“We’ll wait a few more minutes for person X to join, then get the meeting started,” like the other ten people who made the effort to show up on time deserve to be punished with extra meeting time for being responsible. Bonus points if this causes the meeting to run a few minutes long.
Yeah, I’m totally cool with being late sometimes, but I know various folks where it’d be an exception, if they’re not late, because they have meetings back-to-back all day long.
Always makes me feel like the official meeting start should be 5 minutes after or something, but I know that those folks aren’t late for the fun of it. They’d definitely overrun those 5 minutes, if they knew they had them.
My frustration is less with the people who are late and more with the meeting host making the rest of the attendees sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the late person. Unless the late person’s presence is the point of the meeting, just get started and let them catch up.
My place of business has this dysfunction with meetings—Zoom being the biggest offender—where people just keep talking through the end of a meeting. 30-minute meetings become 35-40. 60-minute meetings becomes 65-70. And, with meetings frequently being back-to-back-to-back, invariably one or another person is late to the next one.
I think it’s because scheduling a meeting with all necessary parties is so difficult that if you don’t finish the thought, the next chance is at least a week away.
To top it off, we had a company-wide survey that spawned a working group to tackle the problem of meetings, whose suggestion was to update Outlook settings to automatically shorten meetings by X minutes—to allow people transit time, bathroom breaks, etc. Almost no one set that setting.
Maybe I am crazy but I always thought it was lazy as fuck to have meetings for absolutely everything. Like, how about you spend some time researching and analyzing a subject on your own before calling a meeting for every little step of the way.
Now I understand that there must be a balance, but man there was so many of those meetings where nobody has a clue on the subject and it is just pointless talking for over an hour. Another meeting is scheduled with another party as soon as that one meeting is over, and it is just back-to-back meeting with everyone in the company, slowly but surely deriving a solution from everyone opinion. Seems to me like people who do well in those environments are the lazy workers who just want to spend their whole days chatting in meetings.
Can we, at some point, derive a solution based on experimentation and verifiable facts? Can someone come up with a summary analysis with recommendations and possible solutions? Why does everything has to be the result of endless meetings, endless compromises with people without a clue, and end up being a shitty design-by-committee feature.
Anyway, could be just be a me thing, or specific to that place I worked at.
Just disconnect.
they don’t respect the meeting time, they don’t respect you.
If they couldn’t fit everything in, then that’s their problem for under booking the meeting.
Any microsoft application. Constant bugs, crashes and a tendency to break everything if you accidentally use them in any other way than microsoft intended.
Also, ads in a fucking operation system? I don’t see how anyone can find that acceptable.
I think MIUI was its pioneer. Even the settings app had ads.
At least they use that to sell you the hardware for cheap. Microsoft doesn’t provide anything of value like that. In fact, they charge people for the OS and then have the audacity to add ads.
Like the other person said edge is the only approved browser and they don’t like Firefox.
We are software developers and they don’t like Firefox.
Also, they don’t allow wearing headphones and it’s awfully quite sometimes and I have ADHD and have to fill that noise by talking.
Depending on where you live it and the job you do, you may be possible to get an exception to the rule against wearing headphones.
If you’re in the US or UK, I know it would be your right to request reasonable accommodation for ADHD - either under the ADA or the Equality Act.
Obviously if there’s a good reason to disallow headphones (for example, if there’s some danger that you wouldn’t be able to hear) then this wouldn’t help. But if it’s just the company being controlling, you can probably get an exception.
Im in the UK so I assume this applies, I just don’t want to be that guy that’s like yeah I’m going to force you to let me wear headphones.
I still have to work there after all and I don’t want things to be awkward. Although I would get in to less friendly arguments about politics and such if I could wear them and I could also drown out my own mind.
