Ask Slashdot: Should We Hang Up on Conference Calls? (ft.com)

Make everyone stand. Work to an agenda. Don't let people go on endlessly. There are plenty of suggestions on how to run meetings so they are not a waste of time. People pay less attention to a bigger waste of time: the multi-participant conference call, argues a story on Financial Times. The story -- shared by an anonymous reader and which may be paywalled -- makes a case against the need for conference calls: You know the drill. An invitation arrives in your inbox with a date and time, a list of participants, numbers for dialling in from different countries and a sign-in code (followed by the pound or hash sign). I have had dozens of these invitations to conference calls, particularly those to discuss forthcoming panels and events. None of the calls has contributed much to the eventual event. I know this because my role is often to chair the eventual event. This is the first difference between a conference call and a face-to-face meeting: it is clear who is chairing the meeting, whereas it is seldom clear who is chairing the call. On conference calls, there is usually someone listed as the organiser, with their own sign-in code (followed by the pound or hash sign), but they are often not the most senior person on the call. The organiser, I can say from experience, is seldom the person who is going to be chairing the planned event. Usually, they are the person who organised the call. That may be a senior person; it may be their personal assistant.

The call organiser may take the leading role in the call. It is hard to tell because -- unless you have met several times before -- it is difficult to know who is speaking at any time. Unlike in a face-to-face meeting, you cannot see people's faces. As participants "arrive" in the conference call, they usually say, "Hi, this is Diane", or are announced by a recorded voice like entrants to a 19th-century ball -- "Simon Oates has joined the call" -- but after that you have to listen keenly for any voice marker (an accent, a shouty tone) that will help you identify who is talking. That is if you can remember who is on the call in the first place. What do you think?

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They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of the time, conference calls are simply a concrete way to show effort for project managers and other useless layers of middle management. These people have to make noise and occupy space on calendars, or else uncomfortable questions will start to arise about what exactly they're contributing to the company.

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[XXongo]

What I think is that conference calls sound like a good idea, but I never have any idea who the voices on the phone are. You really need fact to face for that, no substitutes.

Usually what happens is that I listen in for the first one minute of the call, then I just work on my laptop, paying attention with maybe one-tenth of my attention or if something interesting happens.

They are a waste of time, though, since they distract just enough of my attention that I can't accomplish real work, only non-work like catching up with and posting on slashdot.

But the good news is, I get to charge it as time spent on the project whether or not it was actually useful.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[jonnyj]

Inatead of moanong, I'm not sure why you - or, for that matter, the author of the original article - don't just grab hold of any conference calls that waste your time and make them more efficient.

In my experience, it's almost always clear who is chairing a conference call; I always know which voice belongs to which attendee as I rarely have calls with complete strangers; an agenda is usually circulated in advance so that people are well prepared; and invitees who do not believe that they are required are free to not join.

Conference calls serve a critical purpose by facilitating communication and decision making on a projects or transactions with geographically dispersed teams. Perhaps I'm spoiled as most of my calls are with lawyers or city bankers. That wouldn't tolerate the poor behaviour that this whining article describes.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[xevioso]

In my experience, the vast majority of conference calls are for disseminating information from some people to many more people. This can be much more easily accomplished through emails. It may be the case that no one wants to write up a long screed about how Q1 went and what to expect in Q2, but by writing that up, only one person's time is wasted while on the conference call everyone's time is. By using email for this sort of information, and employee can also decide if the contents are even remotely useful for them, and can also use it as a reference point later.

If you are referring to conference calls where coming to a decision is important, and all of the participants have some say or potentially some say or something to contribute, that is a different story. But in many industries this is just not the case, and it's much more likely to be the former situation.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

If your conference calls "always" have an agenda distributed in advance, you're in the upper echelons of respect for productivity.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Pascoea]

I didn't read the article, but what I'm surmising is that they just pointed out that the bad qualities of a bad meeting are amplified by the barriers present in a conference call. Follow the basics of a meeting: Clearly define what the meeting is about, and what is the expected output. Every attendee should have a purpose for being there, and know what it is. Both of those should be included in the meeting invite. Doesn't matter if it's a conference call or not, a poorly defined meeting is going to be a bad meeting. It's just going to be worse on a conference call.

After you learn how to create a proper meeting definition you can pinpoint what's going to be a shit meeting before the first word is spoken. The only difference between a conference call and an in-person meeting? A good facilitator has a better chance of getting something productive out of an in-person dumpster fire. A poorly planned conference call is rarely going to produce anything meaningful.

I saw a really great me'me the other day, something along the lines of "People are really good at knowing when an hour-long meeting should have been an e-mail, but really bad at recognizing that a three day, six page, e-mail chain could have been solved with a 5 minute meeting.

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

I have countless coworkers that I have never met since they are on different continents, but I manage to accomplish quite a lot of work with them and recognize their voices. Face to face is usually not necessary. Even within the same site (a huge site), it is more efficient to use the phone than have half the participants make a 40 minute round trip walk to the other side of the plant.

It is my experience that the person running the call will prioritize topics so that people can be released incrementally and as soon as possible from the calls.

I'm sorry you work with a bunch of idiots.

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[jpschaaf]

I have countless coworkers that I have never met since they are on different continents, but I manage to accomplish quite a lot of work with them and recognize their voices. Face to face is usually not necessary. Even within the same site (a huge site), it is more efficient to use the phone than have half the participants make a 40 minute round trip walk to the other side of the plant.

Ditto on this opinion. Not every conference call is useful, but neither is every in-person interaction. I've had significant success in getting work done with people around the world via conference calls. I think the key is to keep the groups small (only have people on the call who have a vested interest in the topic under discussion), and to have some sort of tangible work product that comes out of the call -- whether that's code that was created via pair programming, a report, or even just an e-mail summarizing decisions that were made. Any conferencing software worth its salt will handle the issue of keeping voices straight. The real problems are traffic noise and the guy who doesn't know how to use the mute button.

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anubis IV]

The problem with meetings is how they manage to waste the time of anyone not actively participating as a speaker or listener at any given moment. There are only two ways I've seen to prevent that time from going to waste:
1) Ensure no one has downtime in a meeting by carefully choosing the topics that need to be discussed, only inviting people who need to hear or speak towards every single one of the topics being discussed, staying on topic, and keeping things short and to the point. Doing it this way is difficult, but it ensures that every minute of every meeting is useful time to everyone involved.

2) Redeem the inevitable downtime by establishing that it's acceptable practice for people to work on other things during that time. This means working from your laptop during in-person meetings, muting mics on conference calls, or excusing people from all-day meetings until the discussion swings back around to their topic again. Doing it this way is much simpler, but it doesn't work in all situations.

My role on our team dictates that I'm sucked into an all-day client meeting about once a month, but I generally only need to be there for a couple of hours. While it seems rude to work on something else, most of the clients I've worked with appreciate us making productive use of our time, even if that means doing something other than being engaged in the meeting we're in with them. And, frankly, most of our clients do it to us too, since I routinely see their guys handling other work during meetings. It's the only way to ensure that any downtime for a person doesn't become wasted time.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't read the article, but what I'm surmising is that they just pointed out that the bad qualities of a bad meeting are amplified by the barriers present in a conference call.

