How many useless meetings do you have to sit through during a single week? So much of it is completely useless. Why, why do I need a 1:1 with my manager every single week? Spoiler alert, I really don't! I'm getting so tired of wasting my time while I have actual work to do.
21 replies (most recent on top)
Planning to plan and meetings about meetings. Cisco is Officespace
Only thing better than useless meetings is spending hours to create Powerpoints to simplify topics for our execs.
Take the test - Is your job bullsh-t?
Lots of "meetings" ups your score btw
https://www.bullsh-tjob.com/quiz/
Our manager (SBG) was pretty awesome. Maybe three hours of meetings per week with external teams that can’t be avoided. Besides that, 1:1’s are always ad hoc and we choose when to schedule them. Scrum is usually only 7 minutes, and we can pre-check-in daily notes in a shared doc. Sprint planning and retro is a 45 minute chore every 2 weeks. If a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, it gets cancelled or “converted to an email”. Very capable guy who kept his tech skills sharp. Was laid off so the company could replace him with some id--t for a fraction of his salary, and now all of our projects went from being 2 months ahead of schedule to 3 months late.
Ex-cisco manager here
1:1 are useful because there are people who needs to rant and be mentored by a GOOD manager. My reports accept the time we spend together and have very good relationships.
The opposite is true for my terrible manager. I hated talking to him and he felt like it was a MUST that we spoke weekly so that he was building a “close relationship”. He didn’t notice that every week was “everything was fine” “no problem”
There are two sides to a coin. If you really don’t appreciate weekly 1:1 just tell your manager.
@AK. You should soak up all the training you can, so when you get LR’d you might actually have some skill and knowledge worth hiring. With your sh---y attitude you will get LR’d so prepare for it
The real reason is Managers have nothing better to do, and they don’t trust their own team on what they are working on. Solution - Fire all managers. Next please.
Keep whining, I love my back to back meetings and they are totally worth it. Matter of fact, let me schedule a bi-weekly meeting with all of you to re-assess the findings presented in this threat.
Amazing what it is to have a good leader. I don’t have any scheduled 1-1s with my current leader. But I talk to her a few times a week, on targeted tasks. That’s how it should be IMO.
I’ve had those useless 1-1s in the past. And my manager then, acted like that’s a big part of his job.
I talk about the same amount of time to my current leader now, but these are are short 5-10 mins calls throughout the week when she asks me for something, gives me direct feedback about something, or has a question. If only more leaders were this engaged.
I’m sure scheduled 1-1s CAN work too, but usually they don’t because they turn into general chat sessions, nothing worthy. And really not building the rapport you’d think it does. We build rapport by actually working through and accomplishing things together.
Taking yearly ethics, security, etc. training should be mandatory and really doesn't take much time (out of a year) but protects the company from lawsuits.
An endless legal budget protects Cisco from lawsuits. The "training" is nothing more than theater as there is no path to correct the endless problems when they arise because the dashboards don't reward such correction.
Cisco in a nutshell:
...I dont want to be pushed into mandatory AI training courses either since I have zero job security at this mess of a company.
4 reactions (+3/-1)
"I don't want to gain skills I might need if I'm laid off and need a new job."
...then you should leave a large global company and go work for a small, we-have-no-processes company.
8 reactions (+1/-7)
"Take responsibility for your career and your life."
meetings arent being held to accomplish anything, they just fill your calendar and make you look busy on webex, if i need something actually done, will ping person directly , bo-m done. PMs feel like if they dont bo-b our calendar they arent being useful or will be LR , so they fill it up and hope something gets done, or at least looks like it
Useless Management
I've supported many VPs at Cisco whose calendars are packed with back-to-back meetings all day, every day, including weekly 1:1s with their direct reports. They too wish they didn't have so many meetings and so little time to get actual work done, not to mention they travel a lot. The weekly 1:1s are scheduled so that the staff feel like they are being heard. If you don't want a weekly 1:1 and really feel like they're unproductive, then say so, but be diplomatic about it; maybe suggest a bi-weekly meeting instead. Your manager might be relieved to have one less weekly meeting too.
What makes it worse when 90% of the people don't contribute anything to the meeting and only attend to appear busy
So many f'ing useless meetings #headexplosion
It’s just really annoying hearing Cisco telling everyone to focus and do more with way less. But at the same time waste everyone’s time because they are too scared or don’t have the will power to question stupid, point processes. There’s also an entire segment of employees, whose entire existence at the company is just attending meetings. I’ve been pretty open about denying invites that I don’t need to attend, and no body has given me too much trouble for it.
lol Mr-I-love-meetings-go-away. 🤣
@ak+1jhnbak8h, then you should leave a large global company and go work for a small, we-have-no-processes company.
Taking yearly ethics, security, etc. training should be mandatory and really doesn't take much time (out of a year) but protects the company from lawsuits.
As companies move to AI, or as other companies offer AI solutions, our employees need to know how and how not to use it. Look at how AI is affecting schools. Students can copy-n-paste their reading assignment into AI and ask it to summarize it and answer questions about the reading assignment. There are so many useful AI apps and tools out there that saying you don't want to learn about AI is just d-mb.
Do we have too many meetings? Yes. Are many of them a waste of time and could have been an email or a comment in a team space? Yes. Do you have to attend check-ins? NO. You can claim to have watched the recording after it's been published.
Grow up and go somewhere else. I promise you that you won't have any more job security elsewhere. That's a thing of the 70's & 80's.
I dont want the meetings or even check ins and I dont want to be pushed into mandatory AI training courses either since I have zero job security at this mess of a company. I dont think they should dictate any training at all since any of us may be gone in the bi-yearly firings. If Im going to spend time on training it should be what I want and what would benefit me in my personal goals.
Agreed 100%