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Comment by CityOfThrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Wow, if I was the leader of this person's company I would immediately terminate them.

It is so toxic to work with people who are this entitled. Getting this upset over a mandatory meeting? What a nightmare. You know this is just the tip of the iceberg for their bad behavior if they are the type to publish a seething screed over something so banal.

I don't like four hour meetings either. But give me a break. Running companies is hard, keeping teams aligned is hard. Sometimes keeping things going requires doing things that we don't like. That's just called being an adult.

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> Running companies is hard, keeping teams aligned is hard. Sometimes keeping things going requires doing things that we don't like.

A mandatory four hour meeting that boils down to "do the thing" is a waste of everyone's time. It's organized by someone in love with the sound of their own voice.

A meeting like that costs thousands of dollars in person-hours. It's then a few thousand more of lost productivity as everyone scrambles to figure out what the meeting means for their deliverables.

It could be an email. Then all the employees would have an extra four hours in their week to actually get shit done.

> keeping teams aligned is hard

If keeping teams of professionals aligned is hard the problem is unlikely to be in the professionals..

You would terminate someone for...having an opinion? They didn't mention the company they worked for (if indeed it is their company and not some made-up example).

Little secret: outside of self-proclaimed "leaders" in the Linkedin bubble, most normal people think like the writer, if not put so eloquently. They have jobs to do, and know how to do them, and do not appreciate being dragged into a 4 hour meeting to listen to bullshit. Of course they'll do it if they are told to. But if you are a "leader" you would be conscious of their time and not waste it on self-congratulatory claptrap.

For long meetings I've dreamed about having a taxi style fare meter running on the screen. It would add up all the wages of the people present and give a running total for the speaker so they know the (minimum) cost of the meeting.

Normally I hate timesheets, but there is some satisfaction in putting "Company meeting: 4 hours" into a timesheet and knowing the managers will have a mild heart attack when those 4 hours are multiplied for every person across the company when they look at the end of the month report.

> Running companies is hard, keeping teams aligned is hard.

It is actually really really easy to not send your employees emails like "This will be an all-morning meeting so arrive energized as we hit the ground running on Monday morning". Shockingly easy in fact.

I had to scroll so much to reach the flip side of the coin. IMHO making a 4 hours mandatory bs meeting on monday morning is much more toxic than this.

Terminate people you disagree with and your blindspots get.. blinder? You end up being delusional, which is far from good.

Mr Musk?! Please stop wasting time on HN and attend to the small mountain of legal documents on and around your desk.

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