Slashdot Mirror
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.
...and it's the coder's best friend.
Well if you had thought otherwise you would be have been a manager not a maker.
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
Two reasons: meetings make people feel important and they look like work (without having to do real work). I have found that most information gleaned in meetings can be e-mailed or distributed in some other manner.
With that said, there is a lot that can be learned in the "important" meetings. People give away a lot of information (body language, facial expressions, etc) about certain situations that can be very valuable. That is where I find most of the value in meetings. Plus, it is a good way to build and keep team cohesiveness.
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
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
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.
It justifies their existence. I've worked in matrix organizations where there are four or five 'dimensions', each represented by their own chain of management. Each employs a team of drones whose only is to chase around between meetings and keep up to date on what's going on.
Start eliminating meetings and pretty soon the executives won't have any place to employ their idiot son-in-laws.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm both a coder and a manager. When I first started, the meetings drove me bonkers. After wasting enough time, I decided to ditch them altogether with my boss's approval so I could finish a big project.
I learned my lesson quickly. After each meeting that I skipped, my boss would show up in my office (effectively destroying the block of time I was saving), and then he'd tell me about 5 more projects brought up in the meeting that were automatically approved. More work was actually created because I wasn't there to shoot down off-track and silly ideas in these meetings.
I started showing up at meetings pronto to "keep the company on track with IT and software projects". It was worth it to waste 8 hours a week in meetings to avoid months upon months on projects initiated by people who had no clue how technology works.
You couldn't just put a dummy there with a voicebox repeating "No", "No way" and "We can't do that"?
Or was the one in your company already employed as a SAP programmer?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Managers are usually not oriented towards your work.
They are usually acting as a worker bee for someone way above them.
Also, when I moved from programmer into management, I was amazed at the amount of sausage making that we protect the developers from.
Projects that are high priority- yet canceled without ever wasting your time.
Plus a lot of coordination and orchestration.
A good manager frees their developers to get work done and shields them from a lot of inane executive requests.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.