ago
A caucus is defined and discussed in the previous post: “A caucus (and specifically an unmoderated caucus) is a type of meeting with no rules about who talks in what order or for how long.” Agreed the post is confusing and could have used a summary of the preceding piece to be intelligible. https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-suck-so-much/ https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-su...

sublinear 2y ago

> So the thing is, human social relationships demand structure. This is the part I agree with the most. I'm not sure about the rest. I can only speak from the perspective of a software engineer. Many meetings, especially daily standups, do not prioritize and filter out user stories and tasks causing them to take way too long. People zone out making the meetings less effective. It's basically weaponized on some projects especially when the management doesn't have a clue what's going on. It enables the blame game e.g. "well why didn't you say something during the meeting?" It's usually pretty clear what should be discussed, but it's rare to see a project manager who looks at the activity stream on Jira or equivalent. There's usually a huge disconnect between management and dev teams in general, even on a relatively "well run" project where everything goes as planned with minimal friction. Devs wind up picking up a lot of slack and just have their own informal meetings amongst themselves to remedy it. This is terrible long term. Every project I've ever been on inevitably hits a snag and all this unravels into management going into freak out mode when they realize how big these communication gaps have become.

gonzo41 2y ago

Make them shorter and more focused.

wvenable 2y ago

In our organization, remote meetings don't suck. It more or less just happened organically because we are a fairly flat organization but in a traditional industry. Mostly no cameras. I don't even own a webcam. A meeting is called for a reason (even if it's recurring). We have no "this is the morning meeting" kind of meetings. There a single person in charge of the meeting. This is most often the person who wants to get resolved the thing the meeting is about. This isn't enforced it's just a natural consequence of someone booking a meeting. Most meetings are between 2-5 people. Large recurring meetings are maybe max 12-15 people. In the large meeting, there is a rough agenda and everyone speaks to their part of the agenda in turn. Anyone can speak up if they have something relevant to add but otherwise they are muted. This is usually when I get my laundry folded.

jaggederest 2y ago
Very close to my own rules for meetings. - Meetings must have a purpose. (to echo you above) - The meeting must have a result, some sort of action or next step. Only one. - When the meeting has created a result to address the purpose, the meeting is over. - Someone runs the meeting. They decide when the result has been achieved. (to echo you above) - Someone (explicitly not the meeting runner) takes notes, action items, etc, and records the purpose and result. - The rule is, you invite people who are required to achieve the result. Other people, marked as optional, may attend if they feel they are necessary. Otherwise, optional attendance defaults to not attending. - No recurring meetings, no "informational updates", those we call something else. A hangout. A discussion. A presentation.
bruce511 2y ago
Typically I leave my camera off during meetings. (Well, the boring ones anyway.) Which means I just keep on working during the meeting listening with half an ear. This is especially applicable to reoccurring meetings where the manager is talking to the team, getting progress reports, working through the jira list and so on. This actually makes for a really productive meeting. I can fill the dead time with admin tasks, but I'm also somewhat aware of what else is happening. Last month it became clear one team member was struggling (for days) trying to do something outside their experience. I offered to make an example, and got him onto the right track. It's taken a long time to get used to these regular progress meetings (and I imagine pre-covid they were done in person and insanely frustrating) but now I gave the rhythm of them I just keep working. One tip I noticed, if Roger should comment on what I'm about to say then say "hey roger" at the start of the piece not " what do you think roger" at the end. :)

throw_that_away 2y ago

hint: It's the company that sucks not the meeting :/

goldfishgold 2y ago

(2018)

agentultra 2y ago

> if the goal is instead to deliver info to the attendees, your meeting should be an email If we just stuck to this rule I would have hours of more time to do actual work. So many “meetings,” are listening to folks um-and-ah their way through their slides. They read the exact text they wrote. Slowly. It’s painful. Just send an email. If this happens in recurring meetings, make an email digest.

