Manager's Schedule vs. Maker's Schedule

theodp writes "Ever wonder why you and the boss don't see eye-to-eye on the importance of meetings? Paul Graham explains that there are Maker Schedules (coder) and Manager Schedules (PHB), and the two are very different. With each day neatly cut into one-hour intervals, the Manager Schedule is for bosses and is tailor-made for schmoozing. Unfortunately, it spells disaster for people who make things, like programmers and writers, who generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour, says Graham, since that's barely enough time to get started. So if you fall into the Maker camp, adds Graham, you better hope your boss is smart enough to recognize that you need long chunks of time to work in. How's that working out in your world?" Ironically enough, I have a meeting to attend in three minutes.

Block it off

[r_jensen11]

If you need heads-down time, block it off on your calendar. That's the easiest and first thing one should do if there is open space on their calendar and they are complaining about constantly being interrupted. Of course, this doesn't help when the person interrupting you is sitting on the other side of your cube's wall....

It's called a fake 4-hour meeting

[WmLGann]

...and it's the coder's best friend.

What is it with meetings?

[Darkness404]

I never have understood why managers love meetings. I mean, it kills productivity, usually ends up being boring or unrelated and in general a waste of time.

Re:What is it with meetings?

[umghhh]

Well if you had thought otherwise you would be have been a manager not a maker.

Single biggest frustration for many coders

[judolphin]

As a computer programmer with an MBA (please don't burn me at the stake -- I'm a coder, not a manager, and have no desire to be a manager), I understand both sides of the story, and it isn't pretty. Meetings are crucial, but they need to follow these general rules:

(a.) As much as possible, have a single "meeting day". This article explains why -- programming is not a "stop-and-pick-up-where-you-left-off" profession. So, in other words, as much as possible, ensure all "administrative overhead" tasks, such as meetings, are blocked together.

(b.) Meetings must be limited to information that *everyone* *needs* to know.

If you follow these rules, meetings are a Good Thing.

Problem is, no one follows those rules, because following them is much more easily said than done.

A 2-hour meeting can ruin a whole day

[SuurMyy]

In my experience having to go through a meeting that requires a lot of explaining and problem-solving can render me more or less useless for the rest of the day, programming-wise. In some way that I don't know how to explain the meetings eat up the very concentration that I need for programming. Perhaps it takes so much out of a programmer when you try to understand someone instead of something you can logically deduce.

I dunno. It's still a mystery to me what one meeting can do to you sometimes.

Re:'Maker Logic' seems natural to me.

[xs650]

"Where I used to work, we worked on a "Point System" where 1 Point was equal to about 1 Programmer-Day, and 8 Points were equal to 8 Programmer Days."

Unfortunately, in the PHB world that means that if a woman can have baby in 9 months, 9 women can have a baby in one month.

Micro-meetings over regular ones

[RabidMonkey]

I find, as do others I work with, that the little one-off, "micro meetings" held around the office every day are very useful. Instead of getting the X people needed to make a decision into a scheduled room, grab them and stand in front of a white board (or whatever) in an ad-hoc fashion. Or, as we do, we all turn around in our chairs, discuss what needs doing, and get back to work in a matter of seconds/minutes, instead of scheduling a full meeting.

I feel like when a meeting is scheduled, the time leading up to the meeting is seldom useful (oh, meeting in 15 minutes, better start slowing down/not start any more work), then the time after the meeting loses some function as there is the inevitable discussion of what we talked about, the creation of minutes, followup emails, etc. On a somewhat similar note, booking a meeting for a 1/2 hour instead of an hour forces people to work faster, and cuts down some of the wasted chit chat time.

We just moved into a new office here, and it has a large number of meeting rooms, which is great. But, even better, there are quite a few "break out" areas, with chairs and a white board, but no door, and no reservations. So when you need to get a couple peoples ideas, you steal a breakout room, and whiteboard what you need. Use your mobile to take a picture of the whiteboard, erase, and move on to the next task. Plus, these meetings tend to be over quicker.

Another trick I've learned .. if you get invited to a meeting, and you don't really feel like you need to be there, just decline it. If the meeting organizer really wants you there, they'll invite you agian, or call up/email and say "oh, we'd really like you there". but it saves you from sitting through a meeting where you just zone out and waste an hour.

Overall, there is great value in meetings, but only if they are kept to the time required to resolve whatever you're there for, and only if they pertain to everyone there. It's pointless to invite 2 different groups to a meeting, so one has to listen to the other talk and be bored, then switch. Focus on goals, invite only the people who need to be there, and get back to work.

