This has the veneer of “push back on obligations” but seems like the foundation is more like pushing the author’s own preferences over other people’s.
Why is this article telling us to “evade Easter brunches” but also telling us to have “seasonal block parties” as an alternative? I get the impression it’s because the author doesn’t like one but does like the other. The article tells us to “decline invitations”; does that mean that the people the author invites to their seasonal block parties should decline? Is the author being unreasonable in inviting people to an event?
I think it’s good to be mindful of where you spend your time, but this article doesn’t really convey anything useful in this regard. It’s more a list of things the author likes and dislikes.
They also suggest "scheduling something together you’d actually enjoy doing rather than “hanging out”", but what if I like just hanging out? One of the best and most memorable evenings I spent with a friend was just ambling around the city.
Yeah, definitely lots of personal preferences embedded in there haha
Personally, I find it easier to grok essays that focus on specifics. I can extract patterns out of examples, but it's harder to accurately do the reverse
I write in second-person because it's shorter, not because it's prescriptive. I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to soften things
I have a sneaking suspicion the author’s next article will be something along the lines of “people who are worse engineers than me keep getting promoted, and it’s not fair”.
100% - our daily stand-ups are a waste of time usually, but we have fantastic team camaraderie and I think us shooting the breeze for 5 minutes every day is a huge part of this.
If your stand-ups are a waste of time, consider making it less status-y and more collaborative. We lengthed ours a bit and encouraged more dialog rather than just focusing on the traditional 3 questions (what did you work on since last standup, what are you doing before next standup, and where are you blocked) and it's been much more productive.
> Decline invitations by default. When you’re essential to an event, its host will notify you.
> Play pranks and plan ruses!
Be a mysterious, opaque asshole.
Create more work for everyone you work with.
And when you do show up, make sure that nobody knows whether you're on the level or not.
Okay, that last one is uncharitable. Being memorable and fun is a valuable thing, and something I strive for, but as John Scalzi has pointed out, "the failure mode of 'clever' is 'asshole'."
It’s exhausting working with people that don’t show up to meetings. The rest of the team is all on the same page already and the special person needs everything explained to them individually because they never showed up to the meeting where the discussion happened. These people always seem to flame out of jobs while feeling they are too good for them.
But not as the full-on maximization goal the author pushes. Doing that will severely limit you.
Other things to consider with meetings and gatherings:
Might I add value to others, either by bringing knowledge or being present to take on tasks?
Might be being seen as present & participating benefit you in the longer term?
What surprises (by definition, things you don't yet know about) might happen at the event?
Might hanging out with a friend or acquaintance be helpful for them?
Defaulting to not doing each of these things at one time or another has been cause for regret in my life. I'd advise at least asking that set of questions and others before actually not accepting an invitation.
I certainly appreceate the sentiment behind this, but I'm not sure that opting out of all group activities is going to work all that well for the overall team.
Yeah, standup is a tax, but it's also a little bit important to see and be seen, and to know what is going on (unless you can convince your whole team to adopt this work style)
Completely agree. Sabotaging the team practices won't get you far.
That's exactly the problem with implementing things like standup and retros.
You're confining information that would be shared asynchronously and in written form to a boring meeting nobody is interested in listening to.
I hate standups, I won't listen to your update, if I need something I'll ask in the team channel.
Before standups were a thing people just wrote when they finished something in a channel. They didn't waste an entire day and waited for a meeting to say it in an effort to appear busy.
Before retros were a thing people just wrote whatever problem they had in the room and people could discuss problems in real time. Now they waste an entire month and then write a passive aggressive post-it on a Miro board - which most likely will end up ignored because look at how many others action points we have.
People adapt to situations and they don't need formal processes to act correctly.
If they do need them, you should fire heads that can't think.
People over processes was Agile's mantra, why have we forgotten that?
Nowadays "agile" is worse than waterfall: same load in processes and bureaucracy, none of the planning.
> I hate standups, I won't listen to your update, if I need something I'll ask in the team channel.
If you won't listen to my update, why should I read and respond to your question?
Please spend five minutes of your day actually working with your coworkers, instead of making extra work for them later on because you can't be bothered to sit still and listen for five minutes.
> If you won't listen to my update, why should I read and respond to your question?
I think there is a different perspective that you are not considering: one hates to listen to your and other N people updates, every single day. And, most of it, is not new or not correlated to one's work.
> Please spend five minutes of your day actually working with your coworkers, instead of making extra work for them later on because you can't be bothered to sit still and listen for five minutes.
Again, there is another perspective: because one wants to give you enough attention, one wants to have a one-on-one communication, independently of the time-box or shallowness of stand-up meetings.
