How to get work done with constant meetings and other noncoding work
Posted by Bromoblue@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 29 comments
How in the hell are you supposed to remain productive with so many meetings? Maybe I'm more ill equipped than most to task switching because of my shit attention span and generally being a slow coder but back in January I was promoted from a junior role to a midlevel role and its been rough. With this promotion came of course more responsibilities like taking newgrads under my wing, which takes away time from my own work and can be arduous. But I'm not too mad about it because I understand the importance of teaching entry levels. I wouldn't be half the developer I am today if not for my mentors who spent countless hours with me. But that combined with constant meetings, I just don't know how the hell I'm supposed to get my work done in time. What scares me is I'm only a midlevel. What the hell am I supposed to do when I reach the point of senior and beyond when it gets even worse?
Ok-ChildHooOd@reddit
This reminds me I need to go through all the meetings and make sure the people on those meetings really need to be there. We have AI summaries these days that would suffice.
ramenAtMidnight@reddit
Big topic. I feel like you won’t get much out of these, but I’ll write down some tips anyway.
brunoreis93@reddit
Rejecting calls
neosituation_unknown@reddit
The higher you go, the more meetings there are. That is a fact. Your people manager should strive to keep the meetings as efficient as necessary - but - if you are working with integrated teams, keeping everyone in sync, that necessitates technical input from the more senior engineers . . .
Mentoring juniors is also part of the deal.
I think for most engineers - the ideal is to get a challenging technical problem and code away - getting the satisfaction of building a product that works well - without interruption.
But in business, which is what this is, there are other stakeholders and moving parts that all need to work together
. . .
But to answer your question, how do you get your work done? That might mean extra hours. Or be extremely efficient during the 9 - 5. Back off on the youtube and reddit during work hours if you want to meat your commitments.
griffin1987@reddit
"That is a fact."
I remove all meetings whenever I join a company. Has always tremendously increased output and made people much happier, at least the people that were actually doing work, and not just meetings.
kondorb@reddit
If a job requires to work overtime to meet basic demands - something is really broken. Or someone really misunderstands the nature of their work.
jcradio@reddit
This is a common problem, particularly in orgs where non-technical people are in charge.
Start time boxing. Box time on your calendar for specific things, and fight for it. Someone tries to schedule over it you either reject it or try to get them to reschedule.
Big_Aardvark4856@reddit
Do you need to attend all those meetings? I think there are two issues:
1) What’s the most effective form of communication?
Sometimes it is a meeting. Sometimes it’s a Slack thread. The people involved should be trying to find the most effective way to communicate.
2) Are you essential to the meeting?
If you’re critical to the business in constantly being involved meetings where you’re involved in key decisions, then your role, title, responsibilities (and salary) should reflect that. If you provide the most value from heads down uninterrupted work, then it’s in everyone’s best interest that you minimize your meetings.
Nater5000@reddit
Noncoding work is work. You are getting work done when doing noncoding work, otherwise it wouldn't be noncoding work.
More concretely: you work at a company which needs more from its employees than just code. The stuff you do outside of coding is a necessary part of the job. The sooner you internalize that, the sooner you can use your time doing noncoding work more effectively.
In the same vein, be sure that your noncoding work is actually productive. It's easy to get in the habit of showing up to every little meeting that you get roped into, but if you're finding that you're not getting anything from them (or offering anything to them), then you need to excuse yourself from them. You're effectively acting as your own manager in this sense, and it's important part of your job as gain seniority. And, like u/slowd said, you can do this on a mechanical level by blocking out times of your day where you want to focus. Just be aware that if you completely avoid meetings, etc., then you won't be operating at the level that is expected of you as someone with more experience.
And yes, it does get "worse" as you gain more experience, but, again, it's important to recognize that these meetings (and, in general, management) are supposed to be generating value. It's your job to ensure that your time is being used effectively. In that sense, if you do a good job managing yourself, then things won't get worse because what you'd be doing with your time will be more valuable.
dfltr@reddit
I’ll add that a big part of making this work is not apologizing for it or acting like different parts of your job are more important/valuable when talking about them.
You aren’t behind on your coding tasks because you were distracted by questions from a junior, you reprioritized your tickets in order to assist a junior, and you were entirely productive at that. Stakeholders were updated about changing plans, zero apologies were issued for “not doing real work”.
JimDabell@reddit
What did your manager say when you told them you have too many meetings and it’s hurting your productivity?
PutPrestigious2718@reddit
Claude code. It’s the only way I scratch my tech itch as a principal while dealing with death by meetings.
GolangLinuxGuru1979@reddit
Commit to less work. Show your manager that you spent a % of time mostly in meetings. So as a result you can’t commit to as much work in a given sprint. If you have a huge workload but you are also in meetings most of the day, something has to give. My suggestion is to reach out to your manager and to them this. They will either have you in less meetings or give you less work. Or they should. If they can adjust things accordingly then you know you’re probably under bad leadership and you should be looking to exit
couchjitsu@reddit
Can you share more details on the "constant meetings"?
