Stand ups and other useless meetings

It almost sounds like a social experiment. Like, how many meetings can we put on these people's calendars until they break?

Yeah. Let me tell you, I would be the first.

Let me tell you, like, camera off. I'm—

I do not mess around with meetings.

Alison chooses door number 3. I will not show up until somebody complains.

You're listening to Off the VPN, the show where two work besties get real about working in tech.

Jasmine, what is up?

Allison, Regna, listen, I'm, I'm feeling amazing. I just got back from a trip. Hey, and catching flights, catching flights.

No, and by the way, no travel issues, which I feel like it's very rare.

Yeah, I was just expecting it. I was prepared, but no travel issues. And yes, now I'm feeling, feeling good. Reunited with my dog, which is the best part of coming back from vacation. Yeah, how's he doing? You know, he's pissed that I left him, but we're working through it. We're rebuilding trust.

Rebuilding— I see, I see. Now every time you're like out of sight, I'm sure he's like—

yeah, freaking out. Absolute Velcro dog at the moment. Like, literally right over there. So How are you doing? What's new?

I'm good. I mean, we're back, we're back, we're better than ever. We took, uh, we took like a nice little, little break. Uh, I don't know if anyone's missed us. If you did, we missed you too.

Um, but if you didn't, that's okay too. We're not upset.

Honestly, that's fine. We hope that you also like got to reunite with your dog and go, uh, and go flying. I didn't go flying. I, I was working. And just doing my regular stuff. But it will be my time in, in due time.

So it will be your time. Listen, we all need to take breaks once in a while. It's good for the brain.

I completely agree. You just come back refreshed, thinking about things and thinking about them better. Thank you. Better. Yeah, I gotta go on that trip soon because you could do this speaking today because clearly, clearly I need one.

Thinking about new things better. Yes.

Yes. So what are we talking about today? What's on the agenda?

I'm excited for today's topic. All right. You know this because we work together. I'm a big meetings person. And by that, I don't mean like I love going to meetings. I love questioning meetings. Do we need this meeting? What are we getting out of this meeting? Why do we have this meeting? Should we cancel it? And today we're going to be talking about meetings, standup things, things that you want to say in meetings that maybe you don't get to say, or for some reason nobody says them, but it's what you're really wondering and what you really like to ask the room. We'll talk about some interesting stories about meetings and what times they should happen at. So I, I'm very excited for this topic.

Yeah, I think it's definitely something. I mean, even just researching for this episode, like, there's so much content out there. I don't even think we're gonna even touch, scratch the surface on some of the topics around this where there's a lot of things coming out there, even just studies or people complaining that like even just corporate America isn't real work anymore, it's just meetings. And so, uh, there's like a big qu— I know we ask a lot about this, like even just in our own jobs, it's our job to think about engineering meetings and how does that relate to engineering work and are meetings real work? How do we measure that? What does that mean? What's too many meetings? And it's, you know, it's a big question. Like, how do you know if a meeting was successful or if you're having too many or if there's too many useless, like, ones? What does that, what does that mean for you or your org or just general productivity? So, I think there's just a lot, also a lot of people who think their stuff is just super useless. And there's nothing I hate more than a useless meeting. I am the first to be like, Yeah, we don't need this. Or I will just be like, sounds like I have nothing to contribute here, I'm gonna leave. Like, that is like my famous line.

I wish— serious, I wish I've seen you do that, but I haven't.

Yeah, no, I will. I—

all my meetings, they have meaning. Okay, no, I'm just kidding.

I assess in the first 10 minutes. If I'm not running it, or if I'm not directly involved and I'm just like an added person, I will see myself out. Um, but if I have an— if I am an active participant, then I will do something about like All right, should we reconstruct the meeting? Should this meeting be more asynchronous? Is there another way to get this information? How do we like, you know, make sure we're using our time appropriately? But if I have nothing to do with it and everyone else seems productive but I'm not, I will see myself out the door.

