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exegeteyesterday at 1:28 AM7 repliesview on HN

We do this at my work and guess what - meetings tend to run 5 minutes late because everyone knows the next meeting doesn’t start until 5 past.


Replies

ehntoyesterday at 5:12 AM

Sounds like the issue is back to back meetings then.

Also every meeting taking the exact time it was scheduled for is a bit of an org smell too. If you have your meeting etiquette dialed in you should hopefully be finishing meetings early more often than running over. If you are running to the minute or over all the time you might just be having crap meetings.

wvenableyesterday at 1:35 AM

Yeah, this works because it's novel. If it became the norm, people would adjust to it and we'd right back where we started.

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rendawyesterday at 3:05 AM

Meeting software should eject everyone when the time is reached.

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chatmastayesterday at 5:06 AM

Isn’t the point of TFA that meetings _unavoidably_ run 5 minutes late, and so starting at 0:05 will avoid being impacted by the previous meeting?

I see two flaws:

1) This only works as long as nobody else does it. If the meeting prior to yours follows the same strategy then you’re in the same position as today

2) it starts 5 minutes later but has no plan for ending 5 minutes earlier, which means the next meeting will have to start at 0:10…

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charles_fyesterday at 10:04 AM

That, and on top of it people now come 5m late on 5m past so we start 10m past and finish 10m late.

etrautmannyesterday at 1:54 AM

This is standard at the large tech company where I work and is extremely effective and universally respected.

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DalekBaldwinyesterday at 1:43 AM

My org had the opposite problem in the Covid remote transition. At one point we successfully enforced meetings ending 5 minutes before the hour, but then somebody would just open the next meeting 5 minutes early.

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