Looking at your calendar:
On average, how many meetings do you have per day
How much time do you spend in meetings per day
Are those large team meetings or 1:1
Are there a lot of ad-hoc meetings or are they all scheduled in advance
I ask because I once had some devs report to me who said they wouldn't get much done that day because it was a "meeting heavy day." But to them, that was about 90 minutes of meetings in an 8 hour day (and it wasn't a situation of 30 minute meeting, 30 minute break, 30 minute meeting, 30 minute break).
kondorb@reddit
I can see you are not an engineer. Let me explain something because there's some truth to that. Let's all be honest here - people don't actually work 8 hours per day. There's walking to get coffee, cooler talks, small talks, unwinding after a heavy meeting, pooping, etc. You get maybe 5-6 hours of pure work. Sitting behind the screen, thinking and typing. Or talking if that's your job. That means that taking away 90 minutes plus loss of concentration does affect the day significantly.
Also, some tasks are simple and you just and type, run, fix, repeat. And some tasks require are high in complexity and require concentration so heavy, that it makes no sense to even start on them if I don't have like at least 3 hours of uninterrupted time.
Putting it into minutes and averages is a dirty trick managers try to use to gaslight their people into thinking that something is wrong with them.
eaz135@reddit
I've been working in tech since 2009, and the pattern is generally the higher up you go - the more meetings there will be, thats just how it is.
I wish I had a solid answer for you, but my "solution" for the majority of my 20s and early 30s was simply brute force. I saw business hours as being mostly meeting and collaboration time, and the evenings (or early mornings) as being the time to actually get work done. This almost always bled into weekends as well, and often had to sacrifice parts of my social life.
I've had a variety of leadership roles across big tech, neo-banks, fintech, start-ups - currently a partner at a tech consulting firm.
I was somewhat forced into changing approach with the arrival of my first baby. My wife went through really bad postnatal depression for a whole year after the birth, where I essentially had to be the primary carer of the baby - whilst juggling my intense full time job. I was put into a situation where I simply had no choice but to set boundaries, because the choice was simple - it was work or my baby, and the baby always wins that battle.
- I started blocking out times in my calendar ahead of time, to give my week more structure and more predictability.
- I started being more brutal in expectations that meetings be quick and sharp. Often people would book 30-45 minute meetings with me, and I'd just tell them prior that I can only make the first 10 mins of the meeting, so lets jump to the chase and not fluff about.
- I spent time at the start of each day looking ahead at my week in terms of meetings scheduled. If anything was in my calendar that didn't appear necessary, I'd message the person directly and tell them my opinion on the topic, and ask them if the meeting was still necessary now that they have the info. I was essentially just trying to brutally remove as much as I could from my calendar that didn't seem it warranted an actual meeting. This was especially the case if I had a sense that a meeting wouldn't lead to any decision, but more clarification was needed and follow-ups. If that was the case, I tried to set that direction, and get the steer on clarifications needed - so we can have a proper meeting when we have all the facts ready to go.
- If I had a meeting where I didn't need to see the screen, I took that as an opportunity to stretch my legs, and dial into the meeting while walking around outside, to get some fresh air and get the blood moving. I tried to do at least 2 of these per day and I found they really helped with the mental side of things.
- I started utilising more of my early morning hours, as I was awake around 5am anyway because of the baby. An hour spent focusing without a single distracting message/email, is equivalent to 3-4 hours during business hours with the constant interruptions and meetings.
templar4522@reddit
1) defend your time. Booking coding time on the calendar can be an option, but it's a bit extreme. Still, decline optional meetings, and talk to your team lead, manager, etc. if the number of meetings is a problem. Maybe your peers also have the same problem and by raising it together you might push for change. Retrospectives are a good place to raise this issue.
2) Mentoring and meetings are integral part of your job. You are actually working by attending a meeting or mentoring people. Stop feeling guilty.
ad_irato@reddit
3-4hrs a day if do not disturb status.
siqniz@reddit
You don't. Then when you ask why you missed the deadline tell'em your just in meetings
shifty303@reddit
In addition to filling your calendar with your own meetings, start early. I start at 7am and the rest of my team doesn't even log on until 9:28am right before stand-up.
I hardly ever have time after that unless I've booked it.
besseddrest@reddit
How involved are you in the mentorship? are you putting in 'countless hours' as well?
Obviously you care about their growth, but at a high level you want to give them the tools and have them run with it. There's parts of their own growth where they'll have to go through some challenges and learn from it themselves. You can't over involve yourself, because it's obviously affecting your own ability at work.
afty698@reddit
One thing I do that I haven’t seem mentioned yet is that I keep detailed notes on technical tasks I have in flight, so that if I have a chunk of time I can dive right back in without having to reconstruct all the context. Basically enabling me to make progress even when I only have small chunks of time.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
Decline meetings you feel you don’t need to be in make them justify it
slowd@reddit
Schedule your own “meetings” during the day, just you and the code. It blocks off portions of your calendar so people can’t schedule new things in it.
WittyCattle6982@reddit
Months in advance!
Crazy-Platypus6395@reddit
This. Block your time!
Thomase-dev@reddit
This is very real,
My solution wasn’t great. I’d just work a lot in non business hours. It was OK because I loved the work and it had impact. But forsure not scalable.
I would also do a lot of coding in meetings to be honest. If I wasn’t directly involved, I would listen and chime in if needed but be cranking stuff out.
+1 to blocking time on calendars.
Another big one is being concurrent. This is tough, but at my old company a PR build could take 45 mins to an hour. I would try to time those up with meetings so I wouldn’t be wasting time. That’s just one example. There are a ton of little wins that start accumulating and then you get super efficient.
bart007345@reddit
I made a rule on my last project that no meetings in the afternoon.
purushX@reddit
apart from block your time, cluster all your meetings back-to-back, ideally before lunch or EOD, so your brain gets a bigger chunk of uninterrupted time for actual work.