I completely agree. People tend to be afraid of saying "no" to avoid offending people. And then there is the case of showing off in front of 10+ people.
At my last job, people were spending nearly 2 hours each day in meetings. Each of these meetings required 1-2 hours of preparation. So, nearly 50% of the work week or 20 out of 40 hours were being lost. And most of these meetings were "updates" meetings. Update to Lead Engineer, then team, then VP etc. To top it off the manager believed in "face to face" interactions. So, all meetings happened via video conferencing.
Whenever I explained on how it should be a lead engineer updating the manager and the manager updating to VP, I was given a strange look. How do we show off our achievements? They said.
But it also meant I couldn't individually say "no". Every time I did that my manager received flurry of mails from other engineers on why I was given the "special" treatment of skipping these meetings.
It's a shame it's so ingrained in the culture there. I completely respect that in many situations one isn't permitted to refuse. The idea of showing off at meetings, as opposed to by shipping quality on time and documenting it is crazy.
That is beyond crazy. If I have more than 2h meetings a day my work is practically done. Bad meetings usually create internal discussions and dissipate discipline. Cost of bad meetings multiplies negatively.
At my last job, people were spending nearly 2 hours each day in meetings. Each of these meetings required 1-2 hours of preparation. So, nearly 50% of the work week or 20 out of 40 hours were being lost. And most of these meetings were "updates" meetings. Update to Lead Engineer, then team, then VP etc. To top it off the manager believed in "face to face" interactions. So, all meetings happened via video conferencing.
Whenever I explained on how it should be a lead engineer updating the manager and the manager updating to VP, I was given a strange look. How do we show off our achievements? They said.
But it also meant I couldn't individually say "no". Every time I did that my manager received flurry of mails from other engineers on why I was given the "special" treatment of skipping these meetings.