Yeah, it's been real. Carry on without me. You clearly don't need me, haven't contributed anything. Yeah, so yeah, no, that's smart. Save yourself the time, save yourself the effort.

Yeah, I wish I knew that trick much earlier in life. Like, I wish that I, I knew that I could just unsubscribe from me. Yeah, sometimes when you're meeting, it feels like you're important or something, and I'm like, I've learned, like, I don't need to be here. Like, if I'm not getting any value, I'm not adding any value, or I could just, hey, give me the notes afterwards. Sometimes that's good enough.

Yeah, give me the summary. I completely agree. I learned that too late. It's not even like there was this feeling of like, oh, I'm important if I go to these meetings. It was more like, I just want all the knowledge. Yes. And I just want to be everywhere so I can like accumulate all the information that I need to like do my job really well. But then at some point you realize that has like diminishing returns and you're like, I don't, I don't know, I guess I didn't learn a single thing. Because you just become like exhausted at some point. And if you're not actively engaged, then you're probably not really retaining a lot of the information anyway.

And it's just like, you could— what else could you be doing with that time? Like, you really need to be there. Yeah, especially very large, expensive meetings. Oh my gosh, I'm like, nobody's listening. I can tell everybody, I can see on your glasses that you're scrolling through something else of my other monitors. Let's be honest here. Yeah. So to kick this off, we actually have something fun. So we have, um, we've got in a slew of some of our first submissions. So, uh, I don't know if you're listening, if you already know this, or maybe you're one of the people who've entered a submission. We have an open poll, uh, or, or survey out. So if you're interested in sharing stories with Allison and I, or just dropping a hot topic or getting something off your chest, um, we do have it on our website. Um, so jellyfish.co/offthevpn. Uh, where you can get the podcast and you can actually go and enter your stories. But we also have, when we show up to like, uh, some events, we now have like this really cool booth thing, or like, or not booth, what do we call it, like a little mailbox, Off the VPN mailbox, where people can handwrite some submissions. And so Allison and I have like a slew that we've gotten from, um, a few places. Uh, one of them was a recent CTO conference I got to attend, and I got to talk to some folks It was really exciting. Um, some people actually went up to it. There was like someone we quoted where they were like, I've been waiting to get this off my chest, and like just dropped like 3 different submissions into the box. So I'm just really excited to share because we got, um, we're not going to go through all of them, but we do have a couple that we want to share for that are just specifically about meetings. So I'm just going to go ahead and read them. So we, we have some, a couple of shorts. So these are like, what is something that, you know, you wish you could just say in your standup meeting. This one's my favorite actually, where they say, no customer will ever buy this feature. So this person wrote and was like, yeah, what do they wish they could say in their standup? So, so they told us, and they didn't say it in their standup, that, uh, they don't think anyone's gonna buy this feature. I mean, if you ever think about, like, I will ask you if you've ever felt this way, but like, I, I imagine like you're in a meeting and like there's just like a glaringly obvious thing in the meeting that you wish people were saying or where like you just wholeheartedly disagree with and you just feel like you're on the opposite end. And I imagine feeling like no one's gonna buy this feature and feeling like this is just a dumb meeting.

I'm imagining a situation where it's like, yeah, everyone's just like putting in a lot of thought and effort into talking about this feature and this person's sitting there like, no one's gonna buy this. Like, what's going on? Like, am I the only one who thinks that? Yeah, that, ah, but I wish that they could say that. Because think of all the time and effort it will save by just like opening up that conversation potentially, right?

Like it depends on who the person is. Like, I mean, I think that's something that can be rough sometimes, like as, um, engineers, right? Like we're working with other stakeholders and it depends on like your company and how much pull you have and things like that. But sometimes you have to build things that maybe you don't totally align with or you don't think is gonna work, or you think we should be building something else. And sometimes, you know, you can speak up and drive a solution to change or something. And then sometimes you kind of just need to like eat it and build something that you're not really, uh, and, and it's, I think even worse when you find out that you were right. Um, and you're like, fast forward. Yeah. And then you knew that you were right. I, I almost feel like I wish I'd rather be wrong. Yeah, I'd rather be proven wrong, but then finding out that I said the thing everyone didn't believe me and then I was right is actually worse.

