What Are Your Meetings Like?

[deanwebb]

Wondering about three things, one of which has been mostly constant and two of which are emerging issues in my experience.

First - meeting times. Are they as fixed as they ever were, or are start times starting earlier in your day and end times ending later? Used to be, nobody would dare call a meeting one hour before quitting time on a Friday. I'm starting to see more late afternoon Friday meetings for sure. Slight shift in earlier start times, mostly in American firms with European branches. No morning drive means earlier morning calls.

Second - meeting lengths. I'm starting to see meetings booked only for 45 or 50 minutes, which leads to other meetings starting at 45 or 50 past the hour instead of on the hour or the half-hour. I started to see these last year in one customer and now they're starting to spread. I think the idea was to try to guarantee a break in between meetings, but that's been short-circuited with people calling for meetings at nonstandard start times. I don't know if this will truly catch on - I expect it'll be dashed on the rocks of tradition and everyone just reverts to normal meeting lengths and starting on the half or whole hour.

Third - meeting sizes. This one is the most troubling... I'm seeing more and more frequently these MASSIVE lists of invitees, and not all for visibility. These people show up! A workshop in my mind usually involves a dozen people, tops, more likely 6-8 people. Technical sessions are like 2-5 people, typically. But now I'm seeing workshop invites of 50+ people and technical working sessions with 20 people on the call. It's worst with the technical sessions, as non-technical people kill any progress with questions about what we're doing or, worse, get on a theoretical soapbox while we're trying to test why a particular SNMP MIB isn't giving us the desired information.

The first one I see as a matter of drift due to the pandemic forcing more remote work and, as such, changing how we work in a day. I get that.

The second I see as a trendy idea, and it may fade as quickly as other fads.

The third, however, I first chalked up to bad project management but now see it in more and more customers, so I'm wondering now if this is a trend with legs and that we're looking at more and more meetings with people who normally didn't give a care when they were on the CC line now derailing things because they now have a direct invite and a microphone. For too many managers, that's a power trip and they're going to want that rush as often as they can get it.

[icecream-guy]

I think the meeting times issue is due to late arrivals,   with meeting at 10AM and 11AM,  if the 10AM runs the full hour, I am late for the 11AM.  I like the idea of 45/50 minute meetings so I can make the next one on time.

meeting lengths,  I've had 1/2 hour meeting run an hour and a half, and hour meetings that ran like 10 minutes,  get the meeting plan together so I can schedule my day.

marked increase in number of meetings  used to be no Friday, no Monday,  now it's both those days, and because everyone is so busy their starting to schedule meetings in the forbidden 12Noon lunch hour, just because everyone is free,  now with meetings at 10, 11, 12. & 1 I get no lunch

I've not seen an increase in the number of attendees

my personal pet peeve is that, since support is 6AM - 6PM.  I cover early BUT nobody is willing to have a meeting at say 7AM, then they allow me to show up for 4PM meetings (after my shift) since they cover later hours.

and then there are the people who hog the conversation and won't let you get a work in edgewise,  the virtual talking stick cannot be passed.  I guess I just got to be louder and talk over people.

[heath]

The only thing that has changed for me is that meeting that used to be face-to-face are not virtual.  No changes in frequency, times, duration, attendees, etc.  Now instead of dropping by my office at 5:00, my boss calls me on Microsoft Teams instead.

[config t]

I stopped going to meetings. If anyone needs something from me they call me directly or we have a short face to face chat about whatever is going on. Occasionally I get pulled into a VTC but it's rare these days.

At my last job deep in the belly of dot mil every Wednesday was meeting marathon. Meetings all morning, lunch, then a couple more meetings in the afternoon. Some meetings were to discuss a meeting with other people who weren't at the meeting. There was enough time at the end of the day to put out fires and generate email traffic about the meetings.

[Nerm]

Since I just changed jobs my meeting changes are more around the types of company differences. My last job was almost nothing but meetings in the global enterprise space and were all hours of the day and night. Now working for a DoD contractor my meeting schedule is much lighter and all on US time zones which is nice.

[Otanx]

Meeting Times: People want to schedule meetings when they are in the office. During COVID we have a minimum 50% WFH policy to help reduce people in the office. I prefer them on my work from home days. I can be in the meeting while doing other stuff in the house. When COVID started I started working earlier, but nobody moved meetings up so I ended up in late meetings anyway. I just started getting up later.

Meeting Length: Our internal meetings are running much longer because people want to just chat. You can't just drop because someone may decide to make a decision during that chat.

Meeting Sizes: Much larger now. I think it is related to the length. People are bored, and want the interaction.

-Otanx

[deanwebb]

Having more larger meetings... LOTS more questions from people that didn't read the notes or documents from the previous meeting. Ugh.