It doesn’t need to be a confrontation - just have a chat with your manager, mention that you have an ADHD diagnosis and that you have been recommended some things to help improve your focus, attention and performance at work, and that one of those suggestions was listening to music or white noise through headphones, and ask if it could be considered as an adjustment due to your disability. If you frame it as a collaborative and positive action that you can take together, rather than something you’re demanding to be different, I don’t think there’s any reason for your manager to be offended by the request.
Could you use just one ear bud? I do that a lot so that I can still hear what’s going on around me but have some music or podcast going while I work.
People having video calls at their desks. We have soundproof booths and conference rooms but no, people will just talk loudly in the open space area. It’s like people talking on the phone on a bus. Hearing only one side of the conversation is super distracting. Sometimes two people sitting next to each other will be on the same video call. I guess more people are bothered but not enough to do something about it.
I sometimes send them quotes from their own conversation on chat.
Passive aggressive ftw 😁
That’s not actually passive aggressive, that’s just being sassy. The term “passive aggressive” refers to something completely different than what most people think.
Open offices are a mistake.
Having to reserve conference rooms to have a semblance of quietude is a terrible system. I don’t miss that shit.
We had a loud talkative guy at my place. Fucking deep voice that he was projecting like he was on a stage or something. It was not possible to have a conversation near him when he was on Zoom. We barely spoke in the open area anyway, but some people just wouldn’t shup up. I can still hear their stupid voice when I think about it.
I didn’t have an issue with open offices before the pandemic. We barely had any video calls (everyone was at the office) and people kept it down. Then everything switched to video and a lot of people are assholes.
I did not really mind when I worked at a ~10 people company, it kind of made sense. Working on a floor with over a hundred people in an open office was miserable. There was always someone on Zoom or people having live meeting in earshot.
Blow my mind that all those office managers and floor planners and supposedly expert at organizing a work environment think that it make sense to cram in hundred of people working on wildly different stuff together at earshot distance. How hard would it be to create big divisions so that you only get to hear the 10 or so people which you’re directly involved with. Anyway, there was clearly an “everyone must be an extrovert” culture thing going on. The higher ups sure seemed to enjoy hearing and seeing everyone everywhere all the time.
For our office we’ve had to resort to this and it’s pretty miserable. There are simply not enough conference rooms and phone rooms to handle all the meetings. People are unfortunately typically in teams with people across the country so every meeting is a video call. It’s really annoying so many people just end up wearing noise canceling headphones.
Sounds like the soundproofed rooms are for people who want privacy, and/or quiet place to work
The soundproofed rooms don’t have extra monitors or proper chairs so they suck for long time work.
When people message with a “hi” or “hello” and then say nothing more till I reply.
It annoys the hell out of me. Like, why can’t you just say what you want. It wastes so much of my time and mental energy to switch back and forth while I wait for your reply after replying to your utterly useless hello.
just answer them with https://nohello.net/en/
What’s worse, after you “hi” them back, some people (looking at you project managers) just ducking call without any explanation. Drives me nuts
Or I think worse yet, I ask a question, and they don’t reply for a while so then when they do respond all they say is “hi.”
It infuriates me, I don’t need to be at my desk for you to answer the question I left you above! Ughhh
Reject call.
‘why didn’t you answer’
‘I’m not available for calls right now’
‘why’
‘that’s not your business’
I’ve wandered down this road a few times now.
Got reported to my manager for doing just that. My rule was simple: if you’re not my boss, I need to know what the call is about in advanced.
I just explain the same as above.
If you’re not paying me for my time, you’re not entitled to it, nor an explanation of what I do in my own time.
If we’re talking about time on the clock, that’s a different story.
Especially infuriating when the other person is in a very different time zone. I once worked on a project with a partner company in a time zone 10 hours ahead of mine and it was common for trivial things to take days purely because the other person insisted on typing “Hi,” waiting for my “Hi, what’s up?” response (which they didn’t see until the next day since our hours didn’t overlap), and then replying with their question, which I didn’t see until my next day. Answering the actual question often took like 30 seconds, but in the meantime two or three days had gone by.
