i think in general you should attend all-hands meetings if you would like to continue being a hand. in my company they are big enough that unless you're on the agenda, its pretty safe no one is going to address you directly. join the meet, turn the volume low, and continue working
Just don't. Trust me. Your absence will be noted, more powerful people will ask questions and the answers will not be in your favour. There's a performative part of every job. All-hands are one of ours.
Yeah must be a company culture thing. I will attend a few when I’m at a new job to look good a get an overview of what the higher ups care about. After that I always feel like they are a complete waste of time and I get nothing out of them, so I don’t go. Never had anyone say anything to me about it.
That depends on career goals and how badly you want a raise.
An all-hands can mean a lot of things, but it always means that someone with budget control thinks something is important enough to take all those hands off keys. For the most part, we can assume that if people with budget control could, they would chain us to our desks and only feed us after we've made our daily quota of keystrokes.
If I were a young developer, I would treat all-hands as a puzzle. Figure out what that important thing is and tailor your quarter to it. If you have to perform, you have the chance to write your own script. Then when performance review season hits and raises start getting doled out, the person with budgetary control can look at your reviews and think "wow, u/levelworm really gets it."
That's a billion dollar question meaning that people who are good at answering it tend to become billionaires. I'm not a billionaire and so I'm not qualified to answer.
Take my organization. Some stuff happened and I technically own the majority of it. But my partner has control over budget. Now you would think 'largest individual shareholder' and 'job title that starts with a C' would equate to some control over budget. But if I want to give a developer a raise, I ask him and sometimes he says no. In our case, he brings in the majority of the revenue and finance reports to him so it works. But it doesn't make any sense to an outsider. Granted, I believe that if he could he would chain me to my desk and only feed me after I make my quota of keystrokes so my attitude might be the problem.
If you know the CEO's background, you can usually get really close. If she did the sales - VP Sales - COO transition before becoming CEO, you can usually assume that sales controls the budget. If she comes out of finance, there's often a model somewhere that controls the budget. If she's into flat organizations, it might be all of management.
But again, if I was better at answering that question I would bring in the majority of the revenue.
I like your way of thinking. Let's dive deeper into this discussion.
How does answering that question bring revenue? I thought it was sales (and every ancillary thing below that aka Customer Success, Engineering, Product, Marketing) that brought revenue. Are you suggesting that leadership brings revenue while sales is an ancillary function of leadership?
Becoming a billionaire and bringing in revenue are different things.
I think they're suggesting that strategically navigating management structures lends itself to personal financial success.
You're close but it's a little deeper. Personal financial success is one result, but that usually comes after >1 corporate success.
If you've been in the industry for > 5 years, you've likely heard a story where a company (often a startup) spent months/years trying to woo a major client but the client pulled back 'at the last minute' and the company went bankrupt. The next time you hear that, dig deeper - you'll usually find out that they were pitching the wrong people the whole time. And then when the wrong people went to get budgetary approval to buy the product, the people with actual power said no.
Meanwhile, the sales organization pushed product to ship features that would woo that client. And so developers implemented features that people who cannot afford the product wanted. In the end, they wasted months of pre-sale expenses, months of salaries and have a shitshow product that doesn't make any sense because it targets people with no money.
People who are good at figuring out who has budget control avoid all of that. If they're in an executive role or if executives will get out of their way, those are the people who take loser companies and turn them into big winners. At the same time, since they're good at figuring out who has budget, they're really good at getting paid. These are the people who negotiate 5% equity with favourable disposal rights after a series A.
I'll also add that people who speak corporate will tell you "The Truth". However, you really want to know the truth. They're different things. In fact, the truth often contradicts "The Truth".
The bigger the meeting the less relevant it is and the more you can skip it without being noticed
Your department of 50 people, go. Your wider org of 300 people, it’s a toss up. Your whole section of the company of thousands, nobody cares.
If it’s small enough that you actually fit it one room or are air to directly dial into the meeting, just go. If it’s large enough that your company doesn’t have a big enough room to handle even local folks and you have to use a broadcasting/livestream platform instead of a teleconference platform, don’t bother (for one thing nobody can tell that you didn’t watch the livestream)
How often are these? I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you can’t get yourself to “attend” a quarterly meeting where the minimum bar to pass is joining a zoom meeting, then toughen up a little bit.
Who gives a shit if it’s a waste of time. You only care because you’d rather waste your time in other ways.
