> His big managerial innovation was to stage a weekly meeting during which all members of the IT team were required to share what they had done in the past week.

The term seems to be "Scrum," and where I've worked at the last 2 companies, it's been *every day*. Where a group of people get together and tell each other about all the unrelated things that they did *yesterday*. This 15-minute meeting often goes to 30 minutes, or longer, not least because the contractor(s) on the meeting like to talk in great detail of all of the things that they did, how well, the issues they ran into, and hey free money - just keep this meeting going.

Every line of the description applies. Every day. Because why not. Raise the point that this is dumb. Raise the point that we're doing unrelated things. Raise the point that this takes a lot of time each week. Raise the point..... and the daily meetings continue. People henceforce give their "LGTM" thumbs-up not-review on PR's and click Approved. The next day, another meeting.

In some cases it can be a useful five minutes, but that's pretty rare, because if anything I did yesterday was important enough for everyone to know I should have told them yesterday...

I am a team lead, and I was guilty of that. One team member told me it sucked, big time, and was a f****** waste of her (and others') time. To be honest, she was quite blunt.

To be really honest: she had to :D (and yes, it did help)

This sounds more like the weekly stand up. Intended result friendly relaxed meeting, every stands up gives a quick run down of weeks plans, says if they need help etc on something, gives metrics if relevant. Everyone is informed of what people are doing and help out if needed or they think they may be of use. Efficiency increases.

Actual result. C Suite stand about like the inquisition picking shite apart so they look good and powerful. Everyone has to give metrics even if they're pointless. Whole morning is spent by teams prepping for them rather than working so they can avoid being the one picked on. Depression insue's and morning is lost.

It comes from those wank MBA programs and courses like scaling up. Where they chuck around words like lean management like it's a new revelation, and then just mentally tick the box (but don't actually work towards implementing it) saying we're doing that we're very very cool.

Often worshipped by the sort of execs that think Steve Jobs and Elon are cool innovative businessmen who can do no wrong.

MBA programs... apparently, if you can count it, you're controlling it.

If you're not allowed to shoot on side, take quick steps elsewhere.

The best bit is what that they actually call this dreary inefficient waste of time : Agile!

Person #1: "I've been doing the same stuff"

Person #2: "So have I"

...

Person #25: "Me to"

My time taken - 4 hours travel each way + 1 day "working" in the office.

Still, I did get a day's pay to sort through my (personal) emails and listen to music whist on the train.

I have been fortunate enough to only have been subject to this sort of nonsense in one of the companies I have worked at. By pure coincidence I had 'critical daily tasks' which were scheduled in exactly the same timeslot and as the only person who could perform those tasks I had to decline the meetings. There were questions asked but I could point at a variety of suitably vague agreements and responsibilities for my role and a couple of the departments who relied on the systems I looked after backed me up (they agreed these scrums were a parasite).

Sadly the people that like holding this style of meeting are the ones who then spend the rest of the day putting the 'results' of the meeting into Crayola charts ready for the next day's meeting.

We now have a CEO who thinks meetings are a waste of time.

If I wasn't such a coward I'd tell you where I work, and that we're hiring programmers...

"We now have a CEO who thinks meetings are a waste of time.

If I wasn't such a coward I'd tell you where I work, and that we're hiring programmers..."

Too old, I was never a code monkey but the NASDAQ stock symbol might be useful.

On second thoughts I am assuming that by this CEO's aversion to meetings he/she is an enlightened, rational executive but I also can imagine a raving insane autocrat might have a similar aversion and unfortunately those creatures don't appear to be in short supply.

I have never been in a meeting that wouldn't have been far more productive if people had just responded to an email.

If you want to send around an automated email every week asking for updates, and everyone fills in their bit, it would work just as well.

I once had a 2 hour meeting on whether a colour of green was the right shade for a website. Even at consultancy rates I realised I wasn't being paid enough to tolerate that kind of nonsense.

A meeting should be either 2 minutes of everyone getting together to "bash heads together" (i.e. make sure that everyone know what the priority is so that you don't get infighting because they've all been told by the boss in the meeting what needs to happen and they can't deny they didn't hear it), or it should be something else entirely (with recorded responses).

The whole agenda/minutes thing is SO ARCHAIC that I find it hilarious. Especially when I can just pull an email and say "As per my email..." for anything that arises (and have done on many occasions). Email too long to read because I've covered every base? Then reply to it and ask for the short version, CC:ing in all the same people. What do you have to hide?

I do not understand the purpose of meetings unless it's literally to make people feel powerful because they can "summon" everyone any time they like and control the meeting, which is precisely what you DON'T want for anything vaguely important.

In charge of a group of SW Engineers, I used to sit in on the HW Engineers meetings. I usually didn't say much and sat planning tasks for my team, but occasionally they would come up with some wizz/bang new idea or device to use, and they had to be made aware of how much that decision would cost in SW development.

It saved us quite a few 'impossible' requests.

"I once had a 2 hour meeting on whether a colour of green was the right shade for a website" - luxury!

I was working on a database that dealt with the protein, carbohydrates etc. info on food labelling and had to suffer an all day meeting in a windowless basement near the House of Commons that had people arguing for three hours on the question of whether "Blackcurrants" should be listed as such or "Currants, Black". It's clearly the former (not that I'm any expert on the subject) but the others felt that it was a matter of vital importance. They were still arguing when I left after having invented an urgent train that I had to catch.

In the end they went with "Blackcurrants".