cpeterso 2y ago
The flip side of “this meeting should have been an email” is that people need to read their email. I think Slack, always on and always interrupting, has eroded thoughtful email habits.
bravetraveler 2y ago
As I grow older, and perhaps comfortable in my skin/being fired/whatever, I will actually just ask for the document to be shared before leaving the meeting in these cases
- bradknowles 2y ago
  This is one of the few things I actually liked about the way Amazon did meetings. The standard was to distribute the document first, or in the event that couldn’t be done, to provide a link to the document at the very beginning of the meeting. You’d spend the first part of the meeting with everyone reading the document (and maybe commenting on it, if you gave them the link), and then once everyone had read the document, you could start discussing it. They made heavy use of “Quip” as a shared document writing/commenting system for anything that was still being worked on, although official documents would need to be in Microsoft Word format.
blitzar 2y ago
For the meeting class of employees it would take them longer to write the half page memo than to have the hour long meeting.
- 2y ago

cyrnel 2y ago

I appreciate the attempt to bring structure to meetings. I agree structure is necessary, but I feel like the article is committing the same sin that it decries: "rewarding A but hoping for B" If you blindly rebalance meetings based on "caucus score", you'll get less ideas from the loud people and more ideas from the quiet people ("A"). You won't necessarily get better ideas overall ("B"). IMO, the "floor" should be given primarily to people with a track record of clearly and concisely expressing novel and good ideas, no matter how loud or quiet those people are. Figuring out who those people are is hard and probably can't be nicely described in a blog post. No one has a meaningful contribution for every topic, and most people don't have the self-awareness to know whether their contribution is meaningful or not. Any good meeting structure has to be able to handle that common situation in a safe and healthy way.

smelendez 2y ago

The main issue that this gets at is that meeting time is a valuable company resource and a contentious resource for employees and should be managed as such. People shouldn’t feel free to chime in with half-baked ideas in meetings or call meetings willy-nilly any more than they would play horseshoes with equipment from the supply closet, use the company credit card for grocery shopping, or call in sick to play golf. What appropriate policies look like probably do vary by company and team but the policy shouldn’t just be that anyone with access to the calendar software can call a meeting or that anyone in the meeting can speak at any time.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
I think I agree. And this may be why there is so much variance. What worked with one team, vendor, group, might not work well with another. I am just about end a very unpleasant project about to go-live and has been something of a shitshow from the beginning. The one recurring theme throughout that we had no one person in charge, who could (edit: nicer phrasing ) help guide the conversation. Post-mortem will not be fun for anyone. The lack of structure can be a benefit; it can work, but not when the project requires close coordination. On the other hand, stupid policies can easily hamstring PMs.
makeitdouble 2y ago
> call in sick to play golf If someone really doesn't want to work, I think from the employer's perspective it doesn't make a difference. We could argue physical and mental inconveniences could be seen the same. I guess there will be places were there's a legal split between the two kinds, but I kinda wish there wasn't. (I'm assuming there's a finite number of days either way)

skywhopper 2y ago

Latency is the killer for me. Both with video calls and even just with cell phone calls. Old school phone calls could be spontaneous and collaborative almost as good as meeting in person, because latency was as close to zero as possible and you could properly hear both people talking at the same time. But the delays and lack of good audio mixing in cell and video-call tech mean it’s impossible to use in the same way. Given the fundamental differences, then, the better solution is to use video calls only for highly structured meetings and to use other tools like chat and email (gasp) for remote collaboration.

