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Manager's Schedule vs. Maker's Schedule
theodp writes "Ever wonder why you and the boss don't see eye-to-eye on the importance of meetings? Paul Graham explains that there are Maker Schedules (coder) and Manager Schedules (PHB), and the two are very different. With each day neatly cut into one-hour intervals, the Manager Schedule is for bosses and is tailor-made for schmoozing. Unfortunately, it spells disaster for people who make things, like programmers and writers, who generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour, says Graham, since that's barely enough time to get started. So if you fall into the Maker camp, adds Graham, you better hope your boss is smart enough to recognize that you need long chunks of time to work in. How's that working out in your world?" Ironically enough, I have a meeting to attend in three minutes.
That's not ironic, that's just coincidental!
And that was pedantic.
If you need heads-down time, block it off on your calendar. That's the easiest and first thing one should do if there is open space on their calendar and they are complaining about constantly being interrupted. Of course, this doesn't help when the person interrupting you is sitting on the other side of your cube's wall....
Did they tell you to bring all of your desk items with you in a box?
...and it's the coder's best friend.
I never have understood why managers love meetings. I mean, it kills productivity, usually ends up being boring or unrelated and in general a waste of time.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
...but then again, I'm a programmer.
Where I'm at now, our system of measurements is basically just "I'll get it done today or tomorrow" to "It'll be done by the end of the week." There's simply so many potential obstacles and unaccountable variables that any more precision than that is pointless.
Where I used to work, we worked on a "Point System" where 1 Point was equal to about 1 Programmer-Day, and 8 Points were equal to 8 Programmer Days. Ideally, an 8-Pointer should take one programmer 8 days to complete and two programmers 4 days to complete. Of course, that always fell through. A half-pointer (4 hours) might take me anywhere from 10 minutes to two and a half days.
As a computer programmer with an MBA (please don't burn me at the stake -- I'm a coder, not a manager, and have no desire to be a manager), I understand both sides of the story, and it isn't pretty. Meetings are crucial, but they need to follow these general rules:
(a.) As much as possible, have a single "meeting day". This article explains why -- programming is not a "stop-and-pick-up-where-you-left-off" profession. So, in other words, as much as possible, ensure all "administrative overhead" tasks, such as meetings, are blocked together.
(b.) Meetings must be limited to information that *everyone* *needs* to know.
If you follow these rules, meetings are a Good Thing.
Problem is, no one follows those rules, because following them is much more easily said than done.
The Institute of Incomplete Research has determined that 9 of out 10
Ironically enough, I have a meeting to attend in 3 minutes.
Please, oh please, tell me it's about firing your web developer!
Comment of the year
As a lawyer I'm friends with told me years ago. That's what they call it in his industry, at least.
The time wasted switched from or back to a task you hadn't completed yet.
I agree with the article. One meeting can dramatically decrease the productivity for the whole day.
As a result I try to divide my time between all-day (or half day) tasks, and leave other days for things that take 1-2 hours a pop, including meetings.
Using the GTD (Getting Things Done) methods help organize things as well, but that's been covered many times here.
When I was a manager running a project to go live on a large web site, I knew the developers were busy. In the final weeks I limited meetings to a single, end of the day stand-up meeting. That let people report on status and issues, but limited the negative impact on people's productivity.
In my experience having to go through a meeting that requires a lot of explaining and problem-solving can render me more or less useless for the rest of the day, programming-wise. In some way that I don't know how to explain the meetings eat up the very concentration that I need for programming. Perhaps it takes so much out of a programmer when you try to understand someone instead of something you can logically deduce.
I dunno. It's still a mystery to me what one meeting can do to you sometimes.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
A programmer's work is vastly different from a manager's, or anyone's where a certain amount of time gets you a predictable level of output. Hear what I'm saying? You might have already designed something in an object-oriented class tree that with slight tweaks to a subclass, meets the spec. You might encounter a strange bug that takes hours to chase down. You don't know all of that when the boss sits you down in a meeting and gives you a spec and asks you for a deadline right there on the fly. That plus micromanagement is the worst. You get jostled too often to get into any kind of groove.
The technical solution? Make your code as reusable and debugged as possible, because you'll never know when you need to write up a solution under adverse conditions.
The real solution? Explain this to your boss in a proactive way.
Anyone know a good book to recommend to the boss who's also the office schmoozehound?
I find, as do others I work with, that the little one-off, "micro meetings" held around the office every day are very useful. Instead of getting the X people needed to make a decision into a scheduled room, grab them and stand in front of a white board (or whatever) in an ad-hoc fashion. Or, as we do, we all turn around in our chairs, discuss what needs doing, and get back to work in a matter of seconds/minutes, instead of scheduling a full meeting.
