My husband has been working from home since March. I've learned that he basically gets paid by Exxon to be in meetings. Speak in meetings, meet with other people about their last meeting, and have meetings to plan for the next meeting...
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Which organizations have the highest meetings?
This topic gets unexpected high response because the "Meeting' culture is a common experience.
It existed, in the past of course, in generic rooms - cramped whether under or over-booked for the number of personnel attending. Bosses chattering on and on, contradicting themselves this word and that. Followed by the sycophants in pecking order.
At least I could just doodle away on my sticky-note pad.
Zoom meetings - the gas-lighting and ghosting taking place is much more evident.
More entertaining. Less doodling, but more hidden smirking.
I like it.
Sheesh. First the parents coming on, then the spouses ... what's next, the babysitters? How many people do you need to advocate for you to earn a paycheck, people? Can't you cut it by yourself, do you need mommy/ daddy/ honey to clean up for you?
Many are not being allowed to return, so before saying someone should be axed because they are working from home know the facts... where I am only 25% of the team is allowed to be there at one time... at there are also many SLS and up who LOVE to have a meeting to talk having another meeting.... I only wonder who is actually going to do the work as they cutting the worker bees pretty low and HQ has proven many times don’t care how you get done, but get it done....
Love online meetings without zoom sharing.. WFH is great! We still get to clock the online hours(hint: set Skype to be always online) and be able to do things like Netflix, cooking and baking! All during WFH hours with a pay cut!
Sounds like hubby is ripe to be axed, as he should be, "working" from home since March!!!
It depends on who else is in the meeting. After more than 30 years with the company, I am convinced that managers rate their own importance by the number of meetings they attend and by how much they speak in them. So if you are in several (ahem) work-related meetings with your manager - and preferably their manager - every day, and you make sure that your voice is heard (even if it's just making banal comments or asking stupid questions), then the managers will be convinced that your time is being spent on productive and important work. It doesn't matter what action items come out of the meeting - they can be delegated to someone else. The main thing is to be in meetings with the managers, laughing and joking along with them.
How do I know this? My last manager - the one who got me NSI'd. His work calendar was full, every day, with back-to-back meetings. He always complained about it, but really he loved it. Spending all of that time in meetings, who did he get to do the work? His Team. He used to finish the day by sending e-mails out to people, asking them to prepare powerpoint slides, construct spreadsheets, write summaries and updates, or just generally find information for him. One time, he made the mistake of sending me an e-mail, telling me what was needed and who wanted it. Suspecting that he was taking all of the credit for our work, I sent him the information (along with a workbook that took me 3 hours to prepare through the evening) and cc'd the other person (his manager) asking if they needed any additional information.
That was the last time he made that mistake! Unfortunately for me, this was in early April this year and it might have been the final nail in the coffin for my career with a supervisor who hated me (the feeling was mutual!)
Remember when all is said and done, more was said than done. This is a mid-life, middle management tier crisis. You must be important if you are invited to meeting(s). The more meetings you attend the more important you are. The fact that nothing gets decided by "planning", and only gets done as a last resort because it is a flaming emergency, makes even the bad decisions by the committee of committees appear to be "good". Remember the ancient joke, the guy in the trench says to his management this is sh*t, by the time it filters up and has been made politically correct, it's good for the company because it makes stuff grow.
There is this misguided perception that a lack of meetings on someones weekly schedule means they aren't staying busy. Of course in real life we know that you need time away from meetings so you can actually get work done.
4 meetings a day? Gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers in this racket!
That has been one of the main criticisms I’ve been hearing recently. To many people talking about what to do, making plans and PowerPoint slides with little to no actual work coming to fruition. I don’t know if this got worse with everyone working from home or if this was how it was before and we just didn’t realize it......
Are you worried about your husband being let go? Seems like his job is a very high risk of being cut in this environment.
I've had an increase in meetings, now averaging 7 per day. All about what needs to be done, but no one's doing it because we're all in meetings.
Just a normal day. Is it not normal?
That’s classic. It’s sound a cozy job.