When I was junior, I used to think that (daily) stand-up meetings were an incredible idea. But on time, I realised they are busy work and do not represent, at all, "working with your coworkers", as you said. Actually, quite the contrary: it is shallow work, and that isn't as relevant as the deep work coworkers do in, for example, pair debugging sessions.
I remember the day, sometime after I transitioned from high school to university, when I realized I was an adult, with agency and the power to decide whether or not I needed to go to class. I had just spent the last 12+ years of my life in the prison-like U.S. K-12 public school system where every limb movement was dictated by grown-ups. Now, here I am, with the ability to actually decide how I need to spend my time! I didn’t always make the right decision, but got better at it as I went through university.
I think some people forget this when they go into their first professional office job, and revert back to primary school mentality: I have to go to this useless meeting! Boss says I need to be there, so what can I do?? This “all hands” is required. We forget we are grownups with agency and the ability to set boundaries and expectations with others.
A lot of junior employees feel they simply have to attend every stupid meeting that appears on their calendar. When asked, I advise them that if they don’t think there is anything to learn, and you don’t have anything to contribute, simply don’t go. Nobody is going to send you to the principal’s office. I show them my calendar where I am double and triple-booked every half hour of every day: I decline meetings constantly! It’s not a big deal.
It's hard for me to decline meetings because I'm always afraid people will make wrong decisions. My job was very hard before I got invited to the meetings, as I had to run around correcting these decisions after the fact. Now at least I can catch them at inception, and minimize the damage.
I spent a chunk of my early career in this particular rut, and at some point you hopefully realise that it doesn't matter all that much. No one person (except maybe the CEO) is on the hook for every decision being correct, and even the CEO is only responsible in a macro sense. Trying to take on the role of perfect-decision-maker is either only going to burn you out, or alientate your whole team.
I'll still try and point everyone in the right direction, but if the team really wants to chase their tail for a month? I'm still going home at 5, they'll figure it out eventually.
Unfortunately, in some situations it does matter. There's a very visible change in the organization from last year, when I was excluded from meetings, to today, where I (or similar senior people from the team I recruited) are included.
It's been very striking, the teams are executing much faster, we're building better things, the engineers seem happier and take more initiative, and the software is higher quality.
Yes, any decision in itself probably doesn't matter much, but an accumulated year of single decisions across the whole company matters greatly.
I am a bit familiar with this pattern. I think this and what the OP describes are the two sides of a similar coin.
On the OP side we have a culture that is too inclusive whereas in your case it is a culture of not breing inclusive enough. Not inclusive enough as in not involving the correct people needed to evaluate a decision.
But the OP doesn't limit themselves to business, they Aldo mention brunches, birthdayd and other non work events.
From my cursiry reading, I think they are more interested in making the point that one shouldn't join random events just because they where invited but rather evaluate whether participation is meaningful first.
That's a fair point, you're right. I was narrowing it down to a business context, because usually the consequences of missing one party or outing aren't as severe.
I do, but that takes too long. What we did instead is hired more senior people, to spread the responsibility around, which now works fairly well. This has reduced the amount of meetings I feel like I should be in, but hasn't nullified it.
We continue to fix the seniority problems where we find them, though, so hopefully it'll all be working properly soon.
Yes! I'd very much advise every young person (who can) to start a business right after school instead going to work as an antidote for the oppression ingrained by more than decade of school. Especially the kind of business that provides services for other businesses.
Seeing "grown ups" in contexts where they struggle and mess up and talking to them as equal and having ability to reject them if they want something you don't provide was very important.
> I think some people forget this when they go into their first professional office job, and revert back to primary school mentality: I have to go to this useless meeting! Boss says I need to be there, so what can I do??
Because often, that's exactly how people are being treated.
There's still a very strong trend in management philosophy that says that Manager Knows Best, and their direct reports just need to do whatever they say, Or Else. And any pushback against that is just going to be seen as insubordination—proof that that employee is a troublemaker who needs to be disciplined.
It's a self-perpetuating philosophy because of that, and it can be very hard to convince a manager who's deeply invested in the belief that he's a superior being compared to his subordinates that this philosophy is neither correct nor productive.
I guess I'm pretty cynical, but I presume you need to be aware of when attendance is taken in all of these contexts. The big townhalls are obviously ego trips for the senior leaders with little to no operational information of use to the peons. But if you get known as someone who doesn't attend them, then you'll probably be known as someone who doesn't respect leadership.
Maybe I’ve been really lucky to have great jobs my entire career, but I’ve never worked anywhere where anyone gave a shit whether you joined a 20+ person “town hall” or “all hands” meeting. It’s not like the managers were up in a balcony with a telescope looking to make sure everyone was there.
