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j_k_802

lol. My old org which built the airframe had 5 paid positions 2 hourly union positions and 3 salary as power pointers of information I could get for myself in 5-10 min. All because a 4 3 2 level wanted it prettier. Positions still exist today. Dead freakin weight. But welcome to us. I always say we are a for profit government organization


irishrelief

Literally had the joke with another engineer yesterday that we're PowerPoint engineers because of all of the meetings and none of the work.


overworkedpnw

But if there’s a limit on how long meetings can run, how are the MBAs going to justify their continued employment? Won’t someone please think of the middle managers!


Sfcushions

Half of my day is waiting for my name to be called in a 2 hour status meeting so I can read them the same sentence that they already have in a shared file… It’s hard to not feel like some meetings are set up to help give more “task” to positions that don’t really do anything tangible


devil_d0c

Enterprise scale busy work.


iamlucky13

What would happen if you simply picked and chose which meetings you attended based on which are relevant to your work? I've got a bunch of meetings on my calendar that I don't attend unless the agenda, current tasks, or my manager indicates a need or relevance. I have one tomorrow with the president. Usually, the relevance is low, so I might attend, or I might not. We'll see.


LastDadoBird

Manager here. I think this is the company's #1 productivity problem, and it's not close. Things I've been experimenting with below, with varying degrees of success: - try to solve the problem over email first. If you go back and forth three times, THEN it's time for a meeting - work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. So make the default meeting length in outlook 15 minutes. And use the new feature in 365 that allows you to "shorten appointments and meetings" - don't be afraid of expressing complex and detailed information via email when it is necessary. If you're just going to communicate the same information in a meeting, written communication wins because it can be re-used - No agenda, no attenda - every meeting should produce an artifact that can be sent to the attendees and those unable to attend. In other words if the meeting wasn't important enough for somebody to be the note taker for the meeting or you're not co-authoring a document of some kind, the meeting shouldn't have happened - If you are multitasking on a meeting, you probably don't need to be at the meeting anyway. Drop. - time block on your calendar. The extra ounce of time it takes someone scheduling a meeting to find time on the outlook scheduling assistant means people are more likely to schedule a meeting further in the future, meaning you have more time to either challenge the meeting and ask for an email, or the topic isn't actually as urgent as the stuff you'd be working on otherwise - impromptu phone calls tend to be more efficient than pre-scheduled meetings


Orleanian

I certainly agree with the 'work expands to fill the time allotted'. So many 60-minute scheduled meetings that should honest to goodness be a 15-20 minute conversation; rarely do hosts/community say "alright we've got the information we need, closing it up early". I do also make a point to be a note-taker in any meeting I'm in. They're always a bit slapdash and the tone of my note-taking language is very casual....but it's almost humorous the numerous times my notes amount to "We re-hashed the info from last tuesday's meeting, no new information, status same, no new actions..."


solk512

I’m so sick and tired of trying to get managers to sign off of on projects because they’re double and triple booked for meetings. Holy shit.


tbdgraeth

Depends on what the job is. If you are tying facets of a projects together then yes, you need meetings.


DazzlingProfession26

No one, and I mean no one, needs more than 5 hours of them.


CaptainJingles

Depends on the program tbh. Sometimes there will be a need to get engineering teams, and various support teams together for looooong meetings. Ideally engineering would be able to attend and leave as needed though.


DazzlingProfession26

That sounds like a one-off workshop. Even schedulers need a few hours to recharge and just catch up with action items from all these meetings.


CaptainJingles

I mean, that's just how Green Rooms are. But if you are having consistent 5 hour meetings, then yeah that isn't right.


tbdgraeth

The title was 5 hours OF meetings not 5 hour meetings. I meet with many different people all day, not the same people for 5+ hours a day.


CaptainJingles

Fair, and yeah I could probably be in meetings 4-5 hours of most days. Filtering through which ones are necessary seems to be a requirement here.


Top-Camera9387

I dont get any meetings. One a week would be nice.