Um, completely agree. It's, it's a much better outcome because then it's, wow, look at what we did! People actually care about this. They're, they're paying for it, right? Like, yeah, it's a much better outcome.

But I think if you think no one's gonna buy this feature, you should at least try to talk to the right people or ask questions.

Mm-hmm.

Ask provoking questions that might get these people, whoever's in charge of making decisions, maybe it's your product, um, manager, maybe it's even higher up. Um, ask the questions to either learn why you might be wrong or to invoke them to ask the questions to actually start to make a change. Or sometimes you gotta eat it, unfortunately, and take the check. Yeah.

Collect the checks, sit back and wait and see, will anybody use or buy this feature?

Exactly.

No, I like, I like the thought-provoking questions. Try and like get to that line of reasoning of like, well, why do we think this is a worthwhile investment in the first place? Like, how did we get to this point where we are now deciding to build something?

Right.

I think that, yeah, that's definitely useful context to have either way if you're right or wrong.

Yeah, all right, so this is a— this is another one. So this is another thing. So they're in stand-up and they're thinking the question that they want to say is, uh, but when do we actually want to finish the task? So when do we actually think this thing is going to be done? When are we going to actually get, get that work? So I mean, there's different ways to like interpret this, right?

Yeah, how are you interpreting it?

So one way of this interpret— like, what it invoked in me, right, is like, when are we actually going to finish this? It's like we're either over-planning something and we're taking too much time talking about doing it than actually doing it. And then another one is like, I don't know, like we don't really like have a good predictable delivery plan in general. Like, we're just like kind of moving target dates or have no target dates and we're just swimming around in the ocean of building stuff with no end in sight. So one of those two things. That sounded bleak.

Damn, Jasmine, chill. I quite a lot of similar interpretation of it with the second one. You got dark there for a second. Let's bring it back. Where it's like, First, like the, well, when are we actually going to finish this? To me was we kind of keep like, I don't know, wishful thinking with our delivery targets and we're like, yeah, we're gonna get it done the end of the week, like early next week, you know, at the latest. And then it's like, okay, but like when are we actually gonna finish this? Like, let's just be realistic with our predictability when we deliver things.

That's kind of maybe how I interpret it, which is much nicer than my interpretation.

It's similar but a bit nicer. Like, let's just, let's just add some buffer time because like, when are we actually gonna finish it? Stuff's gonna pop up. Let's, let's, you know, just like extend it a bit.

Oh my God, I, I like, I like that line because it makes me think a lot. I have had, especially like, and when, when being a manager, right, like that's kind of your biggest question a lot is like, hey, so like, yeah, but really That's cool and all, like you guys think it's gonna be done this week, cute. Uh, it's not, like, let's be honest. And like trying to figure out like how to more predictably create those dates. And so like I can like say with confidence to whoever our stakeholders are for that particular project, like what is, what do we think the timeline is? And I think traditionally people are like, oh, just take what an engineer says and like double it. Which is not like the— it— but like sometimes it's, it's actually true. Like, I've actually done that, but even that's not like always like the right thing. Um, but I do think like, uh, not to get like too deep in this subject, but like I think the thing that, um, I learned with my team when we talked about this particular thing where we were having issues with hitting targets was around like talking about where is time going. That's outside of the project and how that is in direct conflict with the target date. So managing how much effort gets put into the thing that we want helps to have a more reliable date, stuff like that.