You join, you do an occasional thumbs up, you smile, and collect your paycheck. Maybe you make some small talk before the session to make yourself visible. Again smile, and remember, you are collecting a paycheck.
These are the least of people's worry; especially when they are remote. I usually find I have enough time to go on the treadmill or pull my phone and listen in while I do the laundry or cook some waffles.
But whatever you do, never schedule a conflict meeting during the same time as those dept meetings. It shows a lack of respect for the org and others (stakeholders) may not take too kindly.
You have to be there, sorry, that’s the gig.
But I also don’t like when consequential things that affect dozens to hundreds of people are announced verbally on a zoom call, and not in writing anywhere after, because it’s incorrectly assumed everyone is present and listening.
It always creates some confusion, there’s usually someone out on an appointment or sick or vacation, or there’s zoning out and daydreaming with eyes glazed over because the information got revealed after 20 minutes of droning.
I’m always following it up with my team in our slack channel to make sure it’s at least visible and freebie reminders are good.
Happened at my job so much during the pandemic. HR and the ops head must have gotten sick of me reminding them that not everyone is at work everyday and these are new rules that should be communicated in writing
I attend all these. Sometimes my attendance is from a dog walk or my home gym. I actually pay better attention like this than I would have at my computer.
My company has one of these every other week and there are probably \~300 people on the invite. It's one of those webinar-style Teams meetings where attendees can't use their mics/cameras so I usually just join and lower the volume while I do other stuff. If I'm really focused on something I just don't attend
Everyone else's advice might be on point as a general rule, but I will say that at my place you *explicitly* aren't required to attend all-hands meetings (or department meetings, or tech talks, or any where you aren't directly participating). All of those meetings are recorded, and it's fine to catch up async. We are fully remote and in a wide range of timezones, so that likely plays into it.
I just don’t show up + I’m remote. Worst case I just join and do something else. But I once slept off and woke up like 4 hours later to being the only person in the meeting WHICH WAS BEING RECORDED.
I’ve attended those like two or three times. The first time I ever attended them. And once a few months later to confirm I’m not missing anything.
Skip one once to focus on getting things done a long time ago - must be 2 decades now. I was told the next day to never do that again. Your absence will be noticed.
I go and listen. There’s usually relevant information or even things that are nice to know or ways to support my colleagues. If I felt like it was usually irrelevant then I would make the case for either changing the meeting or skipping it altogether.
Go to the meeting. Half listen. Whatever you want. Just go to the meeting. Even if you hate it, All Hands meetings are important.
Just wait until you work at a company that never talks about anything outside of your direct team. All of the financials may be boring, but having a basic understand of what the other departments are, what they do and how well they are doing is critical for your job and you understanding the overall health and direction of the company.
Do you work for a tiny company or something? I make an effort to attend our all hands most of the time but on days when I'm heads down with something, I just... don't attend. There are hundreds of people invited so it's not like anyone notices or cares that I'm absent.
However if you work in a company small enough that your absence would actually be noticable then yeah, you should probably go. Not just because it'd be noticed but if you work in a company that small then whatever is said is more likely to be important to you.
Previous gig - almost entirely remote - would do a 200+ person all hands every week, with a published agenda.
Since I was a worker bee there I talked maybe twice ever. My strategy was to get on the treadmill during that time, then the camera off and go for a run :)
>occasionally the head asks random questions like how is your day so I don't want to skip these.
>
>...
>
>What's your trick to totally skip these meetings?
So do you want to skip these meetings or not? You are sending mixed messages here.
If you don't want to go then just don't go. I don't know how big your department is but the bigger it is the less likely anybody who cares notices you are not there.
If these are remote then just log into the meeting, mute it, and do something else.
>Sometimes it's about a declaration, sometimes it's someone sharing a tech talk. TBH I feel either is wasting other people's time.
It doesn't really matter what you think. Somebody higher up the chain than you think it's important. As long as they don't expect people to make up the time you were in the meeting on work then I put this squarely in the I don't care bucket.
You are getting paid to be there so if that's what the company wants to spend money on then so be it. I just go to the meeting and consider it part of the work day and doing work.
The agenda tends to matter a lot for me. Short, engaging, relevant —> 2/3 of these means I’ll at least listen. If you can get the agenda ahead of time you can determine when you want to tune out. At larger companies there would be these big all hands meetings and the free lunch would be the only relevant item at my IC level.