Re:What is it with meetings?

[PPH]

It justifies their existence. I've worked in matrix organizations where there are four or five 'dimensions', each represented by their own chain of management. Each employs a team of drones whose only is to chase around between meetings and keep up to date on what's going on.

Start eliminating meetings and pretty soon the executives won't have any place to employ their idiot son-in-laws.

Re:What is it with meetings?

[greatica]

I'm both a coder and a manager. When I first started, the meetings drove me bonkers. After wasting enough time, I decided to ditch them altogether with my boss's approval so I could finish a big project.

I learned my lesson quickly. After each meeting that I skipped, my boss would show up in my office (effectively destroying the block of time I was saving), and then he'd tell me about 5 more projects brought up in the meeting that were automatically approved. More work was actually created because I wasn't there to shoot down off-track and silly ideas in these meetings.

I started showing up at meetings pronto to "keep the company on track with IT and software projects". It was worth it to waste 8 hours a week in meetings to avoid months upon months on projects initiated by people who had no clue how technology works.

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[eples]

I'm going to lose my mod points to reply, but I wanted to add a third item to the list:



(c.) Meeting needs to have an agenda, preferably distributed in advance


This cuts down on frivolous meetings as well because there is usually a stated goal or a defined list of topics and people can come prepared.

Fight back with outlook

[krakround]

I schedule 'programming time' into outlook.

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[strimpster]

I find that a lot of times managers like to feel important, so they force you to sit in a meeting where they tell you everything that they are working on and want to tell you way more than you need to know. There is nothing I hate more than being interrupted when I am developing some code to sit in a meeting, and then find out that I didn't need to be there at all and now my time was just completely wasted...

Re:Documenting your time

[slashdot_commentator]

Its called logging your time. All consultants (or aspiring freelancers) should be able to do this. Its how you generate billable hours. And you log by task/crisis completed. Pretend you're Kirk, and you're filling in the "Captain's Log".

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[PitaBred]

I agree wholeheartedly, with one expansion to (b.):

Meetings must be limited to information that *everyone in the meeting* needs to know

I suppose that might be obvious to a programmer, but it's not always obvious to the PHB types ;) If the meeting is applicable to what you're doing, you should be there. If not, you shouldn't. I've seen lots of places get off-track in both directions.

Meetings can be useful

[TheLink]

There are very good reasons to have meetings, and meetings can be useful when done well. Just google for stuff about "effective meetings".

You could have meetings to introduce people to each other, meetings to get information, meetings to decide on stuff, meetings for brainstorming, make important announcements - for instance if Mr CEO is going to lay off lots of staff, I feel it's rather bad form to just send an email.

The main problem with meetings is when the people involved don't know what the meeting is for- one might think it's for brainstorming, another might think it's for deciding (build a consensus on direction to go). So the meeting could go on for hours without achieving anything useful. The people involved need to know the agenda and reason for a meeting, especially the person chairing the meeting :).

Now once you get that done right, there's still room for greater efficiency.

With conventional meetings you use up Y hours of X people, though most of the actual participant "brain usage time" is only a few minutes. This is analogous to a program running for X hours of "real time" but only using 5 minutes of CPU time. Conventional meetings have the problem of wasting 2 hours of 10 people's time.

So if I were a boss, I might "encourage" my employees to use instant messaging for certain types of meetings where possible. That way I can have them in multiple meetings at the same time (bwahaha!). :)

The chatlogs could then be archived (automatically? ) to somewhere where I can quickly see what they've been up to (and for official record). I don't care if they're doing other stuff during those meetings - as long as they can still contribute usefully (I'd prefer to hire people who can read and understand things fast).

Thing is you can't have such meetings throughout the day + every day, since many things require full concentration. If people can't drive properly while chatting over the cellphone, I'm sure they can't do certain work related tasks while being in a meeting. So meeting times where possible should be restricted to certain parts of the day, or to certain days.

I doubt attending a meeting requires that much concentration, you could probably idle a fair bit even if you're in 3 "instant messaging" meetings at the same time.

You could even go for a coffee/toilet break, or take an important phone call without wasting everyone's time when you "return" (with conventional meetings there's often the repeating the past X minutes) - you just scroll up to see what you've missed. You do need to say that you've gone "AFK" though, so that the rest don't waste time trying to ask you questions that require immediate response.

