[ryan_lane]

I'm guessing you're junior, or you'd have more control over these meetings, or have the ability to decline ones that you believed weren't going to be good use of your time.

Having good meeting culture requires everyone involved to improve it. If you want meetings to be better, set them up, add an agenda and objectives, and run the meeting so that it's effective. If you can't run the meeting, if it doesn't have an agenda or objectives, ask the person who created it for them. Ask for action items at the end of the meeting, if no one is calling for them. If it's mostly status meetings, propose a better process to track and communicate status.

If you're working through side channels, you're part of the problem.

Calling people assholes, rather than improving the situation, is an indicator of inexperience.

[photonerd]

This is the most wrong, yet condescending and naive, comment I’ve encountered on HN so far.

I’m actually impressed.

Call me in 20 years, maybe you’ll have learned something.

[DropInIn]

Getting real "toxic positivity" vibes off your whole line of arguments...

[ryan_lane]

Being proactive in changing the situation isn't toxic positivity, and being empathetic with folks in different jobs isn't toxic positivity either.

Assuming people are assholes, and blaming them for situations is just run of the mill toxic. Working through side-channels rather than addressing a problem is also run of the mill toxic.

[DropInIn]

Nah your stuff came across as blind tolerance which is just pointless unconstructive and solely to placate people's feelings (in such instances unjustifiable/irrational).

Just because Joe or Judy "feels" a certain way doesn't mean it should actually have bearing on anything. Really...

Enough placating those with the least logic and self control.

[ryan_lane]

This attitude is the kind of engineer stereotype we can live without.

People's feeling matter in the long term, because it's the difference between them wanting to work with you, and them being forced to work with you. If I had to pick between a genius coder with awful people skills, and an average coder with exceptional skills, I'd essentially always pick the average one.

[DropInIn]

Someone's feeling do matter in the long term, which is where it should be dealt with, not in the immediate.

Do you not see the difference?

[ryan_lane]

People's feelings about you are based on a series of accumulated interactions. You can't just "deal with it" later, because that's now how people work. This isn't like tech debt where you can accumulate some and then spend some timing working it down later. If you're consistently an asshole to people, it doesn't matter if you take a little time now and then to try to repair that. Good relationships require taking people's feelings into account and acting consistently.