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Comment by cabraca | Hacker News Reader

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cabraca

I call your BS call :)

There is nothing better than a day with nicely spaced meetings

My current Project on every second wednesday:

10:00-10:30 Daily Standup

11:00-12:00 Architect Jour Fix

12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak

13:00-14:00 Sprint Retro

15:00-16:00 Sprint Planning

Most of the gaps have a reason (conflicting meetings, etc) We use those gaps to "transfer knowledge". That basically means we sit in the cafeteria chatting about work or non-work relatet stuff, planning our weekends, etc.

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Wait, you're actually putting that forward as a good day? That boggles my mind...if you come in at 9, get settled, you have maybe 45 minutes to work. Then, until 14-15, you have NO one hour stretch, then you have just one more stretch from 16-17...when do you actually code?? Don't you need a couple hours of focused time?

> Wait, you're actually putting that forward as a good day?

sure. Its better this way. otherwise i would have those meetings scattered across a complete week. and tbh, days like this come every two weeks. its not every day. most days its 15min daily standup in the morning and sometimes a refinement of 30m.

>...when do you actually code??

i come in at around 7-7:30, code until ~10, go home after the last meeting.

As an Architect, I'd rather have six hours of meetings, and one hour of documentation, than eight hours straight of being at a computer. In some jobs - meetings are the work. Meetings are influencing, are negotiating, are discussing, are communicating. And all of that is best done face to face.

That's orthogonal to the fragmentation. Probably two thirds of my job is meetings, but I'm ruthless about compacting them so that the remaining third isn't a scattered forty five minutes at a time

I assume he's coding on the other days of the week.

Terrifying schedule. I can handle maybe an hour of two of meetings per day, max two days per week. Daily meetings are a non starter for me.

its not daily. its one day every two weeks.

The standup is still daily though, right?

yes

So long as that's only every Sprint planning day, I think there's value in having that "rest" day. I'd hope that instead it serves as a time to get the "low-effort" tasks done as well, such as finishing documentation, reviewing a task you put off, collaborating on issues that will inform the later planning, and other corporate tasks that we all have to do once in a while. If we all had a day to put that in, I think there would be value. (And yes, some of that time should be bonding with other coworkers!)

However, I think your intent was to suggest it was a great day because no "real work" was done.

>12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak

Too short. An hour or bust. Actually, I am quite serious about. It's great to have time, go out and eat - business lunch in the area are decent to put it mildly.

I am very militant about my lunchtime, and view eating a sandwich in front of a screen as a form of peasantry.

I often shoo away people with "this is a human right"

For perspective: the people cooking your business lunch probably don't get a break of any kind, let alone a 30 or 60 minute lunch.

My experience is that they do get/eat food at the places they work. Much shorter breaks of course but the point "any kind" doesn't stand. They also work shifts, often times 12h ones. They also likely earn less as well. (side note: it's wrong to assume everyone lives in NA; tipping is rather rare here)

Also perspective: staying overnight, while uncommon, to address production issues doesn't translate, either.

You can compress this for one team by starting at 9am and run the meetings back to back until they're over, no time blocks. Standup -> retro -> planning -> grooming, or architecture -> design -> implementation, etc.

I've seen stand-up, retro, and planning completed in 30 minutes. We used the extra hour and 45 minutes for productivity. On cadence days we get half the day back.

When do you do actual work?

The other 9 days.

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