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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

> I pretty much write off the day entirely.

I think this is the mindset that a lot of people have, but always keep in mind, the meetings is part of your job, and writing code is also only one aspect of your job.

What I'm trying to say is that don't let the meetings frustrate you, instead just accept them and the distractions. Few people get to do what they really want to do all the time, and it does often seem that software developers show some prima donna behaviour in that they just want to stay in their flow and the other aspects of their job should be dismissed.

I mean I get it, writing code / flow state is enjoyable and makes you feel productive, but you get paid for the full package.

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This would be a valid way of thinking about it, but programmers aren't generally judged on their meeting attendance but rather their code output. More meetings == less code == worse perceived performance == fewer opportunities for pay increases and promotions

> This would be a valid way of thinking about it, but programmers aren't generally judged on their meeting attendance but rather their code output.

Not universally. Programmers are judged by overall success or failure of the project they are working on. And those ones who can take credit for a success or who can effectively deflect blame for failure are the ones who got promoted. Being in the meetings with the decision makers provides the forum for self-promotion and controlling the message. This does not always mean that they did most of the work. More code or less code is unfortunately secondary.

Did someone ask for this story? https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

> More meetings == less code == worse perceived performance == fewer opportunities for pay increases and promotions

That's a rather junior mentality. When one is junior, yeah, usually the most one can do is moving Jira tickets to Done (which means merging code usually). But when one is senior, the pay increases and promotions come from other activities: mentoring, handling technical topics between teams (usually via meetings), etc.

What I'm hearing you say is that the incentives in our industry are broken.

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