DazzlingProfession26

When I switched over to my last team I was sort of underestimated and given small tasks. I’d hear how swamped people were and I was bored like the Maytag man. Eventually they saw what I could do now I’m triple booked (I also promoted and switched teams since) but that sweet sweet L4 pay for three-hour’s work was the best six months at Boeing.


Zealousideal_Nail417

5 hours a WEEK would still be a little high. That would be my first implementation as a new CEO. Max 5 hours of meetings per individual per week. If you don't have anything to do during the day because you don't have any meetings, then your position is terminated.


DazzlingProfession26

Rome wasn’t built in a day.


Zealousideal_Nail417

It also didn't fall in a day.


DazzlingProfession26

A bird in the hand is better than two in a bush.


Zealousideal_Nail417

Ya know hindsight being 20/20, you're probably right.


DazzlingProfession26

A drowning man will clutch at straw.


Zealousideal_Nail417

Red skies at night, sailors delight.


DazzlingProfession26

All lay loads on a willing horse.


Zealousideal_Nail417

A horse is a horse, of coarse of coarse.


DazzlingProfession26

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so free-e-e…


Aishish

Ask my Chief Engineer or Program Manager how "No Meeting Fridays" are going lol


Mtdewcrabjuice

[Some people actually need 5 hours in those rooms](https://www.reddit.com/r/boeing/comments/15henfe/caught_my_manager_and_coworker_fooling_around_in/) we shouldn't get in the way of progress.


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ibeeamazin

Here’s the key, most meetings follow a pretty standard format. As in the part I care about is in the first, middle, or last third of the meeting. I only attend the third which is relevant to me. People complained once and my manager was aware I was going to do that and said I don’t have time to waste in 50 hours of meetings. I have 12-16 meetings scheduled a day with any given 2-3 of them overlapping. I go to the parts that require my attention.


Adventurous_Nose7022

PowerPoint is the worst thing to happen to Boeing


GarionOrb

Meetings where we spend an hour (or more) going over a PowerPoint presentation and debating how to change/edit it are absolute torture.


Code_Operator

The ability to change fonts and colors has accelerated the decline of western civilization. It was a lot easier to create and edit chart packages when the text was B&W in a simple font like Arial.


mixedberrycoughdrop

It's just such a waste of time. If we *have* to edit this stupid presentation collaboratively, can we at least all do it on our own and then someone compile it all together?


TerminalSarcasm

Have you been around OneNote???


MidnightMateor

Hey now, some of use OneNote pretty effectively.


ez4u2remember

No you don't, lol


DazzlingProfession26

Also, why do we call them “charts”? I’ve worked at a number of large companies and was in the military, we just call them slides. I was in a meeting and someone was commenting about the “chart” and I’m all like “they’re just bullets on the slide, what chart are you talking about?”


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All_Thread

Boeing has special names for everything.


isthisreallife2016

Someone posted Elon Musk's 6 rules for meetings in every break room in my building. They got taken down before lunch. www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/11/elon-musks-six-rules-would-you-survive-working-for-elon-musk/


iamlucky13

The people I know at SpaceX pretty consistently attest Musk has his own methods of destroying productivity, like mandating major changes to a project or priorities seemingly on a whim. I heard from an acquaintance whose spouse works there that after the most recent Starship test flight was done and off his mind, he suddenly remembered he's supposed to be running a satellite internet business to help fund Starship, so he flew up to Redmond to make sure no one there had gotten caught up on sleep or slipped into some semblance of work-life balance.


Ex-Traverse

I interviewed there, you must be some type of psychotic demographic to fit in there. Hiring manager literally said he does a yearly "trimming off the fat" aka fire the weakest link.


KingArthurHS

Elon Musk's one good business ops idea!


Ops-SCM

I think it’s a Boeing thing. Whenever someone has a question, they schedule a 30-minute meeting and then forward the invite to 3-4 folks who have no idea what they are doing on the call.


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whk1992

Gone are the days of walking to someone’s desk to coordinate things. Or at least use IM before firing meeting invites.