stavros 2y ago
VoIP phones have excellent latency nowadays, much better than a call. It's possible to have a normal conversation on them.
- kkfx 2y ago
  It's not much the phone but the network. How many insist using craptops with crappy softphone webapps connected via crappy wifi because they think a damn desktop with a normal cat6 to the router is "an old thing"? How many even try to attend certain meetings on the go on crappy mobile macrobugs AKA smartphones on mobile networks?
  - dbalatero 2y ago
    I think a laptop with cat6 would be sufficient.
    - kkfx 2y ago
      Technically yes, but a laptop as a desktop replacer is sound only if you need to use it also on the go and most of the time you are on the go. Otherwise a desktop is much more sound: while some laptop can be docked (any most can be used as docked even without a proper station) it's a nonsense setup if you aren't really "on the go". A desktop is cheaper, easier to maintain. My main point is simple: hybrid work is dumb: you still need to be near the office, witch typically is in a dense city, where accommodations tend to be tight, so WFH there is not cheaper than the office nor much comfy, you reduce commuting but still need to commute in a dense so unpleasant environment, and you do not have the advantage of single family homes in most cases where you have room for many things at home, from freezers to p.v. and so on. Also offices are even LESS utilized, we already have in cities big buildings used for less than 12h/day with hybrid "home" usage climb but still less than full remote and office usage plunge even more. You need laptops or double desk setup, again wasted resources and/or reduced comfort for what? Just to get physical ads (shops windows) while commuting, the need to commute more simply because being in tighter places you can't stock much at home, all just to make the finance capitalism, the surveillance capitalism to survive a bit more? NO THANKS. There are some jobs who need desktops and can't be from home, so laptops do have a reason to exists, but they should be niche products not mainstream desktop. So far the idea "a real desktop for anyone is too much resources, while mobile devices, subnotebooks can be given to anyone" prove to be PR bullshit because it sound logic, but given the little useful life of such devices compared to desktop (few years against 8-10-12 years for a personal generic desktop that can still be upgraded partially) and the nearly no recycling prove we waste MUCH MORE resources in building crap: smartphones, tablet, smart watches, TV, ... instead of a single desktop per human. So if we can give a mobile device to any humans we can give a desktop to anyone, if we can't we MIGHT still be able to gives desktop. Mobile is needed in most cases for slavery, the rest is just a niche. It's about time to understand that, stop the utter style of a desk with a small laptop and a smartphone and a smartwatch and some all-in-ears battery powered crap to have a simple desktop, with a good monitor, a good "conference style" combined device (mic+speaker+cam), a damn trackball and mechanical keyboard. Things built to last at least 8 years for 99% of the people. Less integrated as possible to be less hard to recycle and easier to partially upgrade.

dhosek 2y ago

It seems to me that the problem isn’t that remote meetings suck but that meetings suck. My writing group meets remotely because (a) covid and (2) one of the members moved to Ohio from Chicago. We manage not to have the issues about people interrupting etc., likely because we (a) care about what we’re doing and (2) actually that caring about what we’re doing really covers it. We do have structure in that we’re workshopping 2–3 stories per session and we have a four-part agenda for each story (aboutness, likes, suggestions, questions). Everybody has done the necessary homework before the meeting (in this case read the stories and written up their notes), but the structure means that we avoid a common workshop trap of everybody just reading their notes to the group and since you know your notes will go to the writer, you don’t need to feel obligated to say everything you’ve written down. Thinking about this, I can see pretty clearly how this could be translated into work meetings pretty easily and fits with a lot of the other commentary here. But bottom line, either the meetings will suck or they won’t and what matters is not whether they’re in-person or remote but how they’re run.

j16sdiz 2y ago
> ... (a) covid and (2) one ... > ... because we (a) ... and (2) actually Why are you (consistently) follow "(a)" with "(2)"? Is this an AI thing?
- tired-turtle 2y ago
  I suspect to emphasize enumeration so readers don’t incorrectly parse the sentence. But the text would be even clearer had these speech patterns been omitted altogether.
  - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
    I'm way more irked by (2) following (a). It's (a), (b), (c), or (1), (2), (3), or (а), (б), (в), but for chrissake, don't mix the styles.
    - dhosek 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

(2018) Related from earlier: Why do remote meetings suck so much? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953914

kjkjadksj 2y ago

The closer meetings are to a conversation with a couple people, the better. No one likes the one presenting to twenty slog. That sort of meeting always could have been an email because there isn’t enough time for everyone to have meaningful back and forth conversation or give good feedback.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

anotheryou 2y ago

purely technical, but lower latency (even at the cost of crackles), make everyone have a good mic, emulated spacial audio. I think these things would help so so much. I wonder if there is any research on the impact of these.