Yeah, that makes sense. This is another one though where I, I wish that you could say this in a meeting, like you could feel like comfortable enough to be like, Let's just lay this all out on the table. You know, maybe this is an opportunity to have a conversation about delivery predictability and like, you know, historically how has the team done? Like clearly there's like, if we interpreted this correctly, there's something there that's like in the tone of the question where this person doesn't think that they, I don't know, deliver relative to their word usually, right? Like when are we actually going to get this done? So I just feel like if there was a way, there probably is, but maybe this person doesn't feel comfortable, uh, to just like pop that open in, in the room. Maybe not with everybody there, maybe with the EM on the team or whoever it is to just, maybe this is the EM, maybe it's a stakeholder, maybe it's a stakeholder, but this is such a good question to like actually ask. Yeah. I don't know. It makes me sad that it's, it's hard to ask this one because I think it's centered around so much of the work that like dev teams do. Right, and how they operate.

And just trust.

And trust. Yes, yes.

All right, so I have, I have one more. Okay. Uh, and this one's very short, simple, and spicy. You're not gonna like this one. Uh, so—

oh, now I'm extra ready.

Okay, so, uh, the thing that this person would like to say in stand-up is Videos on! Exclamation point.

You're absolutely correct, they do not like this one.

I mean, they want to say it, they're just not saying it. I guess that's their hot take. Their hot take is that video should be on.

If somebody like ever unmuted and was like, video is on everyone, I'd be like, something is seriously wrong. Like, I would be like scared. That's Speaking to the culture that we have, I was gonna say that. Yeah, um, but, but yeah, okay, obviously I just gagged, so I, I do not agree with this. What, what do you think about videos on—

I want to preface with like, I agree, like I feel like we are in a culture where this is like, we have like, I would say a pretty high trust culture as far as like participation and like also like forgiving. Like if I was like in a meeting and I was like, honestly, I totally missed what you said, I don't feel everyone's gonna like be like, wow, Jasmine's a big dumb idiot, which is nice, and that's good. So I do think we trust people are working, uh, if their camera is off and that they're engaged. I think that that is not true for every single company. And so to like play devil's advocate, and I'm not saying I'm— I'm super not down with this, I like the option. I'm usually camera on. I might not want my camera on if I look like a hot mess, if I'm not feeling well, or like there's a number of reasons why I might not want it on, or sensory issues. And I think like having no camera on is more accessible for some people, you know what I mean? But I do understand that not every company culture has like high trust, and honestly some people might abuse having their camera off. Um, and so for that reason, I might empathize with this, and I don't know what this person's culture is that they are saying like videos on, That being said, my personal opinion and like how I like to run teams is that it is something that's optional. And I do think like I've never really had a problem with teams. Like usually someone has their camera on. Like I've never had a culture where everyone has their camera off. So it's like kind of hard for me to understand. I feel like if I was coming into work every day and no one ever had their camera on, it'd be kind of weird.

Yeah, there's usually a mix, and again, that's our experience. Um, one thing that I definitely feel, uh, maybe this is something this person who has experienced, maybe not. One thing I definitely feel strongly about is like, if you're in a small room and someone's presenting, it's really weird to be that presenter and feel like you're talking to no one. Like if you're the only person with video on, it's just like really hard to gauge, like, is this slide hitting? Are people following me? You know, like that's the one thing where I'm like, if I'm presenting and everyone's video off, I'm like, well, I have no idea if anyone cares about what I'm saying, if anyone, if this resonates with anyone. Like that's where it's like you miss that feedback element that I think is really hard.

That is such a good point. Like, I don't know what you do, but I will like just talk to myself and I'll be like, like if I'm like, all right, what do you guys think of that? And then no one says anything, I'm like, all right, cool, that's great, fantastic, just keep— I'm like, wow, what a resounding, resounding response, you know? Like I literally start talking to myself and saying like, I will be my own audience basically, uh, but I, I can because I feel so uncomfortable, um Yeah, a hot take. Hot take video.

That is definitely a hot take. Yeah.

So I mean, we really appreciate these submissions. Please keep them coming. Uh, there's more for us. We're gonna talk more about the other ones that we have. Um, we want the spicier the better. Tell your stories, just drop your hot takes. Don't think about it too deep. Just, just, just tell us whatever you want. If you're just like really— whatever you want to say, we'll keep it. We'll keep it off the VPN. It'll be anonymous, it's safe with us, and we will, we will, we will deeply appreciate. Um, so thank you to the people who, who entered these in.