My #1 gripe. Showing up on time and ready for the meeting. I've recently been in a number of conference calls and it seems no one believes they need to be ready before the meeting time. The meeting time, is when people begin to call in.

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Hognoxious]

The size of the groups and the number of groups both matter.

Two groups of six isn't bad; usually only one person in each room will talk at a time anyway if there's a decent "captain" keeping them focussed. Six groups of two would be chaos.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. My previous meeting just ended.

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[jbengt]

On the other hand, I've been in a great number of meetings "wasting my time" listening to discussions on topics that do not need my participation, only to hear something that very definitely could affect my part of the project, but I was the only one who realized that.
People should understand that sometimes "wasting time" is actually a necessary part of the process. (This does not include truly unnecessary or poorly run meetings, of which I've seen my fair share, also.)

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anubis IV]

Certainly so! I wouldn't disagree with any of that. My point was simply that because you're having to waste quite a bit of time between the moments where your continued presence proves beneficial, it would have been better had you been allowed to work on other things in the meantime, as you kept an ear out for something that required your input. I wasn't advocating for Option 1 to the exclusion of Option 2. I was simply pointing out that if we're going to waste people's time, at least allow them to make the best use of it.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do people work that calls are run so poorly? On a conference call when you speak, say "Bob speaking - bla black etc". It's not difficult. If the call is poorly run, give feedback afterwards. This bleating about time wasted and bad organization is energy better spent being constructive

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Psychological theory of communication
40% of information cannot be communicated at all
50% of information is communicated via body language and gestures
8% of information is communicated by how you say your words, like inflections, tons, etc. Like how you can hear or see sarcasm but not read it.
2% of information is communicated by what you said

Something along these lines. Out of the gate, 40% cannot be communicated at all and quickly goes down from there. Unless you're trying to communicate the simplest of ideas. This theory mostly focuses on critical nuances and the breakdown of communication that leads to misunderstandings. Just because something thinks they understood what was said, doesn't mean that they did.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Conference calls are always welcomed at work. Normally itâ(TM)s a group of engineers all sharing the same laptop screen while conference calling. The laptop is connected to a problematic piece of equipment and itâ(TM)s a fast, easy way to gather worldwide talent on a problem. Calls have always been educational, usually to all parties.

Iâ(TM)m old enough to remember how difficult something like this used to be. Now the call and screen sharing are all done in one piece of software. Itâ(TM)s fast and an effective way to get something done.

I will gladly conference call with any engineer out there. Managers and salesmen are an entirely different matter, for reference see any Dilbert cartoon. They are sadly mostly fact based from my experience.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Pascoea]

My #1 gripe. Showing up on time and ready for the meeting.

Nothing better than when the facilitator shows up 5 minutes late, and unprepared. And usually starts with a "Sorry I'm late, [chuckle] and sorry I didn't have time to put together an agenda. I invited all 50 of you here to talk about...". You can hear the eye-rolls through the phone.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of your companies sound so stupid lol.
On our conference calls, which can hold upwards of 60 participants, EVERYONE who speaks MUST address themselves BEFORE making a statement. If at any time it is unclear who just asked a question or made a statement.... Someone will ask, "what is your name sir/ma'am?"
I attend calls like this 3 times a day, 4 days a week without any issues except for that one asshole who puts their phone on hold so we all hear that GD music. WTF is wrong with you people?!

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't read the article, but what I'm surmising is that they just pointed out that the bad qualities of a bad meeting are amplified by the barriers present in a conference call. Follow the basics of a meeting: Clearly define what the meeting is about, and what is the expected output. Every attendee should have a purpose for being there, and know what it is. Both of those should be included in the meeting invite. Doesn't matter if it's a conference call or not, a poorly defined meeting is going to be a bad meeting. It's just going to be worse on a conference call.

After you learn how to create a proper meeting definition you can pinpoint what's going to be a shit meeting before the first word is spoken. The only difference between a conference call and an in-person meeting? A good facilitator has a better chance of getting something productive out of an in-person dumpster fire. A poorly planned conference call is rarely going to produce anything meaningful.

I saw a really great me'me the other day, something along the lines of "People are really good at knowing when an hour-long meeting should have been an e-mail, but really bad at recognizing that a three day, six page, e-mail chain could have been solved with a 5 minute meeting.

take your mother fugging melatonin and go the fug to bed and forget about your manager and meetings for one mother fugging moment. love you guys. hang in there.

brian

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to all of this the idiots who insist on talking into a speakerphone like it's 1990 all over again...it's just unbearable.

Re: They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a really great me'me the other day

Fyi: If you're going to add an apostrophe to the word meme, you it should be m'eme, since it's short for the greek mimeme.
Words with the -eme suffix: phoneme, morpheme, grapheme, lexeme, and tagmeme.

Also, it's pronounced "meem" with a long E, not "me me."

Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers

[Anonymous Coward]

*but might not read it.

What do I think?

[djbckr]

Conference calls do tend to waste some time, but the person who wrote this article is just a whiner. You take the good with the bad.

Re:What do I think?

[nuckfuts]

No kidding. The real waste of time was how long it took for this person to post their rant.

Just because a tool isn't ideal for YOUR circumstances, don't extrapolate that to everybody else.

Re:What do I think?

[xevioso]

Look, many companies have policies that try to limit meetings, because lots of modern companies understand they have a tendency to be time-watsers when people could actually be doing other work.

Why not focus on something else that may have a tendency to be a time-waster? I understand if your conference calls go swimmingly and everyone is engaged, but there's nothing wrong with questioning if this is the majority of the time.

Re:What do I think?

[ranton]

The full article is paywalled, but reading the summary is a complete waste of time. Of course there are difficulties with conference calls. I doubt anyone really enjoys the format. But you need to have other solutions before saying we should just do away with them.

Conference calls serve a necessary purpose. I would certainly prefer to meet with all of my coworkers / partners / clients face to face for every meeting, but no one is going to spend $10k for a status meeting with a client across the country.

Re:What do I think?

[Oswald McWeany]

Conference calls do tend to waste some time, but the person who wrote this article is just a whiner. You take the good with the bad.

I don't find conference calls a waste of time... I put my phone on speaker and mute- and ignore what's being said whilst I continue on working as normal.

I only pay attention if I hear someone say my name... "I'm sorry, can you rephrase the question?"

If I've ever missed anything important in a conference call from not paying attention- I'm not aware of it. But is it a waste of time? Not mine- because I continue on working as normal. It's only a waste of time if you pay attention to the conference call.

Re:What do I think?

[Oswald McWeany]

I worked at one company where a meeting plan was mandatory BEFORE you could request a meeting (on... *cough* Lotus Notes... this was years ago- and yes Lotus was already obsolete then).

Anyhow, you had to have a meeting plan outlining what the meeting was about- and it was against company policy to discuss anything other than what was on the meeting notes. (you could leave things vague if there were predicted areas of vagueness).

I must say, it did work, meetings were short and too the point- and people took it seriously following the meeting plans (which had to be turned in as proof we wrote them and our pay raise was partially based on them). Now that was a small company- maybe 40 or 50 people in the office (another 80 to 100 in the factory but they never/rarely showed up to our meetings)- so maybe 40 or 50 people is easier to police for meetings- but for that company that was a good policy and it worked.