I came to believe they were doing it on purpose so they could constantly slack off and tell their boss they were blocked waiting for my answer.
I just wait until they say more things. Hello is nothing.
I have tried this. I’m often reminded the next day that they still haven’t received a reply from me.
I occasionally give people shit for this. Chat is asynchronous and I’m busy just ask me the question and I’ll respond back when I can. Some people just won’t learn though and I usually just leave them on read.
“Hi, we need to talk…”
I don’t work at the moment, but here is a list of stuff I’m glad to be away from:
- That guy over there that grunts and coughs and clears his throat every 37 seconds.
- Having ten minute standup meetings every day, that take at least 45 minutes every day and could have been replaced by looking at the status page in the wiki.
- That other guy over there that raises his voice and yells and carries on every time he is on the phone, completely unaware that his phone has a microphone, and that anyone else exists
- People who eat stinky stuff for lunch at their desk, chewing with their mouth open while watching the football at full volume. Go and use the lunch room, you inconsiderate fuck.
- my boss over in the next cubicle who yells out someone’s name, expecting them to be there, and then yells a series of instructions whether they are there or not. I’m trying to think, can’t you just get up and walk all the way over to another cubicle to talk at a reasonable volume, like a normal person?
- The woman that just started, sitting in the next cubicle, that reeks of foul perfume. I know when she arrives and leaves by the smog cloud, the revolting stench that follows her around the office, and the trail of people vomiting and struggling to breathe after she goes past. I tried to do the right thing and talk to her and she conveniently can’t speak English, unaware that I can hear her on the phone speaking flawlessly.
We may have worked in the same office.
My co-workers.
Don’t schedule a &$&% meeting during lunchtime without serving up lunch to us!
I hear you, but given that my “lunchtime” could be anywhere between 11:00 and 15:00 (and that’s not even allowing for timezones), that’s pretty impractical.
In my last two jobs in two different countries the unwritten rule is to not schedule a meeting between 12-13. Not everyone has lunch at the same time, and everyone is free to have lunch whenever they want, but this guarantees that you will have some time to have lunch even if you are booked by meetings around noon. But it doesn’t really solve the timezone issue.
My lunch time is me time. I’d prefer no lunch meetings ever. That’s my walking time.
Teams! It literally never works on Linux and you cannot change a single thing about it. I’m so tired of having to tell people that today my teams cannot share shit, which worked flawlessly yesterday.
Teams is garbage. This comes from someone who used it on windows, both on the app and web versions.
In teams, people above you get reports on all of the time you’ve spent in teams and can see all of your “private messages”! There’s a whole-ass dashboard for it!
Hmmm I hope that’s not also the case with private messages on teams some 5 years ago. Pretty sure there was some condescending chats about uni teachers over private messages.
Oh well, I’ve graduated anyway and never again used the messaging function after that.
Teams is shit. I use it at work on Windows, and it’s still shit.
Searching something in the chat? Complete dogshit. Half the times it just straight up doesn’t work, the rest of the times it shows only the message where searched word is present and not the point in discussion when this message happened.
Keybinds. Non-customisable. Keybinds. Who in their right mind does that?! I once heard that keybind customisation would confuse “normies”, which is complete moot. So-called “normies” won’t go to the settings (or at least, to keybinds) anyway and will be either satisfied with defaults or won’t use them at all.
It also cannot restrict how many notifications it displays in the corner - so when things are getting spicier at work, it spams whole right side of your screen (gods help you if you were working on the laptop with small screen atm, cause getting shit done will be impossible). So your 2 options will be to mute everything or continue getting spammed. And then the whole point that it is even worse on Linux. And it’s web version is crap, too. And that it is a bloted, laggy mess that is more in my way when I work than helps me.
Rant over, I guess?the rest of the times it shows only the message where searched word is present and not the point in discussion when this message happened.
Uh, I just click the message and it sends you to the conversation where you can check what was said.
So your 2 options will be to mute everything or continue getting spammed.