AnthonBerg 2y ago
Emphatically agreed. I’m sure there are some research results on how high-quality audio improves meetings – or conversely, how degraded audio degrades communications. Those research results might not be trivially easy to find however. And I’m sure there’s been less of this kind of research than we’d like. However! I’m fairly sure that a pretty convincing picture can be assembled through looking at things from different fields of study. As far as I know, the brain processes any incoming signals. There’s all sorts of filtering going on to extract the meaningful signal. I’m fairly certain that degraded input costs much more brain processing than clear input, probably measurable by MRI or fatigue tests or calorie consumption, if not directly by performance testing on accuracy or response time. I’m also curious if the field that studies turn-taking in human speech communications doesn’t have something to say about unnatural latency between speakers. Cognitive efficiency and communications efficiency are surely measurable there. Psychoacoustic neuropsychology? idk. And then I wonder if the entertainment market hasn’t done some research on high-quality reproduction in, say, cinemas? Almost certainly the investment into elaborate audio/video reproduction equipment is data-driven, backed by measurement of audience immersion. Probably there’s something on high-precision work like remote surgery too. It’s all valid, it’s all applicable. The other side of the argument is that humans tend to be argumentative, judgemental, dismissive, and unaware of the extensive refinement and reshaping of sensory inputs that goes on in their heads. So they’ll tend to dismiss inquiries into this, in my experience. It has to be tediously crafted as a suitably high-status pursuit but not too high.
- anotheryou 2y ago
  one interesting part to me is: I don't think we need 3D VR. Movies, even on a small screen can be totally immersive.

knappe 2y ago

This article may be 6 years old, but it jives with my experiences having worked remotely for a variety of companies and in a mix of remote/onsite organizations for 11 years. In fact, the moderation suggestion is exactly how I've solved the caucus problem without actually being able to name the problem or the solution. This article is going to be my go to for referencing how meetings ought to be run and why. The only other article that really feels like it nails a nagging problem that I've never been able to articulate but stumbled across often is "Why developers don't water the plants" https://yorkesoftware.com/2017/05/03/why-dont-developers-water-the-plants/ https://yorkesoftware.com/2017/05/03/why-dont-developers-wat...

peterbozso 2y ago

Answering the title: like we do at GitLab. https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/meetings/ https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-rem...

el_duderino_ 2y ago
Is working with GitLab as nice as it sounds? Every time I read the employee documentation I get the feeling working there would be a great experience.
- acheron 2y ago
  Doesn’t Gitlab blatantly discriminate in salaries?
  - peterbozso 2y ago
    I don't really know what you mean by that. Yes, the salaries are tied to locations [1]. But I get compensated well above the average compared to doing the same job at other companies (including international ones) in my country (Austria). [1]: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/compensation-calculator/#the-compensation-calculator-formula https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensat...
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    It seems ridiculous to ask this question without clarifying what sort of discrimination you are asking (implying) about.
- peterbozso 2y ago
  If you can be a manager of one [1], then absolutely, yes. If not, then I can imagine it being really frustrating a lot of times. Based on my past work experience, working at GitLab is more similar to being a freelancer in terms of freedom and flexibility - with all the benefits of being an employee (professional community, job security, etc.) too. [1]: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/#managers-of-one https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/#managers-of...

sriram_malhar 2y ago

Fully agree with the article's focus on proper meeting discipline. This can be coupled with Edward Tufte's suggestions on how to present at a meeting. To summarize, he says that there is no point sending a presentation in advance .. most will not read it anyway. Instead of a presentation, write about 5-6 six pages of prose and hand them out at the beginning of the meeting. Every one will scan the document in their own ways and write up questions. After 20 minutes or so, start discussing the document. This way, the presenter doesn't have to drone on about things that everyone knows, and one can focus on real questions. https://www.edwardtufte.com/files/Consume_Produce_14_15.pdf https://www.edwardtufte.com/files/Consume_Produce_14_15.pdf