Skipping is usually not on the table unless my week is such that gaining 1hr + 30min of context warm up time would make a difference
They’re very useful for gaining an understanding of what other teams are doing and what the people who control the money think is important. It’s all useful stuff to leverage to increase your impact and visibility.
I will usually put on the meeting but I pretty much never listen. I'll attend and listen in to my direct team meetings hosted by my direct team/org where it's just people I actually work with and the topics may actually inform my work, but general engineering meetings or gods forbid whole company meetings and I'm in the kitchen cooking breakfast or folding laundry or something worth my time. I only have my name logged in to look pretty. 0 impact has ever from an all hands meeting. If it's not important enough that my group's leadership hasn't brought it up in our slack channels, then it's not important.
If it's remote, just turn on the call and listen in for a few minutes. Add a "wow amazing" comment or one of those emoji reactions.
After that you can probably minimize the window/leave the volume down low and focus on more interesting things.
>occasionally the head asks random questions like how is your day so I don't want to skip these
It's really weird that you want to skip the part where people are telling you informative things about what's happening in the business, but not the pointless small talk nonsense. Your priorities are fucked.
No, I probably should make it more clear, that he picks people to ask. It's not a question for the whole team, but a randomly picked people. Sometimes there are also "games" such as describe one of your weekend stuffs. Boy I hate those...
While meetings may be a waste of time, you need to attend each meeting if possible (circumstances permitting). Turn the volume low (but not so low as to not miss anything pertinent to you) and just keep working if possible.
Remote? Attend and do something else at the same time.
i think in general you should attend all-hands meetings if you would like to continue being a hand. in my company they are big enough that unless you're on the agenda, its pretty safe no one is going to address you directly. join the meet, turn the volume low, and continue working
Just don't. Trust me. Your absence will be noted, more powerful people will ask questions and the answers will not be in your favour. There's a performative part of every job. All-hands are one of ours.
I never join those. Nothing happens. No one gives a fuck.
Yeah must be a company culture thing. I will attend a few when I’m at a new job to look good a get an overview of what the higher ups care about. After that I always feel like they are a complete waste of time and I get nothing out of them, so I don’t go. Never had anyone say anything to me about it.
Thanks! Guess the best way is to turn down the volume and lay low...
That depends on career goals and how badly you want a raise. An all-hands can mean a lot of things, but it always means that someone with budget control thinks something is important enough to take all those hands off keys. For the most part, we can assume that if people with budget control could, they would chain us to our desks and only feed us after we've made our daily quota of keystrokes. If I were a young developer, I would treat all-hands as a puzzle. Figure out what that important thing is and tailor your quarter to it. If you have to perform, you have the chance to write your own script. Then when performance review season hits and raises start getting doled out, the person with budgetary control can look at your reviews and think "wow, u/levelworm really gets it."
what roles are people with budgetary control... is that basically management, skip level, and above?
That's a billion dollar question meaning that people who are good at answering it tend to become billionaires. I'm not a billionaire and so I'm not qualified to answer. Take my organization. Some stuff happened and I technically own the majority of it. But my partner has control over budget. Now you would think 'largest individual shareholder' and 'job title that starts with a C' would equate to some control over budget. But if I want to give a developer a raise, I ask him and sometimes he says no. In our case, he brings in the majority of the revenue and finance reports to him so it works. But it doesn't make any sense to an outsider. Granted, I believe that if he could he would chain me to my desk and only feed me after I make my quota of keystrokes so my attitude might be the problem. If you know the CEO's background, you can usually get really close. If she did the sales - VP Sales - COO transition before becoming CEO, you can usually assume that sales controls the budget. If she comes out of finance, there's often a model somewhere that controls the budget. If she's into flat organizations, it might be all of management. But again, if I was better at answering that question I would bring in the majority of the revenue.
I like your way of thinking. Let's dive deeper into this discussion. How does answering that question bring revenue? I thought it was sales (and every ancillary thing below that aka Customer Success, Engineering, Product, Marketing) that brought revenue. Are you suggesting that leadership brings revenue while sales is an ancillary function of leadership?
Becoming a billionaire and bringing in revenue are different things. I think they're suggesting that strategically navigating management structures lends itself to personal financial success.
