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Comment by wiseowise | Hacker News Reader

Daily standup being absolutely useless has nothing to do with ego.

I think it does but both ways tbh. A lot of the times they exist because people think managements job is to have meetings, like people think a developer's job is to write code. We are well aware that both of these job's have far more than this, but these are easy things to track and if a software guy is writing code, people assume that is productive and it is often the same for management having meetings.

It 'can'(strong emphasis) also give the manager a sense of importance and power or control through micro-management. The key is that the manager should be able to realise when the stand-up is not needed or has done its job on a particular day and end the meeting early, or adjust frequency based on how everything is progressing. That is the manager should side-line the ego and put the function of the meeting over their own feelings of control or power.

People in tech keep complaining about daily standup don't know that is a common practice in pretty much every line of work. It's just a team synchronisation moment.

It’s a common practice to describe who farted and how loud yesterday?

That's very surprising to me. Even in tech it became common only a decade or so ago. I don't know any other industry where it is common, except the military and the daily morning flag raising/morning formation...

Used to do a daily stand up at the big box store I worked in.

Last year’s numbers, today’s goal, what needed to go out, etc.

I always wondered what they thought I could do about the numbers. People are either coming to buy stuff or they are not.

A meeting with that periodicity (or a multiple of it) is common on shift-based jobs that oversee constant operations.

It's not common on any other line of work... well, except for software development, that is almost universally single-shift, non-operational, and some people insist has exactly the same needs as overseeing patients in a hospital.

Yes, it makes sense when there is a "hand off" of continuing operations to the next shift.

For something like software, being produced by ICs or even pairs, a fixed daily meeting is much more likely (at least in my experience) to become a ceremony[1] over time even if it is occasionally or initially beneficial.

[1] was wanting to find a link but could not. I'm using this word in the sense that Tom DeMarco used it in Peopleware.

Ah, you're right, handover procedures between shifts.

I've been on daily standups for groups of people who weren't on a team. It was like a floor's #random slack channel.

Depends how you come at it.

Useless because you personally think it's a waste of your time, or you're above it? Definitely ego, it's not all about you.

Useless because it's poorly executed or mismanaged? Perhaps not. Things are always able to be improved.

Both can be true at the same time. And there’s nothing wrong with not dancing in the circus just because everybody does.

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