Re:What do I think?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only pay attention if I hear someone say my name... "I'm sorry, can you rephrase the question?"

I doubt I would feel inclined or obligated to repeat myself for those who are clearly not paying attention, particularly when you come at me with that bullshit legalese excuse.

Re:What do I think?

[apoc.famine]

Having run a large number of successful conference calls, this is what I do, and what is required before I show up for one when I'm not running it:

* Roles designated and communicated. Who is running the tech, who is running the meeting, who is taking notes.
* Detailed agenda: Topics, desired outcomes, rough times, leads, etc.
* The right people on the call to accomplish the agenda: Are the subject matter experts on the call? Are the project managers on the call? Are the deciders on the call?
* And if all the above have happened: Obviously couldn't have been accomplished over email.

90% of the conference calls I get invited to are disorganized and could have just been an email. So I don't go. If they don't take notes for me to read after, did it even really matter? It's a bunch of "I thought I heard..." at that point, and I can play that game with not even having been there.

Sometimes you do need to talk it out with everyone at the table. For that to be productive, someone needs to own the meeting, put in the effort to organize it, and make sure that it's got goals and the right people and structure to meet those goals. Far too many people think sitting around yammering on the phone will accomplish something. It almost always does, but that something is counterproductive confusion, boredom, and loss of morale/will to live.

Re:What do I think?

[PrimaryConsult]

Forget legalese, my response is a more crass "huh?". Generally speaking if someone is addressing me in a conference call, it is because they want something from me. Not repeating themselves suits me just fine.

Re:What do I think?

[Darinbob]

I've never been in a sort of conference call as described in the summary. Every conference call I've been on is for the company and you know everyone on the call already. And the only reason these calls exist is because not everyone is present in the same city or building.

Re:What do I think?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is great and all, but phones do cut out, your voice was too quiet, etc.

Re:What do I think?

[Anonymous Coward]

You take the good with the bad

You take them both and there you have the facts of life.

When the call never seems
To be living up to your dreams....

Re:What do I think?

[thegarbz]

Conference calls are a horrible waste of time. People should jump on planes and fly around the world for 1 hour meetings the way it's supposed to be.

Re:What do I think?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're the shit. you're 100 percent correct.

agreed.

timmy

Re:What do I think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Caillou is the ultimate whiner. Ugh.

I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

The heading line of the "Article" just wasted 2 minutes of my time. Nowhere in the summary was it suggested that we should do without the conference call. Just some punter droning on about conference calls.
Waste of my time: This article posting.

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it took you two minutes to read 74 words, you need to work on your reading skills.

Re:I think...

[ranton]

If it took you two minutes to read 74 words, you need to work on your reading skills.

That includes skimming through the story again to see if you just missed the entire point of the article. It probably took another minute to verify there really was no point.

PowerPoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the saying "those who have no point use PowerPoint".

Just because you can doesn't mean you should!

Re:PowerPoint

[Oswald McWeany]

Reminds me of the saying "those who have no point use PowerPoint".

Just because you can doesn't mean you should!

Powerpoints have their place- but if all someone is doing is reading a powerpoint... just send me an e-mail instead... of course, I'll probably ignore the e-mail- but I'll also ignore you reading a powerpoint to me.

I run one everyday

[Archfeld]

I run a daily turnover conference/teleconference call every day with about 40 lines, and maybe 100 people. When we get to the end, the part where I say anyone have anything else, I then say okay everyone have a good day and hang up the phone, and disconnect the video server window. Seems pretty straight forward. The worst part of running a large hybrid call is not saying good-bye but getting a decent roll call and herding the cats into discussing what's on the agenda while keeping the side talk to a minimum. I spend a moderate amount of effort corralling people by saying can't that be discussed offline or taken to email...

Re:I run one everyday

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, 100 people on a daily call? I bet a lot of the participants avoid saying anything just for the sake of not delaying the end of it.

I guess even a WhatsApp group would be more productive/effective.

Re:I run one everyday

[xevioso]

But why do you do this? This seems the perfect example of wasting time. You are wasting the time of a ton of employees on the off chance that a few will have something important to say that could just as easily be distributed via email. Rather than waste the time of the employees who have nothing to contribute nor need to spend their time listening when they could be doing actual work, why not waste the time of the employees who do need to contribute, and have them send out an email to everyone, or even to you so you can coalesce all of the day's information into a digest for people to read and have as a reference?

Re:I run one everyday

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not running a meeting, you're running a daily performance. With 100 people, it more resembles theater with people performing than it does discussion.

Seriously, what's the point of wasting everyone's time on a daily basis with 100 freaking people? Whomever is demanding this "meeting" is exactly part of the problem.

Re:I run one everyday

[Pascoea]

Just me, personally, I have never been in any meeting with more than 10 active participants that produced any meaningful outcome. Without knowing the details of the meeting, I can only imagine that a number of smaller meetings would be way more effective.

The only reference I have of managing turn-overs was on construction projects. (Think power plant maintenance/outages) The teams were anywhere from 2 to 20 foremen, each with 5-15 guys. There is no way in hell I'd put all of them in a room together to do a turn over. It'd take an hour, at best, for every person on the job. We found it much more effective for the foremen to come in 30 minutes early and stay 30 minutes late to do the turn-overs, then disseminate any information to their crews. The only time we'd ever have a large group was for orientation. Just my 2c, I'd be interested to hear more about your meetings, actual content discussed, types of participants, etc.

Re:I run one everyday

[nitehawk214]

Seriously, 100 people on a daily call? I bet a lot of the participants avoid saying anything just for the sake of not delaying the end of it.

I guess even a WhatsApp group would be more productive/effective.

I had a boss with 25 direct reports, which is way too freaking many, enough that he never directly spoke to most people unless it was at the weekly meeting. The weekly meeting ended up being 2 hours of him individually asking each person for a status update. of course the other 23 people in the room generally did not care much about what they said.

It did not help that the "weekly" meting was more like once every 3 weeks, because the boss was too busy to take care of this own employees. Yeah, it was a shit company with shit management. Individually, lots of good people, useless as a group.

Re:I run one everyday

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I worked there!

Re:I run one everyday

[Archfeld]

Daily operations turnover call, run 3 times a day connecting all the DC's, and remote operation sites. There are far fewer 'attendees' for the swing and mid shift calls.

Re:I run one everyday

[Archfeld]

It is the daily operations turnover call. It connects the large DC's and the remote operations centers. Tech support, operations support, batch operations and the remote support sites. We cover anything and everything that is part of the daily schedule, on-going outages, and scheduled tasks and repairs. I agree it is inefficient but better than email as there are often up to the minutes status given and questions that need to be asked by the oncoming shift about tasks in progress.

Re:I run one everyday

[Archfeld]

It is exactly what you speculated. Daily Ops turnover from 7/24 operations and support sites.
Tech support, output/peripheral services, batch support, application support, building management, security plus the managers from each area. The scope is fairly narrow and as calls this size go very organized. It occurs 3 times a day, but the off shifts attendance is much smaller.

Re: I run one everyday

[Anonymous Coward]

If only one of the dozens of DCs had someone with a computer that could put that info all on some sort of site showing the web of states.