My criteria have worked out pretty well for me so far: 1. Do I need to contribute the the content or decision making of this meeting? 2. Is there anything important to my job that I can only learn by attending this meeting (as opposed to reading the notes/slides later)? If 1 OR 2, I try my best to attend. This has gotten me through about 25 years pretty well.
Hey new social norms to replace the old social norms. The old way was so oppressive and conformist. The new way is so delightful...can't wait to receive some arts and crafts from someone who is too important to attend a meeting!
Setting boundaries is one of the healthiest things you can do, so I have no argument with anyone who has concisely laid out their personal boundaries and approach to life as in this post...
But at the same time, recognizing when the organization you are a part of is simply not a match for your needs is also important. If you need an article like this to help you navigate your current role... you are probably in the wrong job.
I have the opposite sentiment. Most important are relations to me. everytime you decline an event, you drift one step away from a person or a group.
However, you can decide that people are not important and cut them out all together. But if you decide that someone is important you can't pick and choose.
You mean if I decline enough, I’ll stop getting invited? A dream!
I have a bone to pick with our “ticket estimations” meeting. It’s a waste of time, we don’t even use the estimations for any planning purposes. We just sit there, reading tickets out loud as a group, saying pseudo random numbers that inevitably average out to a 2, 3, or 4.
I’m convinced we’d have better estimations if we just nixed the meeting and sampled estimations from a normal distribution.
more like, if you don't attend you'll get expelled from the group. Meaning you'll get fired.
But then again. if you don't like the group, your job, go on a quest to find someone else to spend you time with. that is probably the best investment you can do.
Those kind of ticket estimation meetings are always a waste of time. Have one person do the estimate and then follow up (in aggregate) how correct the estimations were. Hopefully you will get better over time.
Wouldn't work, in many Japanese companies (but I don't actually disagree with the premise of the essay).
The Japanese have a consensus-driven process that is basically fueled by meetings. If you don't attend meetings (often, as the chap sleeping in the corner), then your department won't have a say in the project.
It's the fact that someone from your team was there. They don't have to participate.
It's quite often that a manager needs to be in Meeting A, but he wants his team to have a say in the project that is running Meeting B, so he grabs some random schlub from the engineering team to go to Meeting B, just to have a representative of the team there. Said schlub has no idea what's going on, so they catch up on some shut-eye. No one even gives it a second thought. Really surprised me, the first time I ran into it.
This is pretty awful work advice for the average person. Most people aren't Feynman.
Taking this approach can free up your calendar, and it might even work out okay for you IF you are already indespensbile and you just produce so much value for your company that they'll put up with it.
For everyone else, you might end up with your calendar permanantly cleared.
As for the aspects relating to personal life, the author sounds like they could use some help.
I wish I had been given advice like this when I was younger. As an introvert, I've learned my lesson to decline most social events as I got older. In my 20's and 30's, social event was almost a "YES", despite not wanting to participate. Now, it's almost always "NO", except for wedding, funeral, birthday for family members or close friends. I also decline any social company meeting, but I'm required to be present for work-related meetings and standups.
I have a formula that's working pretty well for us.
My wife and I host a movie night every other week at our place, with a small WhatsApp group of friends who are free to both drop by unannounced and bring friends of their own unannounced. It's made clear from the outset that this is a zero-tolerance household: No alcohol, no drugs. We prep enough dinner for however many people might show up, which is around 7 people these days. We do not reveal the movie until the showing of, both to add a layer of mystery to the whole thing and just because people who are that picky about their movies are probably not a good fit for the rest of the visitors. A little selectivity goes a long way :)
I'm quite liking the crowd we are beginning to gather for this low-key event. Monetary costs to the guests range somewhere between "free" and "the bag of chips you decided to bring"; costs to us are usually under $40 total.
Everyone who has come by has enjoyed it, even if they decide once is enough and they have better things to do with their time (no offense!). The routineliness of the event has been a great way to quickly build a new friend group in a city neither of us have much history in.
Among our regulars, we seem to disproportionately attract friends who are either full time employed or taking their studies quite seriously, both of which are indicators of quite good things. It's likely we'll have to change the event once kids enter the picture, but I'm sure by that point we'll have a whole different world of socialization options open up to us.
Sounds misaligned, why would you agree to mentor people if you don't want to do that? Alternatively, if you want to mentor people, why would you decline their requests for meeting them?
Why is this article telling us to “evade Easter brunches” but also telling us to have “seasonal block parties” as an alternative? I get the impression it’s because the author doesn’t like one but does like the other. The article tells us to “decline invitations”; does that mean that the people the author invites to their seasonal block parties should decline? Is the author being unreasonable in inviting people to an event?
I think it’s good to be mindful of where you spend your time, but this article doesn’t really convey anything useful in this regard. It’s more a list of things the author likes and dislikes.