Zoom Ends No-Meeting Wednesday Policy, Calling It 'Barrier To Collaboration' (bloomberg.com) 73
Zoom has nixed its policy forbidding internal meetings on Wednesdays, saying it hindered collaboration, a move that goes against the grain -- and its own employees' preferences -- as more companies look to reduce unnecessary gatherings. From a report: Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan disclosed the shift last week in a memo to employees, which also included a new policy on office attendance, requiring those living within 50 miles of a corporate location to come in twice a week. It reverses a policy Zoom implemented in the early stages of the pandemic after surveying employees, who said they wanted to spend less time in meetings to have "more time to think, plan, focus, and execute." In March 2022, the company said that 84% of employees preferred to continue the policy. "As we further ramp up on hybrid work, we've decided to make another change and end our No Internal Meeting Wednesdays," Yuan said in the memo. "We move fast, and this effort has become more of a barrier to collaboration than it was intended. And as an increasingly global company, no Internal Meeting Wednesday creates a lack of clarity for Zoomies working across multiple time zones."
Financials are bleeding cash, not good (Score:5, Insightful)
Their performance probably explains this better than anything else. Not that I expect this will help, but this is a company floundering.
Re:Financials are bleeding cash, not good (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern bad management "best" practice involves trying to solve problems by throwing more meetings at them. Not being able to do this on Wednesdays was interfering with this.
Re:Barrier to productivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Meetings are a barrier to productivity.
Actually, zoom was a productivity boost compared to offline meetings. Finally the narcissist could drone on for hours without impeding your productivity because you could let him drone in the background while working. Try that in an offline meeting.
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Perhaps we still call it an improvement from yesteryear when they used to throw half a dozen overpriced MBAs at the problem.
Few more Zoom meetings is hopefully at least a cheaper pointless action.
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Modern bad management "best" practice involves trying to solve problems by throwing more meetings at them. Not being able to do this on Wednesdays was interfering with this.
Meetings are not inherently good or bad. It's how they get used.
One of the reason I don't want to go back to an office is that you get drawn into pointless meetings. Ones held by those who are trying to hide amongst productive people by drawing people into a meeting to discuss the shade of their coffee mugs, also office politics where two people just spend the entire time arguing with each other, dragging in as many people as they can to make it look like their side is more supported. At home, even if th
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And, ironically, are requiring employees to come back to the office, expecting THAT is what will fix their woes.
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One Size Fits All (Score:1)
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How about letting autonomous teams decide their policy. Whatever drives values fastest for customers.
Problem is if autonomous team A wants to meet with AT B but B has a no-meeting policy. Or worse, A never meets on Mondays and B never meets on Tuesdays. It really helps to have an organization-wide policy.
I wonder how this fits in with the 4-day-week thinking. If I could get my job done by just working more efficiently four days a week, surely I would start by moving all my important meetings to those four days (and cancelling the remainder).
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Problem is if autonomous team A wants to meet with AT B but B has a no-meeting policy.
What there should be is a "No policy policy."
B can make their "No meeting policy", fine, but Let that work only as their guideline, and their policy can only be applied to their team members -- they can't make a policy that limits their team's job duties or availability towards the company. Just like the IT department shouldn't be allowed to create a rule that says we don't take trouble tickets on Fridays -- the team
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B can make their "No meeting policy", fine, but Let that work only as their guideline, and their policy can only be applied to their team members -- they can't make a policy that limits their team's job duties or availability towards the company.
Sure, you could do that but let's back up. The justification of "no meeting XXXday" is to give people, often but not always programmers, a day to focus on tasks which require deep concentration. It's well documented that interrupting someone from a task, getting them out of The Zone, costs anywhere from 5-30 minutes to get back into it. Banning meetings eliminates that cost.
If I only have meetings called by people outside my team, there's diminished or zero benefit. I don't need to meet with my team, I'll j
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is to give people, often but not always programmers, a day to focus on tasks which require deep concentration. It's well documented that interrupting
Well, to be clear.. I think People should set their own Available or Away/Busy status. This is why I think it's absurd that Zoom has to worry about this stuff suddenly at a company policy level; policy this, or policy that -- they are literally selling a team collaboration/meeting product, lol. If it's a problem, then it suggests something has been wrong wi
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One, single day? (Score:3)
Thankfully, we don't have a lot of internal meeting. Last week, zero. This week, two. Next week, none currently planned. If someone wanted to say "never on Wednesdays", no problem. Even better might be "only on Mondays and Fridays".
If they have so many internal meetings that they cannot give their workers one, single, meeting-free day? I know one place I don't want to work...
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If they have so many internal meetings that they cannot give their workers one, single, meeting-free day? I know one place I don't want to work...
Precisely.
Can't think of a better way to advertise you micromanage the living shit out of your child workers. Quite the daycare environment being...presented.
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Zoom is losing money (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation (Score:3)
Zoom has nixed its policy forbidding internal meetings on Wednesdays, ... also ... requiring those living within 50 miles of a corporate location to come in twice a week.