Re: I run one everyday

[Archfeld]

There is a turnover report that is online or goes out in email following every meeting, but for those directly involved there are always questions to be asked that need direct response. Believe me as much as I want there to be a better option I've not come up with one. With the addition of vendor support staff into the mix who don't have access to in house reporting but are critical to fixes and device upgrades/replacements in progress it really becomes a sticky web of epic proportions. I'd be forever grateful if someone had a better option. As a technical support staff member I've certainly got better things to do with my time but I need to know things that are going on at the remote sites that directly effect my duties and daily schedule as well.

Remote Employee Benefit

[deKernel]

One of the greatest advantages of working remotely is that you just put your phone on mute and continue to actually get work done.

Re:Remote Employee Benefit

[Oswald McWeany]

One of the greatest advantages of working remotely is that you just put your phone on mute and continue to actually get work done.

You can do that in an office too. That's precisely what I do.

Re:Remote Employee Benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

I put my phone headphones under over-the-ear headphones connected to the playstation. That way I can hear both the call and the game. The microphone is outside the over-the-ear headphones, so I can unmute and talk if necessary, but that only happens when someone says, "hey, are you there?"

Re:Remote Employee Benefit

[Darinbob]

And I spend time on the other end saying "Bob? Bob? Can you un-mute and answer the question, Bob?"

Re:Remote Employee Benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you aren't one of the guys who puts it on speakerphone and forces everyone else around to hear (even when in an office).

We have one guy who spends I don't know how much time scripting out, word for word, what he is going to say during his portion of the call. Everyone can tell he is just reading from a script. He loves conference calls because I guess he thinks people don't realize he's just reading from a script. The one time I had to join in on such a call, I couldn't help but fuck with him by asking him questions just to throw him off track and force him to actually think in real time. We are talking about someone who has been doing this for decades.

Meetings people love conference calls because they can do it from the comfort of their desks. People who are trying to implement what is being designed hate it because the noise level can become deafening when just a few people around you are on that conference call. About half of people think they need to scream into a phone for everyone to hear. People should be forced to go into a local conference room when they have a conference call so the rest of us can get some work done.

Re:Remote Employee Benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yas. Queen. Love the mute.

Werq

Journalism is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Talentless idiots with nothing interesting to say just copy and pasting jibberish.

I'm surprised he doesnt blame conference calls on white privilege.

Heinlein had it right in TMIAHM

[Theaetetus]

But Prof didn't get excited; he went on smiling. "Manuel, do you really think that mob of retarded children can pass any laws?"

"You told them to. Urged them to."

"My dear Manuel, I was simply putting all my nuts in one basket. I know those nuts; I've listened to them for years. I was very careful in selecting their committees; they all have built-in confusion, they will quarrel. The chairman I forced on them while letting them elect him is a ditherer who could not unravel a piece of string--thinks every subject needs 'more study.' I almost needn't have bothered; more than six people cannot agree on anything, three is better--and one is perfect for a job that one can do. This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest..."

I've had very useful conference calls, but hardly ever with more than three people on the line.

Re:Heinlein had it right in TMIAHM

[rickb928]

I've had useful calls with 40+ attendees.

Admittedly, the purpose of the call was to have all involved parties on the line, at once, so each could refuse responsibility for the issue being (not) addressed, so that management, on the call, could then step out, decide among themselves which team would in fact take this on, and then return and deliver the verdict and sentence.

It's been necessary, from time to time, to have these calls. Sometimes it even ends in the decision that the issue isn't worth fixing. And then we, right then and there, request that the teams offer us the messaging they want us to deliver to the affected population. I don't fix it, my role is to report it in an understandable manner, follo progress to fix it, engage as necessary to keep the process moving, and in these rare instances where the fix isn't going to happen, tell the reporters they are not going to get a solution. They ask why. That's the message I need the product owners to give me, since I have no reason to tell them there is no fix other than, simply, the product owners said no.

And they, my customers, do often want to know why. The reasons vary from 0. Cannot be fixed before it is replaced/decommissioned, 1. Is not going to be a feature/etc we intend to provide going forward, 2. Is being abandoned, best not to say why, or 3. Internal considerations will prevent resolution.

Yes, my customers have other channels to inquire through, and they come to me first... But not last.

These are never pleasant calls. And the calls made before it gets to this point are unpleasant as well, but necessary. If it were simple it would never have gotten to this, and complex is just complex.

Re:Heinlein had it right in TMIAHM

[Anonymous Coward]

Management via blame and shame, with a helping of denial. Sounds like a really productive company.

Re:Heinlein had it right in TMIAHM

[rickb928]

Well it actually is. It's the funding fixes that catches everyone's attention, but the real problem is strategic decisions, re-platforming, legacy maintenance, and what gets done first.

My complaint is that these teams spend way too much time circling the poo, mostly to try and outlast us. When management gets involved things happen fast, but we have to climb the ladder.

Depends what the call is for

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a place that had multi-national calls, and it became quibble-fests as everyone in all the offices wanted to get their two cents in, so they could feel self important. These calls went on for 8-12 hours, with no work getting done.

What was "fun" was a conference call that was supposed to be a Scrum stand-up meeting, but there were two project managers, three managers, two team leads, all wanting to ask their daily questions. The result was 6-8 hour long stand-ups with nothing getting done, because someone would call on one of the worker bees to defend themselves.

Glad I moved on. Some places can be too big to fail.

Re:Depends what the call is for

[b0s0z0ku]

I'd have sat down, then sued them for disability discrimination (developed back issues that keep me from standing for a long time without pain) if they objected to it or fired me.

Conference calls are a necessary tool

[magzteel]

Distributed teams can't just get together in a physical conference room We have to meet on conference calls.
As for who is on the call, we use Skype for business. It shows you who is on the call and who is talking.

If I don't have anything to contribute and am not interested in the discussion I decline the meeting.
Of course, if one is rarely interested or contributing maybe it's time for a job change.

Re:Conference calls are a necessary tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Conference call are a necessary tool

Yeah, but I guess it often gets abused/misused on a corporate setting. From what I experienced in my last jobs, there's a lot of scenarios that e-mail or even group instant messaging is far more effective... but people insist on ConfCalls just because.

Re:Conference calls are a necessary tool

[manu0601]

Distributed teams can't just get together in a physical conference room We have to meet on conference calls.

Tell that to free software projects, that have teams scattered around the globe only coordinated through e-mail.

Re:Conference calls are a necessary tool

[magzteel]

Distributed teams can't just get together in a physical conference room We have to meet on conference calls.

Tell that to free software projects, that have teams scattered around the globe only coordinated through e-mail.

My son is involved with a global free project. They have group video chats all the time

Regardless I don't think you can compare a voluntary distributed team having loose deliverable schedules with a commercial project. I'm in NY, and I meet daily with my Poland and UK teams. One conference call can be more effective than a week of email.

I like those

[gweihir]

I can sleep, read, play games, etc. as long as I am sure to be muted and catch keywords when I need to say something smart.

(No, I don't like them, actually, but I found a way to cope...)

nah

[cascadingstylesheet]

Summary is so whiny I am not reading TFA, but ..