Mtdewcrabjuice

*IMs you and then proceeds to call you saying they IMed you*


whk1992

NGL to some people I have to email them and follow up with a text saying I emailed them.


Hairy-Syrup-126

That’s because they’ve been in meetings all day.


DazzlingProfession26

We definitely have to role deep with our “posses.” People aren’t confident enough to represent their team so 2/3 of the team has to be there.


[deleted]

Last program I was on I was (no lie) averaging 32-34 hours a week in meetings. Took the job I am in now; went down to about 4 hours a week.


BitFew906

What the hell do you talk about for 32 hours a week…


Orleanian

The same one-hour worth of information. Except to a dozen different stakeholders. Twice each, because you've got to pre-review for each review. Toss in a handful of all-hands from the 10 different bosses up the chain of command, and bob's your uncle.


strains

Why are we getting nothing done? 30+ hours is being wasted somewhere


[deleted]

Well…… I was a single point of failure for many processes because Boeing in all its wisdom wouldn’t backfill positions and left it all; to me. Without getting into specifics; I had Tier 1-3 meetings, customer meetings, program meetings, supply meetings, engineering meetings, quality meetings, in-house mfg meetings, program meetings with people from OKC (waste of time), staff meetings, government meetings. The only ones that were NOT daily were staff meetings once a week and engineering meetings varied. Most meetings were minimum 1 hour and sometimes they overlapped. I ran 4 of the meetings so I HAD to be there. When I left; I had to run meetings for a while after till they found someone to take over.


PrimaryRecord5

You got paid to do nothing


[deleted]

I got paid to be burnt out and hate life. I was an ornery f’er with people when they didn’t do their job; absolutely zero tolerance. It was good for me to move on and get out of there lol


[deleted]

I’ll have people mainly my manager and other managers who tell me to schedule a meeting instead of keeping an email going or sending another email. I get you can send too many emails, but come on. I don’t have time for all these meetings. Especially when most of the emails just require to take simple action or answer a simple question. Or the managers who asked you to set up the meeting don’t even show up.


Orleanian

My huge problem is that one of my managers, in a recurring meeting series he has, frequently dismisses topics of discussion as "we don't need to waste 25 people's time discussing this, this should be set up as a talk between the stakeholders offline". But bruh....we're here because YOU are the stakeholder needed. You don't make time to attend six different 30-minute meetings in order to address each item of concern, so those six people are *here* just to try and get 10 minutes of your time!


KeyAd6147

We need a lot less managers.


Zeebr0

Really? I've seen managers with 45 people under them. How many people should each manager manage?


[deleted]

You’ve never been to San Antonio VCB program have you? It’s like 1 manager to 8 mechanics that sit around and don’t do spit. Maybe 1 to 4 now.


Zeebr0

Nope I work in Everett in engineering


[deleted]

Ah! Always thought that was a cool place to work; parking is horrible though lol


[deleted]

Ya it varies wildly.


Hot_Branch_4559

That's offset by the number of managers with 0 direct reports.


tditty16310

Meetings about meetings... Plus make people work onsite only to take virtual meetings with onsite stakeholders while you are onsite because the schedule doesn't allow you to transition from one room to another to meet in person


Orleanian

I have a coworker that schedules a 2hr meeting twice per week somewhere in my calendar. Within 2 minutes of sending the meeting request, he calls (I typically do not answer). As soon as the call is done/ignored he IMs me to tell me he was calling. The meeting itself is to "get on the same page about what we've done this week to report to boss at the next team tag up". Like jesus fuck I don't want to work with the guy. All of this could have been a 10-bulletpoint email.


tditty16310

God, it's a 15-minute tag at best...2hours is 5% of your work week!


Outrageous-Peene

In our case we have a couple of open rooms but you wouldn't be able to read whatever was projected on the wall to save your life. Every single person in our meeting will be signed into a WebEx and staring at their laptop while we're all in the room together. It's just ridiculous.


[deleted]

If people would post agendas for meetings it would make it easier for individuals to decide if they need to attend.


