Meetings – The Real Boss Fight

If programming is about solving problems, then meetings are about talking about solving problems. Or, if we’re being honest, sometimes just talking full stop (some people love the sound of their own voices).

Don’t get me wrong... some meetings are genuinely useful. Sprint planning, architecture chats, roadmap sessions that actually go somewhere. But let’s face it: not all meetings are cut from the same cloth. Some are just glorified calendar clutter.

"This could've been an email"

If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that (or thought it silently while slowly dying inside) I’d probably have enough to retire. Or at the very least, a fancy coffee with some oat milk nonsense (Sorry! I just prefer lots of black coffee but that's just me).

You log onto a 15 minute Teams call with ten other people. No one’s quite sure why they’re there. Someone shares the wrong screen, someone else forgets they’re on mute, and that one poor soul keeps dropping in and out like it’s a wifi themed game of hide and seek.

You leave more confused than when you joined. Meanwhile, the jira ticket you were actually supposed to be working on? Still staring back at you, judging.

The stand up that never quite stands up

Daily stand ups are meant to be quick and snappy – “What did you do yesterday, what are you doing today, anything blocking you?” Sorted.

Instead, you often get:

• A developer giving a full play by play of their entire Git history.
• A line manager asking questions of which they should know the answers to.
• A ten minute debate on whether the ticket title should say "fix" or "refactor".
• Don't even get me started on PO questions...

And suddenly, a 15 minute check in turns into a 1 hour energy drain. It’s still morning, but you’re already emotionally clocked off.

Meetings named like boss fights

Alright, I’m not completely anti meeting. Some are genuinely great.

The good ones:

• Help you untangle gnarly bugs with fresh eyes.
• Leave you feeling more clear headed than confused.
• Give you insight into what you've missed.

A 15 minute focused chat can easily save two hours of typing “any updates on this?”.

Deep dive architecture meetings? Lovely, as long as there’s some structure and not just yap, yap, yap.

But isn’t communication important?

Of course it is. In fact, I’d argue communication is half the job. Writing clean, clever code is lovely. But making sure others understand it is a whole other skill set (read my other posts hehe).

Still, if we’re in five meetings a day, wedging in bits of coding between them like some sort of productivity Tetris, something’s clearly gone wrong.

Am I wrong?

Meh, this is all just my experience, not sure if you'd feel the same but some questions for you;

• What’s the most pointless meeting you’ve ever sat through?
• How do you keep team collaboration alive without drowning in calls?
• Should devs have the legal right to auto decline Friday afternoon meetings? (I’ll draft the petition lol)

I'm tired, and have been working over the weekend,

Still no gin,
Rus

Comments

[Dotallio]

Honestly, I’d pay for a tool that auto-declines Friday meetings for me. Biggest win for my team was switching most status updates to async - how do you handle stuff that needs real discussion without it turning into another time sink?