alt Hacker NewsAt a past firm I managed a team of SREs.
This was very much a "fire drill all the time" kind of place (vs "slow and steady"). The team came to me and said:
"Alex, we keep getting bombarded by meeting requests and have no focus time."
My solution was to create a weekly "team meeting" from 8am to 11am every Friday and invite all of them to it.
They loved it!
I mentioned to them that making a meeting like this was something they could have done themselves but they responded:
"It carries more weight coming from you. Plus, if someone tries to schedule over it, they are more likely to think twice and/or I can say 'Hey, you have to talk to Alex.' "
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I've done this, but IMO one of the nicest things about it is that people have the option to use it as an actual meeting place. It's like taking over an open conference room where people can wander in & out at will -- except invited members of the team are the only ones who can actually get in. Do your collaboration and then wander off, or just take your headphones off. There have been many times I've joined the meeting and there are two or three people in there just silently working. They just wanted to be near each other and hide from everybody else! Adorable.
This is brilliant, excellent example of the ideal of "management as shielding devs from higher-level corporate shenanigans" in action.
I've been fully remote fo a long time now, but I used to do this with my team and other colleagues. We'd book a conference room and create a 'meeting', but it was just a bunch of us quietly working on our laptops in the conference room (no audio, no calls was the rule), uninterrupted for a few hours at a go. It was quite popular.
I have done the same. FWIW, a 2-3 hour block seems to be the sweet spot, as far as keeping it off the radar goes. Ironically, having multiple a week doesn’t seem to raise an eyebrow.
Our product security and engineering teams do the same thing to defend against the project managers - an 8am-2pm product sync every monday and friday. Its worked for years now.
Weaponizing meetings for defensive purposes. I love it.
Working in education I am glad that this is not a problem where I am. As government employees we are all understaffed and overworked, and all meetings are short and to the point, because they are good when you need them, but most of the time you don't and a well written Email or a phone call is enough.
yep, did the same for my team at one place "[IMPORTANT] CUSTOMER OUTAGE" (or something similar).
We had a publicly viewable calendar policy. And I couldn't believe the audacity of people in other areas to take it upon themselves to just book over the top of existing meetings because they had decided their meeting was more important. And I'm not talking a group meeting where it's hard to find a gap that works for everyone, these were essentially 1:1 meetings where the organizer was someone with a little more seniority. No polite ask/DM first if it's ok, or a note in the invite to explain. Just see "focus time - no meetings" or something else _they_ deemed not important and they'd schedule it in that block and assume the IC wouldn't challenge their authority.
So had to play them at their own game to give my team their time back. The meeting was as much as an invite to them to challenge my authority as their previous attempts were. Conveniently it worked and nobody would book over my meeting. I do not miss working for larger companies.