xingped 2y ago
Haha, you say that, but from years of personal experience with this meeting style, what really happens is you end up getting a lot of questions which are clearly answered further up/down in the document or questions which are completely pointless or nonsensical to ask but people like to just be heard and make themselves look good for having something to say.
- sriram_malhar 2y ago
  I hear you, which is where one needs a no-nonsense moderator who will say “that has been answered on page 1”, and who has the authority to shut down the high caucus noisy people
spencerchubb 2y ago
To my knowledge, the 6-pager was popularized by Bezos. It requires the document to be very well written, or else the 6-pager will be wasting the readers' time. It also requires strong reading comprehension, which frankly, most employees do not. It works well for Amazon execs because they are all sharp
throwaway4aday 2y ago
This is really just wasting 20 minutes, it's much better to have a clear agenda which is basically in the form of bullet point notes that most people would make outlining the important topics and questions. Then just go through the agenda providing a brief elaboration on each topic and take questions, get agreement, write down the conclusion and move on. If the meeting is purely informational then in most cases you shouldn't even have a meeting.

kkfx 2y ago

I suspect that most people have issue on mere work tools, they do know by names tools from another era, while they never really used them, but they do not know the modern tools, so they create in their own minds strange hybrids between the old tools they never used and the new one. In the past was common having meetings in a physical room, because the office was a needed tool due to paper-based workflows, and since attending demand certain time not only to meet but also to prepare the meeting, going to the right place and so on they was organized in certain formats. Things are, or should and must be different, but most fails to understand how to use new tools properly. In the modern connected world attending a meeting is damn cheap, but we also have other tools to collaborate and depending on the task such other tools are better. Having searchable text trails, developing certain topics slowly a message at a time, having few "spontaneous" meetings between only few, than openly discussing something often is much better. But you should know modern tools and all must use them seriously.

gumby 2y ago

We have a system that works well for our small founding team. Normally I am pretty hardcore that meetings need an agenda (can be loose) and intended outcome when the meeting invitation is sent out, or else I don’t attend. BUT our small founding team has an exception: we have a daily, morning, remote, agendaless meeting. It’s the opposite of a standup: you can talk about anything. Sometimes it’s things that have fallen through the cracks; I can’t help doing standupy things myself (“this is what I’m doing today in 20 seconds” but that’s just me;) we also hear that so and so’s daughter just got engaged, someone else will be busy coz their spouse will be having a procedure today and they want to drop them off/get them from the hospital, etc. it’s to provide the “water cooler” experience of in the office. Important things get decided too. And we skip sometimes, perhaps one day every other week, since it’s like a bus and will come around tomorrow again. We do overlap in person at times in the lab but they aren’t awkward because we all have a common social context. It won’t scale as we grow, unfortunately.

soneca 2y ago
We have that habit in the small company I work too, and it’s great. It does not scale indeed, and it only works if, outside of those, you only have very few meetings, but I enjoy having this more humane and organic connection with my coworkers

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups). As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
SoftTalker 2y ago
I agree completely. If a meeting is being held so that one person can present information to the group, that can be an email. If a meeting is held so each person can update a leader with his/her status, those updates can also be emails. If the whole group needs to see those updates, it can be a wiki or a shared document. A meeting should only be called when that group of people needs to discuss a topic together and reach a consensus or make a decision. If it's just for communicating information, there are better, asynchronous alternatives.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ebiester 2y ago
  I think the key problem is that you optimize for bandwidth over latency, and it ignores that a manager is often looking for symmetric, real-time information. For example, if I am presenting information for a group, and this is going to cause stress or discord, I need to know quickly how the group reacts so that I can either adjust the plan, clarify the communication, or know I have work to do to manage the relationship. Latency matters here because these delays can cause people's lives to be worse because I wasn't able to monitor body language. Status meetings seem like something that can be replaced by an email, but it turns a manager's job from coordination to task assignment. Example: "Who can help?" versus "Jane, go help John, and Ted, go review this code, and Jane, after that redirect to this customer support request." It may be that Ted already knows the answer, and that John knows how to quickly handle the customer support request, but that's not going to be resolved via email. And unless you have everyone wired to slack, it's going to waste everyone's time. (Wiring everyone to slack is the worst of both worlds.) The goal should be that the team is organizing around the problem, but that means that the team is talking in low-latency methods. Email does not get there. Latency matters. (So does bandwidth, but time spent on the wrong thing doesn't help anyone.)