So on the topic of meetings, I have a story for you.

You know I love stories.

Here we go, story time. The title of this one is, is Three Stand-Up Meetings in One Day Too Many.

Probably, yes.

Gonna go ahead and say most likely. Okay, so here's the post. I joined a startup that operates fully remotely last year that has a daily stand-up meeting with management present that lasts for 1 hour from 9:30 to 10:30. Given—

1 hour? Yes. You said, what does it start?

9:30 AM.

You tell me a 1-hour meeting every day?

Yes, this is daily.

To start the day is crazy. I'm already— already, that's crazy. And they said there's 2 more. All right, keep going, keep going. They already— that's already too much. That's already too much. Keep going.

Also, management's there. I don't know if that changes anything, but it sounds like it's like a big meeting.

But every day? Like, I'd say like once a week. A once a week, an hour meeting, that's maybe an hour meeting every morning is dumb. All right, we're done here. We're done.

We just— we finished it. Uh, thank you everyone. We don't have to continue. No.

Okay, all right, all right, keep going, keep going.

It gets worse. Okay, uh, given the fact that I speak for about 2 minutes, this is a really long time to just sit there and listen to everyone else's status updates. I've persevered with this for 8 months. However, someone has just been promoted to team lead and has gone into boss mode. I don't know what that is.

What is the— what is the math? You said 8 months, so times how many work days in 8 months? So they work for 8 months, that's approximately 172 work days. They've spent 172 hours in that of, of meeting and just that one, that one-hour meeting.

And this person only talks for 2 minutes each time. So we now only have our main one-hour standup with management every other day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Okay, so they started out with daily and now it's every other day. Okay, but now the new team lead wants a status update from his small team that includes me, the author of this post, at 9:00 AM every day.

How long is that meeting?

I'm imagining that it's 30 minutes because they're having that every day. So the small team has a stand-up status update at 9 AM every day. And then on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they have the 1 hour with management from 9:30 to 10:30. So some days, so on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this person is in a stand-up type status meeting update from 9 to 10:30.

That's disgusting. Keep going.

It makes me sick. I'm ill. Okay, but oh my gosh, there's more. I'm stressed. If it happens to be a day where we have our main standup meeting as well, so the double meeting day, they have to leave the small meeting and then immediately repeat themselves at the next one where management is there. So it's not even like new content. So on the days where the, the standup meetings, there's two back to back, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they just say the same thing twice. Oh my gosh. Then they write, it gets worse. The new team lead wants a further status update meeting at 4 PM every day as well. I'm pretty annoyed about this as I just want to get on with my work and I'm sick of feeling micromanaged by someone that's never managed people before. I worked out I'm in meetings purely based around giving a status update and nothing else for 8 hours total during my work week. Someone tell me this isn't normal.

No, I mean, I can't tell you if it's normal, but I can say it's ridiculous.

Yeah, I don't—

I, I— what? Who, who's making the decisions around here?

With the, the new team lead, I guess. I don't know. Why do we need— why do we need— why do we need all of this? What's happening?

So, okay, let's, let's, let's go to like, what is the purpose of a status meeting? Yes, the purpose of a status meeting, right? Like, especially if you're, if you're a leader. So, so, all right, in this, this case, they are reporting. This is not like a team collaboration thing. This is a reporting—

