Show HN: An app that helps engineers fight back against pointless meetings

This always seems to be such a controversial view here, but if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go. We're all grown-ups at work, and are ultimately responsible for our own productivity. Be prepared to articulate exactly why you feel some other use of your time is more appropriate, in case someone asks, but nobody is holding a gun to your head telling you to join the meeting. I'm double-booked for meetings all day, so I'm constantly making judgment calls about which one (or neither) is more important. It's not a big deal, and you don't need an app for it.

Fun app for personal use, but it seems rather passive aggressive to display this in Zoom if you aren't the one who called the meeting. Voice a concern if you think a meeting isn't necessary. Don't quietly try to undermine the meeting as it is happening. And odds are if this is something everyone on the team wants to include in a meeting, the team probably already puts a priority on not wasting time in meetings.

There was a time when I used to say &quot;What? Another pointless meeting? Oh c&#x27;mon that just distracts me from working on features&#x2F;writing code!&quot;. I don&#x27;t say that anymore. I&#x27;m fine with useless meetings because:<p>- it&#x27;s work time. I don&#x27;t really mind how I spend my working hours. It&#x27;s 8h and no more (well, with WFH, it&#x27;s more like 5h or so, but the point stands)<p>- if the meeting is pointless, I just disconnect. So, the meeting is actually like a break for me. I grab a coffee and let it go<p>- if I have too many pointless meetings that do not let me do &quot;my job&quot; (but remember, pointless meetings are your job as well!), well let it be. In the standup of the next day I will clearly state: &quot;I spent 2h attending meeting X&quot;. If someone asks &quot;why aren&#x27;t your Jira issues done on time?&quot;, I just answer &quot;Oh, I was working on something else (meeting X)&quot;.<p>So, pointless meetings are actually not bad. Just keep your soul free of noise, work (code) when you have time for it.

Programmers often think the technical aspect of the work is the most important. I’ve met many developers wannabe entrepreneurs who were convinced they had to spend as much time perfecting their app as possible instead of talking to prospective customers. We all know that doesn’t end well.<p>What I realized over my relatively long IT career is that maybe developers just don’t get why meetings are necessary. Not saying all meetings are equally useful, many of them are in fact a waste of time. But many engineers are narrow-minded and outright reject all the benefits of getting into the same room and discussing a problem.

Based on the example gif in the repo I would definitely agree - any meeting with 127 participants <i>is</i> pointless. Or it&#x27;s not a meeting. Maybe it&#x27;s a lecture or an announcement instead.

Wait till they use it to show the cost of your time spent on HN, or gabbing while refilling your coffee cup.

I&#x27;m waiting for the meeting that helps engineer fight back against pointless apps

Simply announcing the cost of meetings afterwards would have a similar long term chilling effect without being the stereotypical passive aggressive engineer.

Good luck. There are some people in organizations whose entire job is to schedule and attend meetings.<p>No matter how you say it to those kinds of people, expressing that meetings are keeping you from getting engineer-related work done will be viewed extremely negatively.<p>I’ve been in IT decades and still don’t know what the best answer is.

My biggest gripe is &quot;all-hands&quot; meetings that often run over an hour. I&#x27;m pretty sure it&#x27;s just upper management stroking their egos. I have no power in the decisions that have been already made, and are then relayed in these meetings. This crap could be summarized in a couple of paragraphs in an email, and I can read faster than they can talk.

I would get crucified at my org if I put that on my feed&#x2F;screen.<p>Wouldn&#x27;t want to work at a place with a culture like that.

Looks interesting!<p>You may want to consider renaming the tool, it&#x27;s overlapping with getclockwise.com, which is quite popular.

To actually help make meetings more productive, I highly recommend the book &quot;The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance&quot; [1] (&quot;One of the top business books everybody will be reading in 2019&quot; — Business Insider). For a quick summary, watch the author&#x27;s webinar &quot;The Surprising Science of Meetings: Evidence-Based Insights Leaders Need to Gain a Competitive Advantage&quot; [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0190689218" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0190689218</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;8rDuumUtfAM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;8rDuumUtfAM</a>

If you think a meeting is pointless, say so. And don&#x27;t attend.<p>Yes, sometimes that&#x27;s hard due to being in a toxic environment, but in that case, a passive-aggressive measure like a meeting cost calculator will go over like a lead balloon too. (Source: I tried ;)<p>Same goes for &quot;multitasking&quot;. If a meeting doesn&#x27;t have value, don&#x27;t attend, or leave as soon as that&#x27;s clear.<p>If most meetings have no value to you, have a hard look as to why. Sometimes, it&#x27;s because there&#x27;s a meeting culture. But sometimes, it&#x27;s because you&#x27;re missing the point. (for meeting organizers: Spell out the damn point in the agenda, will you? You have an agenda, right?)