1. I always know who invited me, because they sent the invitation. If they aren't leading the meeting, then they tell me so.

2. Good meeting software is web based and it does indicate who is speaking. Granted, if some people are sharing a conference room, then we don't have a visual indication which one of their group is speaking, but if they aren't people we usually deal with then we wouldn't know them by sight anyway. In practice it's not a significant problem.

Re:nah

[thegarbz]

2. Good meeting software is web based and it does indicate who is speaking.

Shithouse software does this too. The article is a large list of whines that have been solved many times over by even dumb people which doesn't bode well for the author.

Well, if these are the calls

[rickb928]

"None of the calls has contributed much to the eventual event. I know this because my role is often to chair the eventual event."

Then yes, why did you accept the invite? A call to discuss an event? Really? I don't get these unless there is planning or action to take in advance, and then it's a call to do something...

And we get a lot of pointless calls, mostly when they fail to compel essential attendees to, well, actually attend.

What happens when you decline?

Depends on how well it is organized

[jfdavis668]

I call into quite a few each week. Some calls are well controlled, and stay on point. One I call into every other week annoys me. First, the important items that everyone wants to know are the first and last items. Therefore everyone has to listen to all the items in between even if they aren't involved. Both of the items everyone wants to know are fairly short, and they never have slides. The items in between can be very long with dozens of slides. On top of that, every time someone calls in, a loud beep is emitted. So when the meeting starts and the one important item is being discussed, they are often drown out by many people calling in late. That call would be so much better if they eliminated the beep and discussed both general topics at the beginning.

Is the problem the call or the credit?

[quietwalker]

No, you should not do away with conference calls. Speech is still a pretty quick way to share information, be it financial reporting, identifying issues and soliciting help, or even discussing technical issues. That you're not in a single room or don't have a live video feed isn't a real issue. Yes, in person meetings add body language, which really helps facilitate communication, but it's not going to stop you entirely.

I didn't read the article due to paywall, but from the excerpt above, it sounds like this person is whining about not being recognized for their role, or that individuals aren't getting credit for their statements, rather than being glad for the group effort to advance the event/project/whatever.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that they're also big into restating someone else's statement in calls to prove their worth and to show they're participating, even though it doesn't add any value to the call. I've seen a lot of folks like that who really reduce the info density of a call, and they're all about taking credit too.

On a positive note, if you can't see who's talking, and don't know them by their voice, perhaps you can judge what they say by it's own merits? If the ideas are valid, if the problems or solutions are real, is it a problem if it's coming from the intern and not the senior vp? Unless the issue is accruing kudos and credit.

what is this crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

msmash pull your head out, why not publish something like this??

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nsa-speck-removed-linux-4-20,37747.html

Take a Stand

[Anonymous Coward]

Or we could take a stand and not read any more clickbait articles from the Financial Times. Oh, this is Slashdot and nobody RTFA? Success!

Re:Take a Stand

[Questy]

Couldn't read the article if I wanted to. It was paywalled. And I'll be DAMNED if I'm going to sign up for content that is otherwise free.

Nice try

[Anonymous Coward]

Conference calls are way too much of a waste of my time for me to actually voluntarily read about them.

Self inflicted?

[grasshoppa]

Look, if you actually call in to those kinds of conference calls, you deserve it, don't you?

My inbox is full of what can only be called "optimistic" conference call organizers, but I'm wise to their game and simply don't bother with it. I'm the one doing the work, so they can blather on all they want, I decide what gets done and how. If they're curious, they can read the emails I send out about it. If they have some input, they can even respond to those emails and get a response.

Re:Self inflicted?

[Austerity Empowers]

That's the beauty of conference calls, they're ideal for organizations where everyone is allergic to personal responsibility, and "shares" the responsibility, so no one person can be blamed. I'd rather just take the responsibility (and blame) and not be held hostage to the committee. Unfortunately not all employers tolerate this.

My advice for those that don't like this: quit. Conference calls like this are a sign something is very, very wrong with your employer. Either coast until it eventaully explodes, or get out while you still can, and while the job market is still decent. You don't want to be there when wall st. finally collapses again (and it will, it always does).

There are pluses and minuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most things you can't have your cake and eat it too. Conference calls can be an effective tool for organizing and informing people in several locations. And used incorrectly they can be a frustrating waste of time. Preparation from all attendees can make a world of difference.

I recommend that if you run a conference call that you be organized and and be firm in shutting down discussions that are not relevant to the group at large. It won't be easy at first, but professional leadership is something that comes with practice.

If you participate in a conference call. I recommend that you stay on topic and you speak up when you have something relevant. If you are feeling frustrated with the process you can either accept that some people don't run things very efficiently, or you can initiate a constructive and professional conversation about your concerns with the current person in charge of the conference call.

Most of the "all X are bad, because I had a bad experience once or twice" is not helpful advice and not worthy of an article.

I attend many conference calls, and I run a few a month myself. Many of them are deeply technical (hardware and software architecture meetings), and some of them are simple sync-up/status meetings with project managers. I don't necessarily get much out of the sync-up meetings, but the project manager finds it helpful. When I am project lead I generally go for a simple weekly status email, but admittedly people have to be reminded frequently to deliver their status on time.

Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Skype for Business. It shows who is on the call, and highlights who is speaking. Other products do this too. Sometimes you only get a phone number if someone calls in from a landline, but most use their computer to attend. Usually the organizer speaks first to kick off the call. Most calls last about 30 minutes in my experience. For telecommuters it's great. I no longer have to make a commute to the office every day.

Really, there are worse things to complain about than conference calls.

Mute

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

It's a wonderful tool.
Hop on your conference call, put it on mute, then go about your business. If someone wants your input, they'll call you out by name.

It's meetings in general

[Anonymous Coward]

Conference calls are just ways for people not in the room to be in a meeting. There's nothing wrong specifically with conference calls, it's that meetings are fundamentally a waste of time. You can "Make everyone stand. Work to an agenda. Don't let people go on endlessly.", but meetings are still a waste of time. Less than 1% of meetings are of any value whatsoever. I just go for the food.

Rules for Conference Calls

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Don't be a whiny man-bitch like the author.
2. Dominate the call. I start calls by saying "Hi everyone. Jeff called this meeting. Jeff...what are we trying to accomplish with this call?" It reminds people to stay on track. Don't be afraid to interrupt and re-state the goal when someone wonders off track.
3. If the call descends into stupidity, be man enough to say "This is anon, I have a bunch of work I need to get done. Does anyone else have important or relevant input? No? Thanks. I'm off."
4. Start on-time. If someone joins late, sorry, we're not going to start over. Talk with someone who was on time and get filled in.
5. Don't hang on and the end. When the meeting is over and everyone starts bullshitting and catching up, just hang up. People can bullshit in person, or in the 5 minutes between when they joined and when the meeting starts.

Yes

[PhantomHarlock]

I've never been on a conference call that couldn't have been reduced to two people or an email exchange. Like the meme goes, "I survived another meeting that could have been an email."

Even a three person conference call is too many. The only time when it works is when everyone is muted by default and only one person is allowed to talk at a time. (a call-in shareholder's meeting, for example.) which is more of an audio broadcast call.