no—

mechanism. Yes, that apparently needs to take an hour 3 times a week is insanity. Yeah, there is like a level of like as a leader, you want to know what's going on and know if there's any decisions you need to make or support that needs to be had, or just how do I know there's health or any guidance that I need to provide. So you need to like get some sense of signal to help with that. That being said, I don't know how many teams there are, how many people there are here, but it's like if you're consistently doing this like, do you really think that the level of, like, if you're, you're— this person's only talking for 2 minutes, right? So we can make the assumption what you said, it's like 60 minutes. So that means there's maybe 30 people in this meeting that are giving updates. Like, there's probably a much more efficient way to roll that up to keep guidance. There also is like, why do you need it 3 times a week as like a manager? Like, isn't— I feel like a weekly cadence and a better planning scheme is probably a lot better to kind of like, and then a standup is more to like assess for support and to make sure we're still aligned. But this feels like we are just constantly keeping like, like we're trying not to lose any sense of control. Like this feels like an overly trying to control or obviously micromanage situation. And it, things like this, the outcome is that you are taking out so much time out of actual work being able to get done. So these just feel like inefficient meetings. Like, why don't we just write— if it takes 2 minutes to say something, why don't we write it down somewhere if it's that important? But also, why do you need a report from like a small time frame, like every 2 days?

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Like, especially because we're spending so much time in meetings, what are we possibly getting done in the 2 days? That's different. And like, you know, like it just, it, it, I completely agree though. This is just, it sounds extremely inefficient. We don't know where it's coming from. And then the other thing too that I find interesting, I'm assuming that this person is an IC, but they didn't say, but they mentioned that like this is getting in the way of them doing the work that they need to do. And so let's imagine for a second that Providing some benefit that they have like this hour-long Monday, Wednesday, Friday with management meeting that's a status update, just send the team lead. Why are you like sending the ICs to like do all the reporting too?

Like if they're making you do an extra meeting anyway.

Yeah, I come— exactly.

So why are you— you want to keep the daily meeting? Sure, fine. But like record everything and then go to that meeting so we don't have to.

Right, like, it just sounds like inefficient on every single level, right? Like, and I don't know if it's like they're trying to keep it open, like everybody, we're all in this together type of thing. Like, you can speak about your work individually, but at some scale that just like completely breaks down because, as we are hearing, like, this person really doesn't have time to, to do their work. Their whole morning is just shot, basically. Is what it sounds like.

And what human needs to know every level of this detail of all of these work streams? Like, I just think that, like, there's no— like, there's nothing to get there. Like, there's just no— I just— that's micromanaging. That's very micromanaging. Like, there's just no other word.

No, it is. I'm laughing at one of the comments on the post someone wrote. Someone wrote, no need to write a post about this, let's schedule a stand-up to discuss instead.

It is— it's giving that energy of like, I know, that's not even to mention if they have other meetings to like collaborate or like do a project. Like, this is just to report status. Yeah. So I mean, for this person, like, I feel like there's two ways to go about this. Like, I would honestly generate— like, literally I would sit and develop what the FTEs are for this meeting. Like literally how I just asked ChatGPT, that took me 2 seconds to ask ChatGPT how many hours this person for 8 months. I would literally say that and then show like, here's what the ROI is here. And like report that to someone who has authority and ignore the team lead 'cause the team lead clearly has, needs guidance on, on this stuff. I mean, all right, don't ignore the team lead. I would still give them feedback, but they're probably not the person to run this up, uh, because they're kind of working efficiently and they need some change. But I would take ownership here of like, listen, this is what it's costing. Here's what I would recommend. Like, I think rollups are a good thing. I would think like, is there a way to even like make this asynchronous or find a way to do this in a weekly basis? Like, there's like a load of things you could do to greatly reduce this. Um, and you can iterate. Maybe if you start with rollups, then you start with one a week and then you keep going. Um, find out who are the people in the meeting who need to know what, and then like kind of drive the meeting towards that. And then if, let's just say this person works for someone, a company that doesn't listen and they suck or whatever, because that happens for some people, it's very hard for them to make change. Literally, there are so many AI bots now, I would literally just have a fake me show up.

When all else fails, your management team, the executives, no one's listening to you, create an AI bot for yourself and just have it present your work for you. That's—

or don't show up and see how long it takes for someone to notice. I'm just kidding.