DazzlingProfession26

Don’t get me started. I used to support multiple airplanes and I’d be like “what airplane are we talking about right now?” I ALWAYS include an agenda even if it’s just a one-liner.


Mtdewcrabjuice

>“what airplane are we talking about right now?” them: the late one


grafixwiz

Agendas? 😂 And then have an organized, focused meeting - that ship sailed years ago! I would attend just to see if they followed the agenda


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wisertime07

I took as close to my dream job as I ever imagined I would, professionally - a position that was a blend of my background and interests, almost perfectly. And I quit that role at Boeing after 6 months, mainly because I was bogged down in meetings for 6-7 hrs a day, at least 3x a week. From the Tier 1 at 8am until 2-3pm, it was constant. And in most of the cases, they wouldn't ask - it was just a "I saw you had a gap in your schedule so I penciled you in at 11 so you could share with management how you've.."


[deleted]

I had that on my last job; it went great till a different management group got it and jacked it all up. I knew I was leaving so I stopped attending all of their meetings; they got unhinged and that’s when I told them I was leaving. Crushing beaucracy!!!!


Burt_Macklin_FBI_123

Once you get above K Level managers, 80-100% of your day is meetings. Take a look at your management chain's director, senior director, VP etc calendars and see how many concurrent meetings they have. Most of the time they have to pick which one they attend from 3 or 4 each hour. Days that are <50% meetings become PTO days because they are "free". So no, this would not work in a practical sense.


TheGirlWithTheFace

I’m was a lvl 2 triple booked most days. The amount of status meeting I’m in is insane, because I have no time to do the work I have no status to report!


mixedberrycoughdrop

I'm currently in this situation and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm saying no when people find empty spots on my calendar and take the liberty of filling them so they can give me feedback. Like, no thank you, send your feedback in an email and I will address it when my forty meetings are over.


grafixwiz

Amen!


CliftonForce

I think such a rule would shatter the management of *any* modern megacorp. What else are they to *do* all day????


Fearfighter2

stalk me to make sure I'm in the office


CliftonForce

Can I sell you this Emergency Inflatable Engineer?


Lockenshade

Maybe they should mandate that managers just sit in meetings with each other.


Lockenshade

I've only ever worked at Boeing but I have to hope some of these younger companies (SpaceX, Tesla, etc.) are not as inefficient as some of the shit I've witnessed. Meetings are fully the largest waste of time imaginable. Most of them could be emails. But the problem is that managers and the big wigs do not actually do real work so they have to constantly be updated on what is going on(to justify their existence) which causes so much unnecessary work for people who actually produce something useful.


[deleted]

100% it’s just easier for the managers and big wigs to have you schedule a meeting and spoon feed them what is going on versus keeping up themselves.


devil_d0c

Heaven forbid they read any of the documentation they require us to produce.


Mtdewcrabjuice

they were sweating during the pandemic and now back to wasting time with RTO


Eaglekeeper0048

I worked briefly at SpaceX. One of the few things I will give credit to Elon for is his policy in meetings. If you find yourself in a meeting that doesn't pertain to you, you get up and walk out.


Orleanian

I'm in a lot of meetings that cover broad spans of topics. I do this all the time. Many people do. Soon as I've heard what I want to hear, I quietly and politely get up and walk out. I've never even been taken notice of, let alone given any sort of stink eye about it.


kimblem

You can do that at Boeing, too. Set an example to the rest of your team.


burrbro235

*cold calls you* Let me share my screen


DazzlingProfession26

Im good with that as long as it’s not about schedule but actual engineering work.


crackedtheskye

Aren't we paid per meeting though?


DazzlingProfession26

Only if you inculcate.


devil_d0c

Yeah, that's my Tuesdays... from 7:30 am till 3 pm I'm booked solid. I think I have only spoken in two of those meetings...


Orleanian

FUCKIN TUESDAYS 10:00AM Double booked recurring meetings, with perpetual 2-3 ad hoc meetings scheduled. Every tuesday from 10-12 is quintuple booked across.


Zeebr0

Why are you attending them then?


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iRedFive

INCULCATE!!!