Conference calls are probably the single most horrible method of business communication there is. Sometimes when more than two people who are not local to each other need to have a discussion, it's the only way, but they should be avoided at all costs and considered a last resort. Both lack of visual and technological limitations (audio squelch breaks down with more than a few people) make the experience miserable.

Towards the end of the last company I was employed at full time, management and staff were spread out all over the world and conference calls, skype sessions and what-not proliferated. I sat in on a number of these meetings and noted how difficult it was to communicate and how much longer it took to make a point vs. an in-person meeting or written copy.

One of the nice things about being an independent contractor is no longer having to deal with time wasting rubbish like conference calls.

The problem isn't meetings, it's how they're run.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that meetings, including conference calls aren't run properly. Before every meeting you should determine:

What's the meeting about? (Be specific)
Who should be invited to the meeting, and why?
What needs to happen before you have the meeting?
Who MUST be at this meeting, otherwise it isn't happening?

As a priority in planning meetings you need to:

Limit attendance to maybe at most 7-10 people.

Any more, and it's just a monologue rather than a discussion. That's not a meeting, it's a presentation. That's OK, but you have to seriously think if what you really want is a presentation. If you really wanted a meeting, either severely limit attendance, or have multiple smaller meetings, or do something else entirely.

Be careful about WHO you invite to the meeting. Some people just make bad meeting invitees. They derail the conversation, dominate the conversation, or are just counter-productive.

Instead what happens at many organizations is the shotgun approach. Just invite world+dog to meeting, give a vague description about what the meeting is about, and let 'er rip. This rarely works.

Isn't it just a delay in hopes that they forget

[Anonymous Coward]

About the real issue of what the problem actually is.

The problem's always boil down to who's going to actually do the work.

In the situation of something big or strong enough to actually hurt people, you let anyone do the work and then you see if it fit the most basic variables in a mathematical formula. So for something like building a wall, you test it with a known wind speed. All of that work was done both mathematically and in wind tunnels, and the math has been proven based on the material composition and dimensions (which is an input field and a a picture). For something like 110v electrical, you would simply apply the breaker load as a test over the length of the wire and ensure the breaker shuts off, or enter the wire length, wire gauge, voltage and amperage to apply 2 formulas and get the exact capacity.

In both of the earlier situations, you have then the problem of inadequate skilled labor. You also have the problem of corporate responsibility and the simple ability for someone specialized in that field to be the operating business. You can approach that problem with insurance and reputation, or you can approach the problem with a simple load test.

Beyond that you get into erosion and oxidation, which in reality could easily be scheduled with environmental factors and mapped out. The problem is nobody is going to believe it because they are going to believe when their house burned down because of the unknown gopher that chewed a wire out.

The facts are pretty simple, you try to make things electrically more efficient so that there's not that problem (which to be sincere is almost completed with the exception of air conditioners and water heaters. However, in the designs of those machines their contact points are isolated and do not contain enough burnable material (think of a leyden jar and the reason they waxed the wires, this has all been done it is just that the current "people in charge" haven't done the research).

So really, all an entire electricians job boils down to is being able to turn the screw hard enough to ensure a good connection, and even that isn't needed with the push in wedge style connectors. If you were going to consider people using grinders and other things that aren't efficient without turbine dynamics.

Now, it really shows that the question below that is who is in charge. Take property for example, how do you keep things safe with the way electrical outlets are built? Well, the first thing you do is realize that you build the outlets with an anode, that is some element that is lower on the chart of galvanic isolation, that is some element that will decay at a faster rate in electrolysis than both the wire and the conductors and you use it as a fuse within the outlet, that stops the concern of oxidation in electrical.

Now this is just something I am thinking about because of just having a friend who was having an outlet installed. Of course our discussion was not about that, in fact he was focused on something completely different if he was even focused at all. But that is what I was thinking of which is why I relate it to this situation of the conference call. Because, why does the conference call exist if the product has already resolved any possible problems (other than the gopher eating through everything)? If the conference call is about who's in charge, well then there is some dick war going on which is not even relevant.

I hang up on them all the time.

[stevegee58]

In all 40 of my previous jobs I routinely hung up on conference calls. :D

Re:I hang up on them all the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

40 jobs? Maybe hanging up's why you keep getting fired?

Re:I hang up on them all the time.

[Tyrannosaur]

Thanks for explaining the joke to everyone

Re:I hang up on them all the time.

[ben_kelley]

Unlikely. It will be the ":D". People hate that.

Re:I think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Get my family freindly Goat C shirt! ~ CaptainSnork

OP needs a better conferencing solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like they just need a better conferencing/collaboration suite. May of my "calls" are now video chats with teammates from around the globe. It isn't cost effective to be "face to face"

We use Cisco Webex, but there are plenty of collab suites that support video these days.

Conference calls as a method to shout down others.

[nitehawk214]

I used to work in a place where I had some cross-departmental meetings with people that didn't like each other. I mean really didn't like each other. Management was either gutless or powerless to sit them down and say "children, you have to cooperate or you will both go to detention."

At some point people in this office started calling in to meetings even when they were in the building. Most of them were "I am too busy working to be in a meeting, so I will just listen in." Some of them would bang away on their mechanical keyboards until asked to mute themselves, and then it was like they were no longer there. No worries.

Others, I realized, called in in order to shout down other people. The conference phone would mute when someone called in was talking, therefore they get to monopolize the discussion and talk over either their enemies or the actual chair of the meeting. Eventually I was fed up with the gutless management style and quit.

Careful what you wish for...

[erp_consultant]

The author makes some valid points about conference calls but consider this...were it not for the conference call you might have to attend meetings in person and some of those meetings might occur very far from where you live. Do you really want to hop on a plane or take a long car ride to attend those meetings? In some cases, maybe, but for the majority of the time meeting on the phone is fine. Conference calls also allow you to work more easily from home, if that is a desire of yours.

Conference calls can be effective as long as you follow a few simple rules:

1) Always have an agenda in the meeting invitation.
2) Always send out minutes of the meeting to the attendees. It helps to keep track of what was said and allows others to make corrections if necessary. I like to use OneNote for this but to each their own.
3) If the meeting is a recurring meeting (weekly for example) then start the meeting by following up on the To Do's from the last meeting.
4) If I am the meeting organizer I usually disable the ability to forward the invitation. Too many times I have ended up with people attending my meetings that I didn't invite. It's my meeting - I'll decide who comes :)
5) Stick to the agenda. Too many times people will go off on tangents if you let them so I just cut them off when that happens. My meeting my rules.

I find that if I do those things not only are the meetings productive, often times they will end ahead of schedule. And everyone appreciates getting time given back to them so the meetings are seen as productive.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Don't forget to schedule time for...

[rnturn]

... the inevitable foul-ups in getting the call set up. Skype isn't working on the organizer's laptop. The speaker phone in the conference room doesn't work worth a damn. People's headsets cause interference. External conversations from the open-office setting bleed into the call. The conference room where the manager is sitting has lousy acoustics and participants cannot understand what's being said. If the damned call gets to the first agenda item--assuming that there actually is an agenda--within the first 15 minutes of the scheduled time, everyone sees it as a miracle. You can't solve these problems ahead of time because the conference room where the people who aren't working remotely will be participating is booked solid for the entire day.