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm gonna go ahead and say like your first piece of advice is probably like the more, you know, on-target one. But yeah, I, I completely agree actually. It's just when you run the numbers, it's astonishing. Like how much effort is being spent, put into a status update meeting of one form or the other when it's like mostly for the benefit of other people in that room, not this person giving the update because clearly they have other work that they need to be doing. Right. So yeah, try and run, try and run with those numbers and try and like show people like, hey, this doesn't seem to be working. And I bet if this is a really big meeting, it's one of those things too where it's like a lot of people feel this way, but somehow everyone's just like going through the motions. It's 9:30 AM, guess I'm going to the big gold status meeting, you know? It's like you can't be the only person that's like, are 3 meetings like too many? Like, I'm sure many people are thinking that. Ah, rough. I knew that's what you want to see.

Yes, be the catalyst. Or just don't complain and just let it ride. Maybe that's when you make your coffee during the morning, your hour-long coffee. That have to be— can you imagine if we had a meeting an hour every morning as soon as we got up and all you did was talk for 2 minutes about what you're doing this week? No, I'd be—

what do you even do?

Like, when they did it every day, what do you even do if your stand-up is the same? Like, you know when your stand-up is the same because you're on something and you just feel awful and you're like, it's the same as yesterday. Imagine doing that in a group of like 30, 50 people.

Yeah. No, the pressure. The pressure. Honestly, I would be, I would be like, well, I didn't get anything done yesterday because I was in this meeting for an hour and then had other meetings and like, I would just be so salty about it.

I just feel like probably that meeting, like everyone is probably just showing off or like making stuff up to make themselves look good. Like, there's no way even the statuses in that are useful, because like, how do you— how do you— especially that level of granularity just feels so small.

Yeah. And also, I don't know, now that I'm like really picturing this too, I'm like, who is taking all of this information and what are they doing with it? Because are they like taking it in and like recording it somewhere, right? Like, Project A is in this status, Project B is in this other status. Because then it's like, if you're generating like a report from this information anyway, just make that report like an artifact that people can contribute to asynchronously. I just would really want to know what's happening with all this information that's being shared, because no shot that people are like keeping it all in their heads.

It almost sounds like a social experiment, like how many meetings can we put on these people's calendars until they break?

Yeah, let me tell you, I would be the first.

Let me tell you, like Camera off.

I'm— I do not mess around with meetings.

Like, I would use door number 3. I will not show up until somebody complains.

No, because it's like, what are we all getting out of this? This is precious time. Like, I have actual work to do.

Sorry, but like, I know if you even think about it, like, outside of like work Like, this person spent 172 hours of their life— we only have so many hours on this planet— and all they did, like, if you think about it in an existential— wow, I'm really dark today— if you think about it in an existential way, like, oh yeah, that many hours of your precious life spent listening to stand-ups that, like, stand-up updates that are probably fake and made up just to make themselves look good.

Yeah.

And you don't even know the context because there's too many people working on things and you don't even know what they're talking about. Yeah.

Oh, this just got really sad. Like, I just feel bad for all these people. And like, whoever thought this was a good idea, I'm like, they have their, their concept of time is all wrong.

So end result here is, uh, be conscious of the time that you ask for, for your employees. Yeah, for the time that you contribute to your job, because they add up real quickly. 8 months of 1-hour meetings a day, 172 hours.

Isn't that a movie?

Is it? I don't know.

It is now. There's like a James Franco movie about like this hiker who gets stuck. Hold on. It might literally be 172 or it's 72. Standby. It's literally— it's— that's the name of the film. 100— no, wait, it's 127.

Never mind.

127 Hours is an adventure thriller film, 1 hour and 34 minutes. Highly recommend. Don't watch it if you get, um, like queasy with, uh, stuff, but it's a good— it's a good film. Um, anyways, yeah, yeah.

So, uh, meetings, um, they require balance.

They require balance.

And this is way too many.

This is not— check in with your people. Are you getting value out of this meeting? Are you learning something? Ask questions. Let's make sure we're all spending our time appropriately.

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