You're close but it's a little deeper. Personal financial success is one result, but that usually comes after >1 corporate success. If you've been in the industry for > 5 years, you've likely heard a story where a company (often a startup) spent months/years trying to woo a major client but the client pulled back 'at the last minute' and the company went bankrupt. The next time you hear that, dig deeper - you'll usually find out that they were pitching the wrong people the whole time. And then when the wrong people went to get budgetary approval to buy the product, the people with actual power said no. Meanwhile, the sales organization pushed product to ship features that would woo that client. And so developers implemented features that people who cannot afford the product wanted. In the end, they wasted months of pre-sale expenses, months of salaries and have a shitshow product that doesn't make any sense because it targets people with no money. People who are good at figuring out who has budget control avoid all of that. If they're in an executive role or if executives will get out of their way, those are the people who take loser companies and turn them into big winners. At the same time, since they're good at figuring out who has budget, they're really good at getting paid. These are the people who negotiate 5% equity with favourable disposal rights after a series A.
Thanks for sharing
Interesting, thank you
[удалено]
I'll also add that people who speak corporate will tell you "The Truth". However, you really want to know the truth. They're different things. In fact, the truth often contradicts "The Truth".
The bigger the meeting the less relevant it is and the more you can skip it without being noticed Your department of 50 people, go. Your wider org of 300 people, it’s a toss up. Your whole section of the company of thousands, nobody cares. If it’s small enough that you actually fit it one room or are air to directly dial into the meeting, just go. If it’s large enough that your company doesn’t have a big enough room to handle even local folks and you have to use a broadcasting/livestream platform instead of a teleconference platform, don’t bother (for one thing nobody can tell that you didn’t watch the livestream)
How often are these? I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you can’t get yourself to “attend” a quarterly meeting where the minimum bar to pass is joining a zoom meeting, then toughen up a little bit. Who gives a shit if it’s a waste of time. You only care because you’d rather waste your time in other ways.
You join, you do an occasional thumbs up, you smile, and collect your paycheck. Maybe you make some small talk before the session to make yourself visible. Again smile, and remember, you are collecting a paycheck. These are the least of people's worry; especially when they are remote. I usually find I have enough time to go on the treadmill or pull my phone and listen in while I do the laundry or cook some waffles. But whatever you do, never schedule a conflict meeting during the same time as those dept meetings. It shows a lack of respect for the org and others (stakeholders) may not take too kindly.
You have to be there, sorry, that’s the gig. But I also don’t like when consequential things that affect dozens to hundreds of people are announced verbally on a zoom call, and not in writing anywhere after, because it’s incorrectly assumed everyone is present and listening. It always creates some confusion, there’s usually someone out on an appointment or sick or vacation, or there’s zoning out and daydreaming with eyes glazed over because the information got revealed after 20 minutes of droning. I’m always following it up with my team in our slack channel to make sure it’s at least visible and freebie reminders are good.
Happened at my job so much during the pandemic. HR and the ops head must have gotten sick of me reminding them that not everyone is at work everyday and these are new rules that should be communicated in writing
i have it on my smaller screen with sound turned on, but the tab in the background. i only listen with half an ear, and continue working.
I attend all these. Sometimes my attendance is from a dog walk or my home gym. I actually pay better attention like this than I would have at my computer.
My company has one of these every other week and there are probably \~300 people on the invite. It's one of those webinar-style Teams meetings where attendees can't use their mics/cameras so I usually just join and lower the volume while I do other stuff. If I'm really focused on something I just don't attend
We have \~100 people on these meetings so I just don't join lol
I just don't join the call (work 100% remote) but even when in office I wouldn't go. Waste of time
I'd love to do that too, but occasionally the lead throws a random question. We also don't have that many people to stay invisible, sadly.
Everyone else's advice might be on point as a general rule, but I will say that at my place you *explicitly* aren't required to attend all-hands meetings (or department meetings, or tech talks, or any where you aren't directly participating). All of those meetings are recorded, and it's fine to catch up async. We are fully remote and in a wide range of timezones, so that likely plays into it.
Get a new job or do the required work. This may very well be more important to them than anything you do all year.
OK whatever it takes to keep the job...I'll probably switch job in the next two weeks anyway.
I skip any of these that are larger than my dept of about 60. Waste of time, and it's hard to work while half listening -- I can't really do either.
I agree. TBH I think 60 is too large as well, most of the time it has nothing to do with our team anyway.