This guy is a bit... helpless?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's no need for the conf call, then he needs to tell the organiser that. So many business problems like this are because of a complete lack of basic communication skill like this. But it actually sounds like he doesn't realise the meeting is needed - other people might need the meeting to ask questions and get clarification on things for their part in the event.

Secondly if he wants to run the call rather than the organiser (and that way, he can control who gets to ask what), then he needs to tell the organiser that, and then run the call - i.e. send out the agenda beforehand, then in the call speak up when other people deviate from it.

Also upgrade from 20th century phones to something modern. Like a computer with a conferencing software (gotomeeting, zoom etc) . You can see the invite list, which should have an indicator for who is talking, and share your desktop, showing a copy of the agenda, which really helps keep the meeting focused and useful.

Re: I think so

[Anonymous Coward]

quit talking to yourself then.

Here's what I think

[OneHundredAndTen]

That conference calls exist, to a large extent, in order to justify some jobs that would otherwise be unjustifiable. That's also true of many positions in the managerial world, whose goal seems to be to artificially generate work alone to justify the existence of such positions.

No!

[GerryGilmore]

It's WAY more fun to put the call on hold (not mute). That way, your company's "on-hold music" will be piped into the call overwhelming everyone else.

Re:No!

[PrimaryConsult]

I once accidentally put a meeting on hold when I got another call during a conference. No one knew how to mute me, so the entire call of about 15 people (including 2 high level execs) stopped for about 10 minutes while I worked on another problem. I heard secondhand that they kept saying "who is this! Mute your line!" (not realizing it was hold music) followed by attempting to talk over it. Some tried to rap their comments to the beat.

This must have happened frequently enough because the hold music was eventually reprogrammed out of our phones.

/. seems to have really terrible meetings

[Headw1nd]

When the subject of meetings comes up here I am always baffled by the number of comments where people complain about meetings. Am I alone at working somewhere where meetings generally have point and result in important decisions being made? I can only think of one meeting I have attended in the past year I would call a waste of time (and that one was hosted by a client) The rest were by and large necessary in order to proceed on projects. Is this because I don't work in software development?

Re:/. seems to have really terrible meetings

[cascadingstylesheet]

When the subject of meetings comes up here I am always baffled by the number of comments where people complain about meetings. Am I alone at working somewhere where meetings generally have point and result in important decisions being made? I can only think of one meeting I have attended in the past year I would call a waste of time (and that one was hosted by a client) The rest were by and large necessary in order to proceed on projects. Is this because I don't work in software development?

No, you're not alone. Most of our meetings are purposeful and useful.

In fact, I'd say the conference call meetings top the list of useful meetings. They are either a meeting with a client or partner, or else a meeting that is unavoidable despite people being out.

CCs are the worst, except for everything else

[SaBumNim]

If you follow a few simple rules regarding keeping the calls on the subject at hand, there's hardly a better way to communicate a single message to multiple people. A mass email, with questions that may have to be answered multiple times to different people, is less efficient. The other part of this is, conference calls create some amount of accountability. The minutes should say that the following attendees were on the call and we decided to go in X direction. There should be complete understanding as to the direction of the group at that point.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Contrary to Betteridge...

[DavidHumus]

Yes.

Just do what the boss ...

[CaptainDork]

... says.

Standups are worse

[Anonymous Coward]

People *still* take forever, and on top of it we all have to stand. The whole thing is a waste of time. Group meetings should be conducted by text or not at all. Bonus points: you get a free transcript of the meeting when it's over.

Time and place for everything

[mschaffer]

There's a time and place for everything. Like any other tool, it needs to be used properly.
Just because something can be abused or misused is not a good reason to abandon it completely.

What is the alternative?

[petes_PoV]

And no, I don't mean for a distributed, geographically diverse, meeting. I mean an opportunity for an office worker to pick up their phone (thus preventing anyone else from calling them) and make like they are working for an hour or two without ever actually doing a single dam' thing.

For many workers actually doing nothing for an extended period is the biggest contribution they will make to the success or profitability of their employer. These people should not be prevented from doing what little they can!

Panic "Stay On Until Fixed" conference calls

[grep -v '.*' *]

Not your every-day conference call.

I worked for a company: different people, servers, functions, time zones, all that. But Production Control had a special group that everyone (EVERYONE) kowtowed to: the EEC (Emergency something Control.) PC had monitoring hooks into everything, and had change control info for outages. Anything that broke that wasn't on their list got people paged anytime of the day or night to fix it.

Depending on the type of outage or if the busted-item tech asked for assistance, EEC woke up and starting calling in resources from supporting groups. You couldn't refuse and you couldn't hang up. And if they needed help, it went recursive. If enough time passed, they'd even start grabbing upper-level executives. You'd watch your stuff to make sure it was working correctly, respond to suggestions and make your own, but otherwise put them on mute and just listen to the background babble. You ONLY got to hang up when they let you go. (or your phone died, and they gave you a few minutes to find a second one.)

It was extremely wasteful of people's time but had one redeeming quality -- the problem got FIXED because all of the people with moving parts were either on the call or could be added. Spent many a night listening to weird problems obviously not my fault, others "next door" where I could have affected them, and a few times where I (or equipment) *WAS* the problem and even a time when I started the call.

What;\'s a conference call?

[WinstonWolfIT]

An 84" screen with live video remotes has been standard in these parts for a few years.The remotes get live video of the local speaking.

Re:What;\'s a conference call?

[erlee]

Yup, same here.

Our conference calls are a complete disaster

[nehumanuscrede]

As my company has transitioned to VOIP systems, the lag and / or voice quality or any given participant is anywhere from perfect to
abysmal depending on where they sit and / or how they're connected. ( Corporate office big pipe, remote worker via VPN, etc )

As a result, during any brief period of silence, everyone believes it's ok to start talking and the entire conference call devolves into
undecipherable gibberish as everyone begins talking over one another.

Then there are the givens: The crying baby or barking dog in the background, the guy who is talking into a muted mike, or the host who
tries to mute themselves, but accidentally hangs up instead. Tearing down the entire call.

Takes fifteen minutes just to get everyone back on because half the folks on the call aren't listening to it and, thus, aren't aware it even
dropped. Or, they're on three simultaneous calls and are just bouncing between them periodically.

Add to that fact some folks believe they should convene a conference call with a bazillion participants at the last minute over the most
minute bullshit and some days your sole job function is to sit on conference calls all day long.

Then the company wants to know why you're not getting any real work done :|

Corporate jobs are a GD three ring circus. . . . .

Written by a wanker

[OneSmartFellow]

Yeah, most (85% maybe) meetings would be better as e-mails - just disseminate the information.
Some meetings are productive- good managers make productive meetings.
Most meetings are shit -  bad managers (at least 75% of all managers) have crap meetings.
Where's the news ?

Half-duplex

[hackertourist]

The most annoying issue about conference calls using Skype and/or a speakerphone: when you start speaking, audio from the other end is cut off, which leads to a lot of collisions and garbled words.

