patrick.net

Morning meetings are the biggest waste of perfectly good jack-off time. I've got nothing for anyone at 9am after finally getting to sleep in wee hours when I finally got to bed, the either bad coffee, or lack there of, the crappy commute, and just get to my desk and now you want to make Company decisions based on information that someone that still has eye boogers and only thought in their mind is that bear claw in the break-room and their second cup of coffee.
Then once that coffee kicks in, now I'm wired and buzzed, and just had a revelation on how to solve that problem that has been plaguing me for the last week. But I can't go jump on it and try out my new solution. Marge is chastising us about someone not flushing the toilet. During what would otherwise be, my most productive moments of the week.
For me the best meeting time is at the end of the day.
You can go over what you completed, list any problems you might still have for any outstanding issues.

Only 1/4 of the time is wasted??? It's way more than that!!!

Just 1/4? The best meeting are held standing up, that way no one gets to enamored with listening to themselves talk.

I remember when I worked at Intracorp/Cigna Healthcare, we'd have the form letters that still needed to be edited and proofread for mailing that afternoon and our supervisor Lauren would call us into the conference room about 3:00 for a 45 minute meeting to fuss and fume about how we weren't being productive enough, then still expect us to get everything out on time.

I'm doing a project now. I'm the only resource that is actually doing the work. But every day I have about 3 different phone meetings with different groups. 11am, 2pm and then about 5pm.
Most of which is about topics that I'm not ready to program for. So by time I do get that topic a week or more later. Everything we discussed about it, was lost over the other 2 weeks worth of meetings.

More over every single task and requirement these folks come up with have problems with the logic. I tell them there will be a problem with it, but since I'm not working on that item yet, I can't exactly put my finger on why that logic bothers me.

For example yesterday, I had to update an insert sproc to deal with three future dates. Dates that are based on a date that should be the 3rd Nth record, but if the 3rd Nth record is a "D" track then skip it and grab the 4th Nth record. If the record in question is a "D" track record, then grab the third "D" track record, skipping over the A, B, and C track records.

Here's the problem, the record being inserted is ALWAYS the most recent record, and there will never be three records with later dates in the table, NEVER!

It took me over 45 minutes to explain that. These are Educators.

So now it's a cursor that has to enumerate over all records where the datapull date is null.

How ever if the track record proves right. I'll be asked in the coming weeks to pull all of that work out.

CaptainShuddup says

It took me over 45 minutes to explain that. These are Educators.

The 1st lieutenant syndrome.

I love meetings in the form of conference calls. I can log it as work time, mute my microphone, and do whatever I want, which I will leave to your imagination.

My favorite video about these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ

More than 1/4 is wasted, and usually too many people are invited which leads to bikeshedding as the surplus people need to remind you they are present.

zzyzzx says

Only 1/4 of the time is wasted??? It's way more than that!!!

haha my thoughts exactly. I think maybe 1/4 of the time might be productive at best.