Too many people were blowing off work on Wednesdays.
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In this case, Zoom has other problems than meetings.
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In this case, Zoom has other problems than meetings.
They should probably have a meeting about that -- on a Wednesday. :-)
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Reminds me of an old userfriendly cartoon:
Consultant: What do you think makes you unproductive?
Techs (all at once): MEETINGS!
Consultant: Great. Let's schedule a time we can sit down together and talk about it.
Apparently... (Score:3)
Some people don't know how to get things done without a never-ending stream of meetings.
Or maybe, some people don't know how to look like they are doing something productive, without a never-ending stream of meetings.
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Most non-managers, on the other hand, can't get shit done due to an endless stream of meetings.
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You are absolutely correct, and most productive managers are hampered by the stream of meetings too.
Thankfully, as a manager, most of my meetings are between 8 am 10 am, then I have most of the day free to get actual work done. Yes, I do call some meetings of my own, but only when necessary. Most of the time, it's more efficient, when I need answers, to reach out to someone individually, than to call a meeting.
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"reach out to someone individually"
The technical term for that procedure is "a meeting".
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Perhaps. But an individual conversation is usually far more productive than getting 10 people on a call, when you only need 1 or 2 of those people.
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The technical term for that procedure is "an email".
Emails have a vast array of superior features to meetings. First, I can read it when I have time for it. Second, I can reply after I pondered the implications fully and formulate a sensible, easily understood reply. It also comes with its own documentation feature. And we can time shift it as we need. We needn't even schedule a time when everyone involved can be there. You can fire off that email RIGHT NOW and may even get a reply within a few minutes from
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What really bothers me is that at least 50% of meetings could be done in either a mail or a video stream. If you only want to convey information, maybe with a return channel from each recipient but no interaction between the recipients, why the hell call in a meeting instead of using a more sensible form of communication that also allows for a certain amount of time shifting to accommodate for the schedules of the recipients.
And if you say "oh, but then I have to wait for the answer": You have to wait anywa
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"Some people don't know how to get things done without a never-ending stream of meetings."
You're slightly off-target. A never-ending stream of meetings is what they do *instead* of getting things done.
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You're not wrong! What you are describing is a category below what I was describing. Both exist.
More meeting == no vision (Score:4, Insightful)
People call meetings when they can't decide what to do themselves.
You can tell a company that doesn't have a clear idea of what needs doing, or doesn't have enough money to invest in the right thing to do and tries to figure out how to spend less and pretend to achieve the same result, when the number of meetings increase.
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Unfortunately, that doesn't mean meetings are unnecessary, since it's not always up to "people" to make the "what to do" decisions. Often you need meetings to coax "what to do" out of the client or to come to a consensus what is needed from different parties in order to get the project on track.
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"People call meetings when they can't decide what to do themselves."
Making unilateral decisions is rarely a good idea, unless you are working on something that no one depends on.
Micromanaging Death Spiral (Score:2)
"Come into the office these days."
"Don't not have meetings on these days."
This never creates value.
Does their Board know what's going on?
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If their board is like most others, probably not.
Maybe because they're rarely at the office and almost never meet.
There should be a federal employer emissions tax (Score:2)
It's pretty clear that older organizations just aren't getting it.
I would suggest $1 federal tax per employee/contractor mile travel from their place of residence to work, to be paid by the employer -- the road distance between where they live and their office can be used. Let them pay for the extra environmental impact they add, when better options exist.
They can create an exemption for employees whose primary duties on that day day involve the physical handling of production machinery, manufacturing
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Can you not see this evolving into...
- companies that only hire people who live VERY close to the office
- what if the employee travels to work from another location 3 days/week? Should that milage be adjusted?
- where does that tax $ go?
- Can you define "when better options exist" better than the best lawyers at Apple/FB/Amazon/Google/etc decide what it means and how they can "work around" whatever it is you want?
- Do you tax "remote" workers that fly 1000 miles to the office once per year?
- If an employer h
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- what if the employee travels to work from another location 3 days/week? Should that milage be adjusted
No. Workforce average daily mileage value (geometric mean) from workers' regular residence times number of employees who commuted times number of days per week. The point is tax based on expected miles based on the policy; not to require some arcane system metering the mileage including every odd exception.
Do you tax "remote" workers that fly 1000 miles to the office once per year?
No. Workforce median
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I said.. "If an employer has to pay $5k/year extra for an employee, where do you think that money is coming from? Perhaps their salary?"
You replied.. "No individual employee adjustments. And the Prohibition against discriminating on the basis of housing should remain in effect"
All well and good, but like everything else, salaries are budgeted. If someone is able to pay $100k for a position but has a $5k/year cost for hiring that person, then they can only pay $95k/year. That extra $5k has to come from somew
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All well and good, but like everything else, salaries are budgeted. If someone is able to pay $100k for a position but has a $5k/year cost for hiring that person, then they can only pay $95k/year.