I found a solution for me

[Opportunist]

And it sure did draw the ire of those that go to meetings to pass time without having to do anything productive. When you have meetings with a large and heterogeneous group (from marketing to security), planning is everything. You do not need all of the people to be there for all topics. When you discuss database layout, marketing isn't required. When you discuss corporate identity and choice of color schemes, security isn't required. Plan accordingly. And yes, that also means planning the topics and putting them down on the schedule. To the minute, if need be. Yes, I had meetings where I invited people to be there from 10:20 to 10:30. Most topics can be discussed in 10 minutes. Sometimes you need to discuss details in more time, but usually not with the whole team but with a select few. Schedule a meeting afterwards and discuss it, but don't waste the time of the others present.

It does put some stress on the people because they have to present their topic in only a few minutes and come to a conclusion in only a few more, but it does speed up the process considerably and reduces downtime to a minimum. It also takes people a while to get used to it, it happened more than once in the early meetings that people came 10 minutes late only to find out that they could as well turn around and leave because the part that they were involved in was done and gone.

In the meantime, though, this works pretty well. It is WAY more work for you as the coordinator because the order of topics is crucial and you have to know exactly who you need for what topic, and people can't just come to the meeting with an "here we are now, entertain us" attitude but need to prepare their stuff, too, so they can present it in a timely manner because minutes actually matter now, but it also means that you can get more into an one hour meeting now than you could stuff in 10 such meetings before. Not to mention that people don't waste their time staring holes into the wall because they're bored out of their skull since it is of no concern to the one responsible for security whether the front end color is this or that shade of green.

The importance of a meeting

[Z00L00K]

The importance of a meeting is inversely important to the number of participants.

Best Satirical Representation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about the best satire I know of on the subject:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/maycie/this-is-what-a-conference-call-would-look-like-in-real-life

https://theamericangenius.com/business-news/hilarious-video-conference-call-in-real-life-parody-part-two/

Different source sites for Parts 1 & 2, sorry!

Don't Hang Up

[itguy01]

While many conference calls can "go of the rails", they can in fact be a useful tool. Be it an old-fashioned con call or a newer video con call they do allow communication between geographically separated individuals. I am on sometimes 5 or more con calls a day. If run correctly, they are still beneficial. If you have a "moderator" or "host" defined and they play the role it is still a viable means of communication. There are a few calls I have been on where there has been an agenda and a proper host who kept the call on task and we accomplished quite a bit. I have also been on ones that were a waste of time. Until technology figures out a reliable way for tone to be conveyed via e-mail, con/video calls will always have a place in the business world.

Easy. Just mute everyone by default.

[bistromath007]

We already have something to reduce conversational entropy when our natural hierarchical socialization isn't enough. It's called parliamentary procedure, and you can have it on a conference call by having the organizer (or committee chair, if the tool you're using allows the assignment of roles) control the floor according to that procedure. Mute people who don't have the floor, require people to ask for it in the text chat, and appoint somebody to record minutes in the text chat. Fixed.

MOD PARENT TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please break the rules once and mod this to 6?

Calls i am on are productive

[alphad0g]

It sounds to me like your environment is the problem, not the meeting method.

If the calls are worthless then you have a culture at work that has decided that worthless is tolerated. If you are only a participant and the call is worthless, don't go. If someone tells you that you are needed, then get an agenda and find out why you are needed before accepting the call.

You are in charge of your day, so let others know if they are wasting your time. Don't blame the conference call as the culprit, it is the people and the culture.

Our company requires webcams...

[erlee]

We require webcams be activated for conference calls. Exceptions need to be approved by the host or your manager, but it's an exception... not a rule. If you're not on the webcam, your manager gets an email about it..

And play mute roulette

[swb]

On larger calls with a lot of fairly anonymous people we will play mute roulette.

You mash the mute button really fast a bunch of times without looking and then make some strange noise. The "loser" is the one who doesn't have the phone on mute.

Re:And play mute roulette

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm, so you could just mash an even number of times. Then the losers are just the ones who can't count?

Hello

[PPH]

This is Lenny.

Mulituser FaceTime...

[TheFakeTimCook]

...Will solve the "Who Arrived/Who's Talking?" questions. At least for meetings of up to 32 participants (which covers most practical meetings!)

That is, once it is actually WORKING... ;-)

They can be made to work

[Anonymous Coward]

An effective conference call needs a clear chair, agenda, queue management, speaker identification, and recording mechanism -- ideally a side chat session which people have to be on. Minimally hand-raising (queue management) and speakerID are needed. The problems identified here are all addressable and have been addressed. The un-addressable problem with conference calls is their synchronous nature, which requires everyone to be awake and available at the same time. A call with participants on the US west coast, in Europe, and in Japan or China, is almost impossible to schedule.

Can we do conference chats instead?

[Applehu Akbar]

I'm no longer in corporate life, but I had to undergo innumerable time-wasting conference calls back in the day. Usually we would have to wait for Laura from Accounting to unfutz her headset, wait for Chad from Marketing to finish his three-microbrew client lunch, and then work around the problem of Karl the Codemeister beaming in from the München affiliate and having trouble with the international connection. Typically it took about twenty minutes of "Can you hear me" in a variety of thick accents before business cold commence.

Why not replace conference calls with conference group texting? You circulate a detailed agenda and then go from there. The advantages would be:

1. Text conversations are not interrupters.
2. No need to wait for people who aren't ready yet until some critical input is needed from one such person. You can then indicate the specific nature of the input. When the missing person appears, he can easily scroll back to know what has happened so far.
3. Text unambiguously communicates part numbers, DHL destinations, lines of code, and links to external videos and PDFs. Try getting these right over a voice line when the Georgian, the Geordie and the German are the ones talking.
4. Everyone has an automatic and instant transcript of the meeting.
5. Text excels at getting through over degraded communication links, even if that means SMS from a hotel room in Prague.

Re:Can we do conference chats instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you have been out of the corporate world for a while. That is exactly what "collaboration" apps like Webex Teams, Microsoft Teams and Slack do. And you can use a computer, which is far easier than trying to do it on your small smartphone.

Re:Can we do conference chats instead?

[Applehu Akbar]

So why is this discussion about conference calls?

Re:I think you should hang all up

[Anonymous Coward]

Meeting value is inversely proportional to number of attendees.

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you propose that you coordinate a v1.0 product launch that involves 50+ teams located across the globe without conference calls?

Are there any adults left in this industry, or is it truly all just spoiled, arrogant, hipster brats who think they are being 'disruptive' when in reality they are just sophomoric?

When BS gets in, get out.

[ebvwfbw]

Had a blow hard on the phone recently. Invited myself and others and we had nothing to do with it as it turned out. I asked, then kicked other people off then myself. Dumbass tried to set up another meeting. I put the kabosh on that too.

What's 2+2? "well you see it depends on what two you are talking about ...bla bla bla bla..."
Me - It's 4. The answer is 4 you fool!

People still use conference calls?

[Tomahawk]

We moved to BlueJeans some time ago, so all calls like this are now multi-participant video conference calls. When someone is talking, you can see them talking (or, where they elect to not share video, you can still see their name).
Yes, it likely still has some of the same issues that conference calls can have, but many are mitigated, and when you have people all around the world it can be the only way (apart from flying everyone in to one place, for a 1 hour meeting) to get everyone together.

So, yes, end conference phone calls, and join the video conference call evolution.