You can also mute only the chat that’s being spammy, but I agree with this one because I can’t mute it for X mins and such.
It’s curious how when the pandemic started people around me were super happy with Teams, comparing it to Google Meet and other meeting software, because it was one of the best services that simply worked, and over time they became more angry with it for all the bugs and weird decisions.
How bout the fact that everyone above you can see everything you do and all your “private messages”?
Can they? I don’t really care, I don’t use the corporate chat for personal things. I will act without regard to that, and if it comes to my knowledge that they did read them for the sake of controlling me, I’m going to fucking leave the company after talking to HR, that’s an issue with the boss not the tool.
I do find that useful in a corporate scenario, where if someone leaves the should be able to retrieve all the information shared on those chats, and if you suspect that someone is saying things they really shouldn’t to clients or colleagues, being able to check it is good.
I miss Teams. It was so bad, that anytime I forgot something, I was able to blame teams and no one questioned it. Since then I changed jobs, so can’t do it anymore.
We have 3 (three. Three!!) redundant monitoring and alerting systems and have yet to detect the issues routinely found by our customers. Its not because we didn’t detect them, it’s because we have so many false positives we stopped looking (but still run the monitors).
Uuuuuugffhhhhhj
- Toxic Positivity: “Everything is always great” and the unspoken rule to never talk about your issues.
- Mental health issues not being taken seriously and/or treatment being forced on you
- Alcohol culture: “if we haven’t had a beer together, i don’t know you”
- meetings. As a programmer i can be super productive, but then i’ll be interrupted by a meeting… and that meeting is an hour long… completely stripping my concentration and now i gotta get it back up…
- retro-meetings … talking about what has been done in the last week… and what we liked and what we hated… i never know what to say “yeah i finished shit” or “i hate working with this shit” but then you have to elaborate…
So, I figure all modern corporate offices are exactly the same then. There is some good stuff in there, but it is so over the top and forced that it sort of ruin the benefits imo.
Positivity is great, even if it is forced a little, but hiding all negativity, issues and criticism make forced positivity completely useless. Not to mention that at the office I worked there was virtually always one or many of your “bosses” in earshot, in every situation. There wasn’t a daily, a meeting or a workstation in that job where some guy responsible for my promotions and employment wasn’t listening. This is how you make sure nothing of value is ever said in your dailies and retro meeting. It’s all great!
Now let’s play the game of figuring the smallest politically correct nitpick to mention during the retro so that we can check that self-improvement/self-organizing checkbox in front of the boss. What, you think over 10 hours of useless scrum meeting is wasteful, on top of the actual important meetings? Well, better not mention it. I mean you could, but shitting on scrum will get you canned. Do you think the way points/hours/complexity is evaluated completely miss the mark? Or are you tempted to mention Goodhart’s law when reviewing whatever metric in Jira? Well, better not do that, because you might as well say that your boss’s job needs not to exist. Better not mention anything that might compromise someone else in front of the boss, or anything that could be used against you in a review.
Because that’s the thing, since no one ever admit to mistake and make themselves vulnerable, if you’re the only one to do it it’s gonna raise “red flags” and you’re gonna hear about it in your next review. Better give a good not-so-anonymous review to your immediate managers too, raising any sort of issues could prevent one, or both of you from getting promoted with increased pay.
An absolute lack of consideration in regards to chat etiquette. Man now that I think about it, it’s chat threads/notification in particular.
People who carry on side conversations in threads. You’re giving everyone else who has participated in the thread the choice of “disable notifications for this thread and risk missing something relevant come back around, or get a notification for every single side message they’re sending”. Especially when someone is chiming in like 4 hours later. “Glad you guys got this sorted out”. Yes, all 12 of us on-call people in this thread needed to get that message direct to our phones at 3a.m. 4 hours after the outage has been resolved. Thanks for that. Very fucking helpful. High value communication.