j45 2y ago

Better meeting skills in person help make remote meetings better. Lots of great tips in the comments, for me it's making sure meetings don't become a timepass. Meeting cadence whtn the meetings are new is important. Often eaiser to have a regular meeting and a mini check in the frist while until things are going. Ongoing Cadence is important, too often or too little time to get things done can be hindrance. Days of week can make a difference too. Talk Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon to leave time for people to start dealing with their week, and also on Thursdays to have enough time to finish something for Friday. The later in the week a meeting is, the less that can be done about it that week and it can perpetually push into the next week. Group note taking and agenda - there are neat meeting management apps out there that make things more interactive like carrying forward agenda items automatically, sending out the agenda for you in advance, etc. Note taking - This has become easier with AI, but having someone still send them out is great. Depending on whether management wants, having an out line of people's tasks documented to them can make it easier, but everyone should be taking notes to not get dependent on this. If this can be available often meetings can be shorter. Agendas and concise materials before meeting- can help people catch up and prepare to help make sure the meeting is about decisions and discussions in support of a discussion, and not discussion for the sake of doing the work on the meeting itself. Juniors first - one for the best things Ive ever seen is having juniors offer their input and thoughts first, which can be followed up outside the meeting with ongoing mentorship with seniors. it can be as simple as this is what I have learned to understand about this, and the rest of the team learns that they can rely on this person more. From a tech side, something novel and fresh every so often can help. Learn to use Zoom/Teams/Mmmhmm and it keeps it visually interesting and easy to pass around updates.

dusted 2y ago

“The only winning move is not to play."

backtoyoujim 2y ago

"if we do online meetings all of you can work from home" any other questions ?

deathanatos 2y ago

The "caucus" format as the reason that remote meeting suck doesn't make much sense in the context of our thesis of "remote meetings" suck, since it's not unique to remote meetings. If we go with that conclusion, IRL meetings should suck, too, and the remote-ness is inconsequential. Though … IMO, that fits: remote meetings and IRL meetings suck equally to me, and the "caucus" reasoning seems to jive with my experience. Good luck fixing it, though; the ruling class of management is the ones with the authority to implement moderation, and AFAICT management as a profession is not convinced that meetings are bad. (Or at the very best, they're only convinced that everyone else's meetings are bad.)

jwsteigerwalt 2y ago

Culture is hard. The effort that executives and leaders in originations with good culture exert to maintain it is often underestimated.

NoPicklez 2y ago

Remote meetings and meetings in general are good when there is an outcome for the meeting, when there are only the people that NEED to be in the meeting, the meeting is short enough to create outcomes without blabbering on and the timeframe is adhered to. I cannot stand it when a 15 minute stand up, becomes a 30+ minute discussion that rolls into the next one and the next one.

xchip 2y ago

Remote meetings don't suck. They save time and resources.

black_13 2y ago

[dead]

zer8k 2y ago

I wish I could enforce meeting rules at work but they are dictated by TPTB. We recently had cameras forced on because management suspected people weren't paying attention. That is correct. The meetings are regularly derailed by someone, typically some kind of Product Manager, waxing poetic about whatever they think is important. Cameras-on made life even worse. Now I have to sit prim and proper in my chair for 30 extra minutes because no one will shut the malignant extrovert up. Work gets delayed, boredom sets in, etc. I don't even know who to blame for this. It's really not much better than it was in person. In person meetings sucked more, as you had to be physically present to be talked at, and at least with a remote meeting I can just minimize the meeting and try to get back to work. I would estimate 90% of my meetings are useless. 50% of the 10% remaining could be emails, and 50% are probably worth it. Why can't I just build software? Perhaps PMs and management should get their own meeting where they can just listen to themselves talk.