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[jellomizer]

Not as obvious as you may think. Managers sometimes keeps programmers in the meeting as a sanity check, What is worse wasting an hour and being board at a meeting. Or after an hour long meeting with management they come up with an idea that is impossible or difficult to program. And have to do it anyways as it has already been sold to the customer during that meeting.

Re:Ironic?

[AP31R0N]

Pedantic is French for "stop making me aware of my ignorance!". Grammar snob/nazi and prescriptivist, likewise.

Don't apologize for correcting someone's error. If they are offended, that's their insecurity.

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[John Hasler]

d) Meetings need to have minutes summarizing what was discussed and what was decided. Managers tend to remember what they find it convenient to remember, not what actually happened. If necessary take notes yourself.

Re:A 2-hour meeting can ruin a whole day

[hattig]

Imagine that instead of a 2 hour meeting, it was a two hour teleconference with a horde of managers at the other end, where you were needed, but only for brief intervals, and politeness / relationship management required you to be there. Also imagine that you don't have desk phones because they interrupt the shared working area and you're a coder so you can use IM. So you have to do the teleconference in a room without a computer, just you and the telecon device.

That's a DAY killer. If that was scheduled to 2pm, you'd spend your morning dreading it, lunchtime dreading it, the meeting dying and going slightly insane, and then afterwards recovering.

You might as well turn up in the morning, say hello to the boss to show you turned up, then fuck off down the pub until 2pm, come back in a state where you can handle fools and buffoons and funny accents, and then go straight home afterwards.

And I tell you, getting a whole day's pay just for a two hour teleconference would still be being underpaid, per hour.

WHY THE FUCK ARE TWO HOUR TELECONFERENCES SCHEDULED AT 2PM. You can't do shit between 4pm and 5pm. You can't do shit between 1pm and 2pm. Too short a timespan. You might as well fill the day with other meetings (call it a 'meeting day') and never even turn on your PC. Or you could cut your throat.

And someone nicked my gameboy micro, so I don't even have that for teleconferences anymore.

Re:Meeting?

[Blakey Rat]

Hah! You think that's bad? Try going to your user page on an iPhone wanting to find out which posts have been modded-- OH WAIT YOU CAN'T because the page flows ALL wrong and the moderation scores are obstructed by a pointless right-hand DIV you can't turn off.

Oh and just as a tip: "hover" controls, like those used to add/remove tags to posts on the Slashdot homepage, DON'T WORK ON DEVICES WITH NO MOUSE. Like an iPhone, or Tablet PC. Please, everybody, stop using these.

Re:What is it with meetings?

[Maxo-Texas]

Managers are usually not oriented towards your work.
They are usually acting as a worker bee for someone way above them.

Also, when I moved from programmer into management, I was amazed at the amount of sausage making that we protect the developers from.
Projects that are high priority- yet canceled without ever wasting your time.

Plus a lot of coordination and orchestration.

A good manager frees their developers to get work done and shields them from a lot of inane executive requests.

Re:What is it with meetings?

[rhsanborn]

I've found, not so much that all meetings are useless, just that they tend to be held by the wrong people, include the wrong people, and work through the wrong things. A small team of technical people, all directly related to some problem or task getting together to work out details, or figure something out is a "meeting". The problem comes in when you tie up those technical people on a mundane call or meeting run by non-technical people who just want those technical people there in case there is a question.

Meetings are a necessary evil

[Rastl]

But just because they have to happen doesn't mean that I can't generally schedule them to my advantage.

I tend to group my meetings so that they're in a single block when I can. That way they don't run long ("Sorry. Have a 10:30. Gotta go.") and I can then keep the rest of the day free for actual work.

For those days when it isn't possible that's when I do my documentation since there's no way I can get back into a project and do anything useful with an hour.

Back in the days our calendar system would auto-accept any meeting invites. It was a while ago. But that meant you got put into all kinds of meetings without actually being able to request a different time up front. My boss had the best solution, which we all try to do now based on other responses. He blocked out 80% of his day into two events: "HFMTDW". If you needed to get into the blocks you asked and he would free up the time for you.

"HFMTDW" = "Hiding From Meetings to do Work"

I loved that boss. Too bad being the manager of our division drove him into a nervous breakdown after 18 months.

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[Tekfactory]

At a place I used to work I would put out agendas for technical meetings, I'd include relevant technical or compliance requirements in the "required reading". My boss was of the opinion everyone should do their own research instead of me "spoon feeding" them, which wasn't my job.

Somehow these meetings always seemed shorter when everyone came to them with the same assumptions.