These kinds of snarky calculators actually make meetings worse, I think.<p>There’s lots of people who I think enjoy meetings because it demonstrates power. Calculating how much their meeting costs will make this worse because it’s easier to see how powerful a meeting is.<p>Separately, I don’t think that time consumed as a cost is unknown to participants so quantifying it doesn’t help much. Kind of like how calories on the Burger King menu doesn’t result in fewer double whoppers with cheese ordered.<p>To help prevent pointless meetings, what I do is reject meetings that don’t have agendas or clear objectives. I explicitly decline and say “I don’t know what this is for” and sometimes I find out what the reason is. Sometimes it changes my mind, but usually blank invites mean not so great meetings.<p>And then, I try to never schedule meetings unless there’s no other solution. And I send simple agendas, and if necessary, homework with a time estimate needed to process (eg, read this background before we meet). Sometimes if I’m feeling froggy, I’ll actually mention something about how it’s a 30 minute meeting with the context and background done beforehand or a 60 minute meeting if we want to walk through everything together.<p>I’m not sure how objectively valuable this is to the org, but it makes me feel better. And I’ve had multiple people comment that they appreciate it and use my reputation and approach in deciding whether to attend in my meetings.

I would love to see a feedback feature (not necessarily for this app but just in general) where meeting participants can answer: 1. Did I learn anything new at this meeting? 2. Did I talk at all during this meeting? 3. Would I have gotten the same value from some asynchronous shared doc, etc etc.<p>So many meetings have so many people that just lose time by going to the meeting and provide no updates or don&#x27;t receive any new info just because the meetings are big and unwieldy

These employees are salaried. They are not paid in 500ms increments.

This is incredibly passive aggressive lol.

There is also a &quot;smart assistant&quot; rescheduling service by the same name[1] that I used to great effect at my last employer<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.getclockwise.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.getclockwise.com&#x2F;</a>

I worked for someone in the 90s that came over from Disney and he mentioned they had a similar system but with the dollar amount in huge type on the screen. I can&#x27;t imagine what some of those Disney executive meetings cost.

Meetings are awesome because I get to do nothing, get paid for it, and everybody agrees I did something that took up time and was work related. What is there not to love?

Related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20252759" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20252759</a>

Over the years I collected some general advice how to be productive in meetings, which worked out quite well for me. But it requires discipline, to follow the rules:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pilabor.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;tips-and-tricks-for-meetings&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pilabor.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;tips-and-tricks-for-meeting...</a>

Surely this is a guaranteed path to get nailed as a toxic employee. Conducive if the goal is to get fired and collect unemployment.

It&#x27;s pretty crazy how expensive a simple sprint planning meeting really is if you have 5+ engineers.

Technical solutions to social problems don&#x27;t usually work, why would this be different?

This is fantastic but unfortunately it reveals compensation information for attendees.

As lead I tell devs: you dont need to attend any meeting that is not useful &amp; cuts into your dev.<p>Some empowerment required, cross-functional explanations on my part.

Wow, I do waste a lot of company money by slacking off :)

We need to have a meeting about meetings that discuss the policy on policies to set some ground rules and then circle back...

there is already another calendar management app called Clockwise, maybe try a different name to avoid confusion?

This should really just be an outlook plugin that estimates the cost of a meeting at the time of scheduling.

I think this problem is institutional rather than technical. But I could be wrong.

Wouldn&#x27;t want a cost calculator when I go the washroom the clock

&quot;averageSalary defaults to $150,000 and can be modified by using the set subcommand.&quot;<p>While in my country, engineers are paid around 50k$...

Speaking of, could we just not with calling meetings &quot;ceremonies&quot;? It is so pretentious and pompous sounding.

You could always use bufferi.ng

Should Zoom build this in as a feature? Why or why not?