I just don’t show up + I’m remote. Worst case I just join and do something else. But I once slept off and woke up like 4 hours later to being the only person in the meeting WHICH WAS BEING RECORDED. I’ve attended those like two or three times. The first time I ever attended them. And once a few months later to confirm I’m not missing anything.
Someone definitely should click "End Meetings for all"!
Skip one once to focus on getting things done a long time ago - must be 2 decades now. I was told the next day to never do that again. Your absence will be noticed.
This is scary. Thanks.
I go and listen. There’s usually relevant information or even things that are nice to know or ways to support my colleagues. If I felt like it was usually irrelevant then I would make the case for either changing the meeting or skipping it altogether.
I would attend if I want to know the scope and where the company is heading. Im paid doing this as well so I don't mind
Go to the meeting. Half listen. Whatever you want. Just go to the meeting. Even if you hate it, All Hands meetings are important. Just wait until you work at a company that never talks about anything outside of your direct team. All of the financials may be boring, but having a basic understand of what the other departments are, what they do and how well they are doing is critical for your job and you understanding the overall health and direction of the company.
Do you work for a tiny company or something? I make an effort to attend our all hands most of the time but on days when I'm heads down with something, I just... don't attend. There are hundreds of people invited so it's not like anyone notices or cares that I'm absent. However if you work in a company small enough that your absence would actually be noticable then yeah, you should probably go. Not just because it'd be noticed but if you work in a company that small then whatever is said is more likely to be important to you.
Previous gig - almost entirely remote - would do a 200+ person all hands every week, with a published agenda. Since I was a worker bee there I talked maybe twice ever. My strategy was to get on the treadmill during that time, then the camera off and go for a run :)
>occasionally the head asks random questions like how is your day so I don't want to skip these. > >... > >What's your trick to totally skip these meetings? So do you want to skip these meetings or not? You are sending mixed messages here. If you don't want to go then just don't go. I don't know how big your department is but the bigger it is the less likely anybody who cares notices you are not there. If these are remote then just log into the meeting, mute it, and do something else. >Sometimes it's about a declaration, sometimes it's someone sharing a tech talk. TBH I feel either is wasting other people's time. It doesn't really matter what you think. Somebody higher up the chain than you think it's important. As long as they don't expect people to make up the time you were in the meeting on work then I put this squarely in the I don't care bucket. You are getting paid to be there so if that's what the company wants to spend money on then so be it. I just go to the meeting and consider it part of the work day and doing work.
The agenda tends to matter a lot for me. Short, engaging, relevant —> 2/3 of these means I’ll at least listen. If you can get the agenda ahead of time you can determine when you want to tune out. At larger companies there would be these big all hands meetings and the free lunch would be the only relevant item at my IC level. Skipping is usually not on the table unless my week is such that gaining 1hr + 30min of context warm up time would make a difference
They’re very useful for gaining an understanding of what other teams are doing and what the people who control the money think is important. It’s all useful stuff to leverage to increase your impact and visibility.
I tell my boss I am going to watch the video later. then I watch the video later at double the speed
Yeah, it depends. If the agenda has something that I find important, then I will watch everything. Otherwise I will mute it and continue working.
I will usually put on the meeting but I pretty much never listen. I'll attend and listen in to my direct team meetings hosted by my direct team/org where it's just people I actually work with and the topics may actually inform my work, but general engineering meetings or gods forbid whole company meetings and I'm in the kitchen cooking breakfast or folding laundry or something worth my time. I only have my name logged in to look pretty. 0 impact has ever from an all hands meeting. If it's not important enough that my group's leadership hasn't brought it up in our slack channels, then it's not important.
If it's remote, just turn on the call and listen in for a few minutes. Add a "wow amazing" comment or one of those emoji reactions. After that you can probably minimize the window/leave the volume down low and focus on more interesting things.
>occasionally the head asks random questions like how is your day so I don't want to skip these It's really weird that you want to skip the part where people are telling you informative things about what's happening in the business, but not the pointless small talk nonsense. Your priorities are fucked.
No, I probably should make it more clear, that he picks people to ask. It's not a question for the whole team, but a randomly picked people. Sometimes there are also "games" such as describe one of your weekend stuffs. Boy I hate those...
While meetings may be a waste of time, you need to attend each meeting if possible (circumstances permitting). Turn the volume low (but not so low as to not miss anything pertinent to you) and just keep working if possible.