I only started frontloading requirements after we had a requirements meeting come to a dead stop when 2 CISSPs, a Project Manager/Business Analyst, 2 Systems Engineers and 2 Security Analysts couldn't define what the Audit and Logging requrements were for a Windows box.

At the follow on meeting I brought handouts, the Business Analyst asked me why I went to all the trouble, I told her I only wanted to say "I don't know" to the same question once.

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[Ritchie70]

d.1. Minutes need to be taken by someone who understands the subject well enough to accurately reproduce the discussion on paper.

There's this guy at my job, a BA, who usually cranks out meeting minutes within a half hour of the meeting ending.

Unfortunately, due to his lack of understanding of many of the issues, it's like he was at a different meeting.

Re:Ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Implying all Irish are drunks is not racism because "Irish" is not a race. Duh. That would be ethnocentrism.

Black people really do have brown to very dark brown skin. Turds are also brown. That's all the joke is saying.

I think jokes about my own race are funny too. It's called getting over yourself and not taking everything so goddamned seriously. Does it ever occur to any of you that getting so angry over a few words means you are part of the problem of racism? It means you have bought into the ideas behind it and believe that they are valid and real when in reality they are completely arbitrary. That's why you cannot laugh at them.

Re:strange

[causality]

Did they tell you to bring all of your desk items with you in a box?

Nope, this isn't a troll post either. The mods failed. Again.

If anything this was Funny.

As for me, I have karma to burn. Do your worst!

Re:Single biggest frustration for many coders

[BitZtream]

Let me get this straight, you think because you have an MBA that you somehow understand something that you didn't before? Other than how big of a waste of time it is?

I've never met anyone with an MBA who got anything from school other than a sheet of paper. Its a degree for people who need a degree to say they have one but not actually because they will learn anything from it.

Re:i petitioned my boss a week ago

[shiftless]

Hah, corporate culture is so idiotic and inflexible. The problem with 99% of corporations in my opinion is that they cater to the lowest common denominator. I don't mean that in a rude or haughty way; let me explain.

There are lot of different kinds of people in the world. I guess there are some people (a lot of people) who work fairly well with the whole 9-5 every day routine type job. It probably suits most people not because they particular enjoy it, but because most people wouldn't have enough self control to actually do their jobs as well if you were to just, say, let them teleconference from home or something. (FWIW I think this perception is largely a myth, and that the solution to unproductive employees is to simply fire their asses.)

The problem with this approach is that it alienates people who could otherwise be strong assets to your company, like me. I'm the kid that fucked off all week long at school, didn't study, got yelled at for reading three chapters ahead in the book, then aced the test without even trying. You want to hire me? Give me a job solving problems. Pure technical problems (or whatever other technical work you hired me to do) with no politics, paperwork, hours long pointless meetings and teleconferences, forced teamwork, etc attached. Let me come in to work at any hour I want, leave any time I want, work from home if and when I want. Basically let do whatever the hell I want as long as I accomplish specific tasks within a specific time frame. If you want to contact me, don't call, send an email/IM and wait for a response unless it's an EMERGENCY requiring IMMEDIATE RESPONSE. Don't treat me like a kid, I'm my own man and don't need a nanny to help me along. And lastly, don't try to make me feel guilty or inferior because I'm different than you.

You know what, I don't pretend to be ideal for jobs that the "average" employee is good at. I recognize that I have strengths and limitations. What I want is to see employers be smart enough to recognize these strengths and limitations and put people in positions with responsibilities that best suit them. IMO the best employers are the ones who hire the best, give them a lot of freedom, and pay them well--like Google for instance. They make the job be more like an extension of your life rather than a typical "job." It's a place that you look forward to coming to every day instead of another boring 9-5 grind. That's smart. I wish other employers would learn a thing or two from them.

Re:Ironic?

[vux984]

Black people really do have brown to very dark brown skin. Turds are also brown. That's all the joke is saying.

If that were true, then it wouldn't be funny. The joke says more than that. Its saying cats can't distinguish black children from their own shit.

Its a racist joke. That doesn't mean you can't tell it or laugh at it, or that doing so makes you a racist. But don't pretend its not a racist joke. The humour comes from equating people of a specific race to shit. That makes it a racist joke.

It's called getting over yourself and not taking everything so goddamned seriously.

I don't know you. I don't know if you are a racist or not. But if you are going to broadcast racist jokes to the general public, you should expect that people will be offended. Suck it up.

I'll defend your right to tell off color jokes, but I'll also defend anyone who wants to call you on it. Free speech goes both ways.