Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

I definitely feel the growth of meetings has been a bit insane since WFH started.

Here's what I do:

1) separate technical meetings from process/operations meetings and clearly spell out the difference

2) Write in a narrative format what it is you're trying to accomplish and distribute this ahead of time. Doesn't have to be the often lauded "Amazon 6-pager", but if you can't explain what it is you're trying to accomplish in words you need to think about it a little more.

3) do not be afraid to throw someone else's name down as the owner for a specific action (but make sure to follow up if they aren't/can't be present)

4) Designate primary and alternate owners for actions, and make it clear when you need the primary and when the alternate will suffice. This helps with a) meeting fatigue and b) the increase in volume of meetings caused by no more water cooler talk.

5) do not take critical feedback about meeting structure personally. This one was hard for me at first, since I'm used to more formal structures, but there is no "pure best practice" for meetings - especially in a WFH environment. It's an iterative process.

1) is a great advise that I think I can make use of, same for 2).

For 5) I feel it is hard. Often there are expectations that you join meetings just in case a higher-up manager needs a piece of information or I am afraid to loose out on critical information. Do you, in your organization, have an active meeting culture with feedback for meetings? It feels to me that in my organization too often when a conflict, next steps or any other decision is needed, instead of writing about it people just schedule meetings to discuss things. And then there are meetings where people just share information ("team meetings") that could be shared in writing much more efficiently (people read faster than others talk, so reading information is often more efficient from my point of view).

The general theme of my advice is that communicating in a clear, precise, and reproducible manner (reproducible meaning where someone can back-brief what you just said and get it right) is one of the most important things to learn/know how to do if you work in tech - or any industry, really, but Tech in particular. I didn't come from a technical background, unless you count math, and that has been the go-to advice I give people because it does two things: 1) it builds up your own confidence in what you're saying as well as others' confidence in you, and 2) you will actually end up learning more about the subject as you strive to be evermore accurate in what you're saying.

If English is not your first language, then this advice is doubly important because it will help you improve.

Edit: sorry, I didn't actually answer your question.

>Do you, in your organization, have an active meeting culture with feedback for meetings?

Yes, but I'm a little more senior now and I think focusing on the feedback mechanism itself is missing the forest for the trees. Communication is always King, wherever you go. It seems like, from your description of the situation, you have a great opportunity to improve the communication within your organization overall, if people are still reverting to "just schedule a meeting".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com