A long time ago, in a company that I will not name, but that continues to exist in a tiny fraction of what it used to be due to mismanagement and blinkered predictions of how technology would go (they failed to understand smart phones would render their business model obsolete)... I had one of those line managers.

A reverse misandrist... a man who disliked other men, a bigoted little fool who expected everyone to kiss his arse and would try and punish anyone who didn't. A man who tried to pit every one under him against each other (with some success for the weaker minded drones) to avoid the gaze of incompetence falling on him.

A man who was so petty, he tried to sabotage my application for another position on another team by lying to the dept head... who informed me what he'd said. A man who had complaints upheld against him by an incompetent HR who covered it up.

The previous autumn, I had a fling with another woman from another dept. It lasted a couple of months and I was told by her that she'd been involved with a married guy who wouldn't leave his wife and she'd broken it off. I never knew who... but I'm sure you can guess.

The following spring, after yet more attempts by this man to get me in trouble... I'd had enough and during a meeting with his line manager, I threw my resignation across the table at him... This petty little man, continued to try and stir shit up against me and they agreed to put me on garden leave... I'd given 2 months notice, so they had to pay me for that... I went around saying goodbye to people and letting them know what a POS he was.

As I was in the lobby saying goodbye to a few others... he approached me, held out his hand with a smug grin on his face and said 'good luck, and no hard feelings'.

I pulled him a little closer, looked him in the eye and replied 'Sure, and I'm sorry I fucked your mistress'

He went purple and tried to take a swing at me... in front of witnesses, catching me on the shoulder. I turned to the receptionist and asked if she'd be kind enough to call the police, and went up to HR to report the assault.

He was eventually fired, they tried to coerce me into dropping the complaint and not reporting it to the police... To which my reply was short... 'But I don't work here anymore' The police did nothing, but my job was done. I walked back into an old temp job I had before this one, and within 6 weeks of leaving (and before my paid leave ran out) I had a new job with a 50% pay increase.

They expected it.

I kept it up.

Meetings were shorter.

I was lucky - especially with my last employer (which I stayed with for 20 years). Their idea of management was to make sure we had the tools and facilities we needed and defend us from unreasonable customers.

In a long distant past, at a workplace that felt like being in the Dilbert universe, we had monthly, obscenely boring team meetings, scheduled from 8 to 12. Like in Palmer's, we had the guys who loved to hear themselves talk and rare relevance for anyone else was purely accidental. Often, those meetings would extend to 1 o'clock and even beyond. And just like Palmer, I felt they were a huge waste of time. Unlike Palmer I didn't suggest improvements but instead decided to make better use of my time: sitting there, snoozing.

Very disappointingly, I was never called out on my nap.

As an EM, I apologise for lengthy standups - its very easy to let them run away and they go on and on. You have to train people that I don't want to know all the horrible details of what you did yesterday, I'm sure you worked hard. I just want to know three things - Are you blocked?, Do you know how long is left now you've worked on it a bit?, and Any concerns around the scope of the ticket?

We do 30 minutes standup each day, 15 for standup, 15 for any extra discussions, and we always finish early. If its not an in-office day, you can give your update on Slack..

The trick is redirecting people to discuss their lengthy things 1:1 after the standup.

When newly promoted I was invited/expected to attend the company monthly management meetings. Quite a large concern, highly departmentalised..... Lots of managers and each meeting took up the best part of a day.

The same managers attended but few did any preparation between meetings; each had a dog-eared, 'dedicated' folder which they carried in order to look important.

Business was tough (no surprise there!), and inevitably cost-savings were raised. "Overheads must be reduced" meaning: "Redundancies". A significant number of staff were to go. Of course, blind to the real problem, not a single participant at those meetings was personally affected.

Eventually, it was decided that a major product was to be run down and sold off. Which was when we started our own business with a clean sheet and no baggage. It won't surprise you that 30 years on, our company continues, the old company and it's thousands of workers has been scattered (frittered) to the winds. Those managers were the last to go.

We're a small team spread across three locations on two continents so we do have a weekly team meeting, usually lasting no more than 30 minutes, just to touch base. It's an opportunity to make sure everyone is aware of the bigger picture and anything that's going on which they need to know about but we definitely do not have endless descriptions of things we've already dealt with - I've been in those meetings before!

Ah Agile working, we have that, 15m daily chats in morning, on what your doing and how well, end of sprint reviews and then a 2 days of planning out the next months work. The planning works, it's great to see everything planned out and approved, other teams scheduled in to work when they are needed and no short notice emails for help, as we say no, unless a major incident, well in my team and we hit our targets, even though we are the smallest team in the business, starved of resources, others same old adhoc chaos and last-minute cries for help haven't learnt.

Sounds like manager I used to have. He worked in pre-sales support so you thought he would understand technically.

He would ask for a technical description of the problems I was working on "because I did work in tech sales support you know". I usually refused - until he insisted - and I explained. We got lost after the second sentence. He never asked for an explanation again.

My next boss was brilliant... she said "give me the 30 second impact of the problem" me : "It is a rare problem - it could cause a major outage".

She got a reputation of being a good manager, because she let us techie get on with the job, and kept her manager informed with all the one liners.

If a meeting was called for late morning, I used to take my lunchtime banana in and place it on the table in front of me.

If (when) the meeting ran over into lunchtime, I'd start eating it conspicuously with a "sorry, my stomach's expecting lunch and my brain can't cope without food"