I feel like when a meeting is scheduled, the time leading up to the meeting is seldom useful (oh, meeting in 15 minutes, better start slowing down/not start any more work), then the time after the meeting loses some function as there is the inevitable discussion of what we talked about, the creation of minutes, followup emails, etc. On a somewhat similar note, booking a meeting for a 1/2 hour instead of an hour forces people to work faster, and cuts down some of the wasted chit chat time.
We just moved into a new office here, and it has a large number of meeting rooms, which is great. But, even better, there are quite a few "break out" areas, with chairs and a white board, but no door, and no reservations. So when you need to get a couple peoples ideas, you steal a breakout room, and whiteboard what you need. Use your mobile to take a picture of the whiteboard, erase, and move on to the next task. Plus, these meetings tend to be over quicker.
Another trick I've learned .. if you get invited to a meeting, and you don't really feel like you need to be there, just decline it. If the meeting organizer really wants you there, they'll invite you agian, or call up/email and say "oh, we'd really like you there". but it saves you from sitting through a meeting where you just zone out and waste an hour.
Overall, there is great value in meetings, but only if they are kept to the time required to resolve whatever you're there for, and only if they pertain to everyone there. It's pointless to invite 2 different groups to a meeting, so one has to listen to the other talk and be bored, then switch. Focus on goals, invite only the people who need to be there, and get back to work.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Awhile back, we got a new head of our department. He decided that he needed to see how everyone used their day so he required everyone to fill out a form to track our time. I joked that my time tracker would look like this:
8:00am - 8:15am - Checked/Answered E-mail
8:15am - 8:30am - Entered time tracking for 8:00am - 8:15am
8:30am - 8:45am - Entered time tracking for 8:15am - 8:30am
8:45am - 9:00am - Entered time tracking for 8:30am - 8:45am
9:00am - 9:15am - Entered time tracking for 8:45am - 9:00am
etc.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I schedule 'programming time' into outlook.
There are very good reasons to have meetings, and meetings can be useful when done well. Just google for stuff about "effective meetings".
:).
:)
You could have meetings to introduce people to each other, meetings to get information, meetings to decide on stuff, meetings for brainstorming, make important announcements - for instance if Mr CEO is going to lay off lots of staff, I feel it's rather bad form to just send an email.
The main problem with meetings is when the people involved don't know what the meeting is for- one might think it's for brainstorming, another might think it's for deciding (build a consensus on direction to go). So the meeting could go on for hours without achieving anything useful. The people involved need to know the agenda and reason for a meeting, especially the person chairing the meeting
Now once you get that done right, there's still room for greater efficiency.
With conventional meetings you use up Y hours of X people, though most of the actual participant "brain usage time" is only a few minutes. This is analogous to a program running for X hours of "real time" but only using 5 minutes of CPU time. Conventional meetings have the problem of wasting 2 hours of 10 people's time.
So if I were a boss, I might "encourage" my employees to use instant messaging for certain types of meetings where possible. That way I can have them in multiple meetings at the same time (bwahaha!).
The chatlogs could then be archived (automatically? ) to somewhere where I can quickly see what they've been up to (and for official record). I don't care if they're doing other stuff during those meetings - as long as they can still contribute usefully (I'd prefer to hire people who can read and understand things fast).
Thing is you can't have such meetings throughout the day + every day, since many things require full concentration. If people can't drive properly while chatting over the cellphone, I'm sure they can't do certain work related tasks while being in a meeting. So meeting times where possible should be restricted to certain parts of the day, or to certain days.
I doubt attending a meeting requires that much concentration, you could probably idle a fair bit even if you're in 3 "instant messaging" meetings at the same time.
You could even go for a coffee/toilet break, or take an important phone call without wasting everyone's time when you "return" (with conventional meetings there's often the repeating the past X minutes) - you just scroll up to see what you've missed. You do need to say that you've gone "AFK" though, so that the rest don't waste time trying to ask you questions that require immediate response.
But just because they have to happen doesn't mean that I can't generally schedule them to my advantage.
I tend to group my meetings so that they're in a single block when I can. That way they don't run long ("Sorry. Have a 10:30. Gotta go.") and I can then keep the rest of the day free for actual work.
For those days when it isn't possible that's when I do my documentation since there's no way I can get back into a project and do anything useful with an hour.
Back in the days our calendar system would auto-accept any meeting invites. It was a while ago. But that meant you got put into all kinds of meetings without actually being able to request a different time up front. My boss had the best solution, which we all try to do now based on other responses. He blocked out 80% of his day into two events: "HFMTDW". If you needed to get into the blocks you asked and he would free up the time for you.
"HFMTDW" = "Hiding From Meetings to do Work"
I loved that boss. Too bad being the manager of our division drove him into a nervous breakdown after 18 months.
I'm surprised if your boss will agree to let you work fewer days, even if it would benefit the company. Many managers are afraid of losing control. Many are oft afraid that if they give someone special privileges there will soon be others demanding them as well.