The ability of a business to budget its costs Doesn't make the extra cost somebody else's problem. It is the business who has to either lessen their own arbitrary requirements, Or find that money.
The whole point is with a tax they will most likely find a way to Not arbitrarily impose travel when it is Not germane
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where does that tax $ go?
Carbon remediation, Fossil fuel deprecation, and subsidy of Renewable and Nuclear power and infrastructure construction.
Can you define "when better options exist"
Better option is defined as any solution which allows business communications and completion of the work from a location that requires No commute or less frequent commute.
If a particular employee commutes less often than 1 business day out of 10,
then that, and no more frequent commute than that should be considered good e
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Their answer would be that you have to live next to the office and still come in every day.
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Just tax gas. Same result. Inflated consumer prices, devalued money. That's all these stupid taxes do. The environment doesn't take cash and won't fix itself by throwing money at it.
Bold, contrarian tech hubris failed: ru surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
We've had office work for a few centuries now. Not every norm of your predecessors is bad. Most of them were in there for a reason. It's worthwhile to question them, but don't just assume that because having a day without meeting is a great for you, it works well for everyone in a large multi-national corporation with diverse needs. The tech company has many bold business practices, typically fueled by a few decades of insanely low interest rates. Now that every promising tech company doesn't have a ton of free money flowing in from investors, I think a lot of the Silicon Valley craziness is going to be reduced and tech companies are going to look a lot more like regular companies. I don't think "no meeting Wednesdays" "wine on tap in the office" "free laundry" and many other of the excesses are long for this world. I wish they were and I laud these companies for the competitive spirit in hiring employees and their creativity, but yeah....you're running a business, not a nerd fraternity.
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Working at an office is a leftover from a time when you had to, because there simply was no other way for people to work together. The tools were not there.
They are now.
I didn't have an offline meeting in about 2 years now. Weirdly, it didn't lower our productivity. It did increase it, mine at least, because I don't have to drive 3 hours for a 15 minute meeting anymore.
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Weirdly, our daily 15 minute morning "stand-up" meetings have been on-line even on days when all 7 participants are present in the same, small, open office. Less weirdly, that meeting, which we only started because of the pandemic forcing work-from-home, has improved our productivity - as long as the office manager runs it and the boss doesn't get involved.
Well if it worked for you!..... (Score:2)
Working at an office is a leftover from a time when you had to, because there simply was no other way for people to work together. The tools were not there.
They are now.
I didn't have an offline meeting in about 2 years now. Weirdly, it didn't lower our productivity. It did increase it, mine at least, because I don't have to drive 3 hours for a 15 minute meeting anymore.
Welp, if it worked for you, it must work for everyone then! Yup, there's no difference in the ENTIRE organization between what you do and everyone else, say working at Zoom, may do.
I honestly hate in-person meetings...why?...because then my boss notices if I am not paying attention to the stupid meeting which I shouldn't be in. That said, my employer is paying me. I am not a volunteer. If they want to pay money to have me be unproductive, it's their right. I can question their use of my time and ex
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My company has done it for 3 years (Score:2)
If unnecessary meetings are flourishing, then, either you're at the senior VP level or your company has general health issues. Mos
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Welp, if it worked for you, it must work for everyone then!
That's kinda rich after your "the office is the best thing ever invented and if you disagree, you're wrong" post. Remember?
We've had office work for a few centuries now. Not every norm of your predecessors is bad. Most of them were in there for a reason.
Choose what you want (Score:2)
No-Meetings-Wednesday is a barrier to collaboration.
Meetings, on the other hand, are a barrier to productivity.
Choose what you really want.
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Meetings seem useless to the people that no one wants to work with
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Meetings are useless to the people who already know what they need to work at. The only people who need meetings are the ones that have no idea what to do.
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Change it to ... (Score:2)
Sounds like its starting to suck to work at Zoom. (Score:2)
More Meetings for Unmotivated Minions (Score:2)
Dragging them into the office and forcing them into More Meetings will not Motivate the unMotivated Minions. Solve the Motivation problem, and the More Meetings problem will Melt away. Did I use up the world's free supply of "M"'s?
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Mars, Inc wants to have a word with you concerning their product [wikipedia.org] and your use of their trade mark.
Next Friday (Score:2)
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I'll stay in my usual, i.e. random rock band t-shirt and track pants, thanks.
Everyone schedules meetings on No-Meeting Day (Score:2)
Is it really No-Meeting Day, or no standing meetings day?
No-Meeting Day is the day when the people you need to meet with are most likely free.
End (Score:2)
"Zoom Ends No-Meeting Wednesday Policy, Calling It 'Barrier To Collaboration'"
Can we just end Zoom completely, instead, as a barrier to having simple, fast, and effective phone calls/conference calls because we don't want to mess with stupid invites, logins, cameras, useless talking head images, endless mic and camera checks, etc? One can dream....
Tried setting up zoom phones... (Score:2)