Meetings are the Productivity Killer

A general computer related quote, and a tirade on meetings:

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in. - Bradley's Bromide

And we all know why committee's would be their downfall -> meetings. Just like at the end of WarGames, instead of having the computer play itself at Tic-Tac-Toe we could instead have them attend meetings. Maybe they could have done that with the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation - get one of them to call a meeting to discuss assimilating the humans.

I have a litany I have adopted for meetings. It is originally from Dune. I am sure many of you will recognize the quote:

Meetings are the productivity killer. Meetings are the little-death that bring an end to productivity. I will face my meeting. I will permit myself to through it. And when it is over, I will turn the innter eye to see its result and hunt for any productivity there. Only I shall find what I bring. - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Meetings

Not all meetings are bad, but they certainly are not all productive either.

I was reading Paul Graham's excellent essay on "What Business can Learn from Open Source" where he said:

The problem with the facetime model is not just that it's demoralizing, but that the people pretending to work interrupt the ones actually working. I'm convinced the facetime model is the main reason large organizations have so many meetings. Per capita, large organizations accomplish very little. And yet all those people have to be on site at least eight hours a day. When so much time goes in one end and so little achievement comes out the other, something has to give. And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack.

I've heard a number of consultants who worked at HP comment that the consultants did all the work because all the full time employees spent all their time in meetings. Having been a consultant at HP I was surprised at how many meeting rooms they had, and how often they were all full.

Paul goes on in the next paragraph to say something the really reminded me of my first work with an hourly wage:

For one year I worked at a regular nine to five job, and I remember well the strange, cozy feeling that comes over one during meetings. I was very aware, because of the novelty, that I was being paid for programming. It seemed just amazing, as if there was a machine on my desk that spat out a dollar bill every two minutes no matter what I did. Even while I was in the bathroom! But because the imaginary machine was always running, I felt I always ought to be working. And so meetings felt wonderfully relaxing. They counted as work, just like programming, but they were so much easier. All you had to do was sit and look attentive.

I love his analogy of "machine on my desk that spat out a dollar bill every two minutes no matter what I did". I remember standing the bathroom one day figuring out how much money I was getting paid to stand there. I had been developing software for years before this point, but never on an hourly wage. Something about getting married made me think I wanted something more stable. Years later after having been laid off a few times I realized that employment was actually less stable.

There is a Dilbert comic that is a favorite of mine. I am pretty sure it was one of the many that was placed on T-Shirts, mugs, etc. Ratbert gets hired at Dilbert's company, but has no idea what to do. Dilbert tells him just to sit at the computer and move the mouse if anyone walks by. Ratbert dutifily does just that and everyone thinks he is a great employee. Then he says "How did anyone look busy before computers were invented?"

Tags: [Programming] [Meetings] [Productivity] [Computers]