Bluepacsky

Currently I am on E2 as employee in the US. Can I change companies by applying and they sponsor a new type of visa?

That is exactly my feeling! Yet I find most organizations do not implement async cultures and/or tools to run those processes. I feel that too often people do not want to do any upfront work to prepare an async discussion and rather expect everyone to do work by joining a meeting that could have been avoided. And then there is the social aspect that people rather want to talk via Zoom/Skype/Teams... than to write.

All these points are very true. But let's say you are in a large international organization, competing audiences etc. How you handle political concerns when someone schedule an unnecessary meeting? Can you just tell them straight-ahead? I often find that for many people it is easier to initiate a meeting than rather to share information in written form (that would their work to prepare, while for a meeting everybody else has to spend time).

The idea about check-in is awesome! Someone mentioned it further down but "dead audience" is a problem, people often start to code or do other things during meetings. This is only gotten worse during the pandemic. So this feels like a great way to start a meeting without taking too much time! Thank you for the idea. Do you do this in every meeting you run? Do people in your meetings get tired of it after reoccurring meetings (for example doing this every meeting seems less exciting)?

That is true. I think many engineers would feel less empowered if approval for meetings was needed. I think that is not feasible.

The point about meetings just being forgotten is a good point! I think that happens too often to me as well. I will try to do this in the future! It seems like that would be a good standard to follow for everyone.

I really appreciate the second point and the mentioned ideas! That is great advise. I think having everybody write status updates in advance can be a great idea but how do you make sure that does not turn out to be more work than just sharing those updates verbally in the meeting?

Your third point, setting an "end goal" is a great point! I have not thought about that often enough. I usually set agendas for my meetings but too often I do not define the ideal "final state" I would like to see from a meeting. Do you expect this also from others when they send you meetings? How do you handle regular meetings as a product manager, e.g. Sprint plannings in a Scrum context, do you then say: "My end goal for our planning is that everybody knows what to do in the next sprint"? Also, I tried to also ask this to others, but how is meeting feedback in your organization? My own meetings I have control over, but those are less than the ones other schedule where I am a participant, not an organizer.

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).

I like the general idea of having less meetings. I try to cut time down for meetings I am responsible for. However, there are ~10 hours of meetings each week that I need to join either because: 1. There is an expectation by management that I should be there in case they have a question (often they do not). 2. I join to make sure I do not miss the critical pieces of information that I need. That is often five minutes out of sixty minutes. But it feels that often written content ahead of time (such as the amazon approach) would alleviate that need. Do you have any advise on how to deal with inefficient meeting culture by others?

How do you use anonymous feedback? We do not have any tools in place for this but I do like the idea.