Then there's the issue that who knows if you're really working in the evening if there's no-one to watch you do it? And if you would be trust-worthy, how about the others who will soon be demanding to be able to work evenings as well?
So, it's very likely that your boss won't agree, despite it being superficially obvious that they should. It's just so much more emotionally safe saying nay.
Truth be told, I would probably be the most effective if I worked just six hours a day, uninterrupted. However, having tried to explain in a job interview why I'd like to "slack" so much, I have given up the fight. There are just some things that are inexplicable to some people. At the end of the day, it's not all about being productive. You also have to work "in a proper manner", which means that you get up early in the morning and work at least a good solid 9 or 10 hours despite your brain starting to fart after the first six. See, you gotta be a team player - and team players play by the rules, no matter how ineffective they make you.
If your boss is more enlightened than I'm expecting them to be, consider yourself very lucky!
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
fixed that for ya
My favorite sign about meetings was actually posted in a shipyard meeting room, it said "There are no problems that cannot be made unsolvable if enough meetings are held to discuss them". Meetings at this shipyard, tended to be short, and were difficult to schedule. Made for really productive meetings.
Meetings should be used to solve problems. Information can be passed by email, or better yet through formal documentation. Status reports can be done by email and should only contain tasks completed on time, tasks not completed or will not be completed on time, and why if there are any of the second. Regular meetings should be held one on one to help employees meet individual goals and discuss any problems in a private way. Beyond that, "meetings" like kick-off events and celebrations for meeting goals can be held to motivate and provide recognition. Though I wouldn't call those meetings in the traditional sense. In an Agile environment, stand up meetings are effective as long as they are short and to the point.
br/
Hah, corporate culture is so idiotic and inflexible. The problem with 99% of corporations in my opinion is that they cater to the lowest common denominator. I don't mean that in a rude or haughty way; let me explain.
There are lot of different kinds of people in the world. I guess there are some people (a lot of people) who work fairly well with the whole 9-5 every day routine type job. It probably suits most people not because they particular enjoy it, but because most people wouldn't have enough self control to actually do their jobs as well if you were to just, say, let them teleconference from home or something. (FWIW I think this perception is largely a myth, and that the solution to unproductive employees is to simply fire their asses.)
The problem with this approach is that it alienates people who could otherwise be strong assets to your company, like me. I'm the kid that fucked off all week long at school, didn't study, got yelled at for reading three chapters ahead in the book, then aced the test without even trying. You want to hire me? Give me a job solving problems. Pure technical problems (or whatever other technical work you hired me to do) with no politics, paperwork, hours long pointless meetings and teleconferences, forced teamwork, etc attached. Let me come in to work at any hour I want, leave any time I want, work from home if and when I want. Basically let do whatever the hell I want as long as I accomplish specific tasks within a specific time frame. If you want to contact me, don't call, send an email/IM and wait for a response unless it's an EMERGENCY requiring IMMEDIATE RESPONSE. Don't treat me like a kid, I'm my own man and don't need a nanny to help me along. And lastly, don't try to make me feel guilty or inferior because I'm different than you.
You know what, I don't pretend to be ideal for jobs that the "average" employee is good at. I recognize that I have strengths and limitations. What I want is to see employers be smart enough to recognize these strengths and limitations and put people in positions with responsibilities that best suit them. IMO the best employers are the ones who hire the best, give them a lot of freedom, and pay them well--like Google for instance. They make the job be more like an extension of your life rather than a typical "job." It's a place that you look forward to coming to every day instead of another boring 9-5 grind. That's smart. I wish other employers would learn a thing or two from them.
...in transitioning from systems & coding to PHB: I now have to keep a schedule with the rest of the world. I used to be able to come in at 11AM or Noon, leave at 3, come back at 6 and work till midnight if I wanted. If I wanted to see a movie at 2PM on a tuesday afternoon, I went to the movie. But our entire development team in that time consisted of me, myself, and I. Now I have 2 full-time developers and 2 more contract developers that I have to coordinate with. I still have some flexibly, but generally I need to be in the office by 9 or 10AM to answer emails and to go through the support tickets, assign tasks, etc.. The coders usually show up sometime between 11AM and 1PM and then work for a couple hours, head home, then do their real work usually between 10PM - 4AM. The time they are in the office is usually spent asking questions, or we're doing testing to see if things work in the production mock up.
I don't care when or how the work gets done, just so long as assigned tasks get finished in a reasonable amount of time. And if they are having problems, let me know. Other than that, our developers have a free hand.
I don't get to schoomze. That's the other co-founder and CEO's job. Granted he owns another business that is the primary source of his income and that takes a lot of his time. We generally meet 3 hours a week total, make sure we're on the same page, and he does the sales negotiations with clients and corporate paperwork (like payroll and taxes). Meanwhile I have the title of COO and over see the day to day operations of the company.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.