People who will not use threads. I don’t need a new fucking notification every 20 seconds because you guys are deciding to have a chat about e-bikes. Make a goddamn thread or use a room made for chit chat, we’re all on the same team, we’re all in on-call positions. I’m paid to respond when this thing makes a noise. I am NOT comfortable muting the team channel.
It’s addressed elsewhere in these comments, but +1 to folks who just message you “hi”. Go get stabbed.
On the topic of notification fatigue:
People who will just not finish a thought. Before hitting their enter button. So they end up like doing this thing. Where you get a notification every 15 seconds, because they are just absolutely addicted. To their enter key I mean. They are addicted to thier enter key. their* Oh. I guess I could have just edited that message instead of sending the correction with the thing. Asterisk? Asterisx? I forget what it's called. LOL. Anyway, that thing.Also, when I’m helping you I am 100% going to stop what I am doing every time I get a message and read the message. There’s no way for me to know whether or not you’re messaging me “Oh never mind, I had a typo” or “here is more relevant info to make your work easier”. That message may very well have immediate impact on what I’m doing, and affect the course I take. Of course I’m going to stop what I’m doing to read it. So maybe don’t wait 5 minutes to send me the message “k” after I kindly, thoughtfully provide you with the status update “I think it’s the fizzibob, let me verify in the logs real quick” of my own volition so that you are not only aware of what’s going on, but don’t have any question as to whether or not your question is still being looked at.
Not using threads is fucking driving me insane too.
Also when somebody just says “hi” and waits. Don’t you fucking dare to do that. Type in what you want so I can decide if I want to reveal that I’m currently actually there and want to deal with your bullshit. Sometimes I just don’t write back. And then 3 days later they ask me in the office whether I saw their message. And I say yes, saw that, I just thought that was all because you haven’t continued.
Also you don’t have to say “Hi Golem” every single time when you start to ask something on the same day. Sometimes even 5 times a day. Geez. Just say what you want and be done with it.
Introduce them to the wonderful world of No Hello!
The lights at my previous workplace. They were super bright, depressing, fluorescent lights, and even though we had windows with natural light coming thru, they’d have the overhead lights on at full blast. Not only was it a massive waste of electricity, the lights actually hurt my eyes, and made me hate my workplace. I loved the WFH phase during covid since I could just rely on natural light - and was so much more productive and in a better mood. Unfortunately they started calling us back into the office with 3 compulsory days, and that was the last straw which made me quit my job.
I’m living the inverse of your experience right now. Just started a new job that requires 3 days in the office after having worked several years fully remote. I sit next to a full wall-length window and yet am being battered by soul-crushing overhead fluorescents. Time to figure out where the controls to the lights near me live in the breaker. I hear the COO likes all of the lights on so he can “feel like there are more people in the office.” Bully for him.
The moderator of a daily web-meeting saying “Who wants to go first?”.
Followed by either:
- nobody speaking
- everybody speaking
…BECAUSE THERE’S A LAG AND BODY LANGUAGE DOESN’T EXIST ONLINE.
Seriously people, don’t ask everyone. Ask individuals.
I’m always the one asked first. Fuck that. Don’t at all. Just … stop
Mandatory webcam on calls/meetings. I get that it works for team building when half the developers are at home at any given time, but it exhausts me in meetings.
You sit there with nothing to say/do while you listen, constantly having to look forward and pay attention. Then your jaw starts to feel tense, but you can’t just open your mouth or move around too much.
Total torture for 60+ minute meetings. In my previous company we had the webcams always off, so I could relax or if it was only talking with no presentation even sit on my couch away from the PC.
I’m not sure how much of this pressure is from your company or self-driven, but I always keep my webcam on and I don’t give a shit about sitting straight or looking attentive or whatever. Half the time I’m fucking around with stuff in the background. Nobody has ever said anything about it.
Agreed. I also frequently turn mine off for a minute or two to grab tea or snacks or whatever. Nobody’s ever said anything. It’s on ~90% of the time.