[jauntywundrkind]

We have some really phoning it in zoom folks we've hired who do their job semi ok but are just awful and don't contribute to culture, are super dialed out.

I don't want to totally damn them, because they have families and lives and other things going. But I've had a number of coworkers tell me they have re-adapted their code review to say near nothing (it won't be well received) and to otherwise end their own good-culture practices to adapt to really hostile remote culture.

The thing is, this isn't at all zoom. This isn't remote. It's companies that are just shit poor bad about letting bottom up knowledge trickle up. It's about terrible management that has made being in touch with their workforce hard. And in most cases, that's not the workforce: it's the management, it's the company.

It's easier to do this job of running a company in person, to spy & get information. But it's your laziness, it's your being awful at your job, that makes you rely on this in-touch layer.

[Uehreka]

> We have some really dialing it in zoom folks we've hired

Do you mean “phoning it in”?

Being “dialed in” and “phoning it in” are opposites, it was a little unclear which you meant from context.

[jauntywundrkind]

Updated, yes.

[gotoeleven]

How do you get people to stop looking at their fucking phones during zoom meetings? Sure if we had a magic perfect management fairy that could sprinkle perfect management skills on the managers maybe people would be better at working remotely but people are mostly lazy and will mostly do whatever they can get away with. And its way easier to get away with looking at your fucking phone during a zoom meeting than an in person meeting.

[ryandrake]

If people are checked out during meetings, maybe they don't really have to be there. When I set up a meeting I try to ensure only people who really, really need to be there are invited. Way too many meetings are like: "1. Eng Lead Presenter, 2. VP who's receiving the update, and 3-10. Team members involved in the project." If 3-10 are not expected to speak/contribute and already know what 1 is presenting, why the fuck are they there? To sit there and pick their noses? They could be a lot more focused and productive back at their desks (or not connected to video conference). I don't invite them, and if I invite them by mistake and they know they aren't contributing, I expect them to decline and not show up! I don’t want tourists at my meetings.

Companies where non-contributors and non-receivers feel pressured to come to meetings just to show their faces are Doing It Wrong.

[milesrout]

Or maybe they do have to be there, but they aren't paying attention? It isn't a given that people will pay attention if they need to, that is the whole point.

There are lots of reasons someone might be in a meeting. They might be there to receive certain information. They might be there because they're going to be assigned work as a result of it. They might be there because hearing the actual conversation with the client is useful for being able to understand the context of the work. Getting that third hand from someone that didn't talk to the client is nowhere near as good. That is what leads to wasting time and money doing work nobody wanted.

Sometimes people just don't pay attention when they should. That is real. It is not sensible to immediately assume they're justified in not paying attention. Even if you aren't needed and you aren't interested, it is your job. You are paid good money to be there. Your contract requires you to follow lawful instructions from your employer. Do the job properly and look at your phone at lunchtime. You don't have the right to switch off and start playing with your phone because you are a bit bored and have the attention span of a teenager brought up on Tiktok.

[gotoeleven]

Nope suppose they do need to be there and they arent listening because they're sending text messages and then when they are asked for their opinion they are lost because they weren't listening. This is the norm for zoom meetings.

[dijksterhuis]

it sounds to me like they don’t believe they need to be there / to care about the meeting, but you do.

that’s sounds like the real problem you need to address, the real underlying conflict between you and them.

so… why don’t they care about your meeting…?

if you can fix that problem, you might naturally solve the phone problem. they might start giving a shit.

[hardlianotion]

this is fixed for in person meetings is it?

[zmgsabst]

I’m a big proponent of optional and required on meeting invites.

Required: tech lead and VP.

Optional: everyone else.

I have nothing against people showing up just because they want to snoop on what’s being said and spending half the time on their phone — but I reply maybe to anything optional sent to me.

I find people sort themselves out if you have enough floating optional invites you can’t attend all of them.

[dijksterhuis]

fewer, more purposeful meetings usually helps (not saying you do too many useless meetings, but it’s the general sentiment on here and with people i know IRL about why they slack off - cis the meetings they’re in are usually a waste of time)

see latter part of other comment in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43056026

edit — was also going to suggest, at the start of the meeting politely but assertively request everyone turns their phone off at the start.

if it looks like someone is fucking around with their phone, pause the meeting. remind everyone about the request at the start of the meeting. resume the meeting. don’t drag it out and turn it into a rant. don’t call the individual out. just make it known that the behaviour is not okay. get back on with things. do it each time it happens.

do that for every meeting for a few weeks. some people will hopefully get the message. some people might not. hopefully enough people get the message to make a difference.

they might think you’re a dick for it, at least to begin with (it’s enforced change from an authority), but up to you to decide whether it’s valuable enough to see through.

[FireBeyond]

Apart from anything else, I see most people at in person meetings in conferences on their laptops and such working away, that’s not a problem, but doing similar remotely is?

Seems more like neither of them really actually needed to be there. If you didn’t actually miss or note their lack of contribution, then they were perhaps less necessary. I’m perfectly engaged with the meetings that meet those criteria.

[SoftTalker]

Phones are an addiction. I know executives who have a box outside the conference room and everyone has to put their phone in the box as they enter the meeting. They pick up their phone on the way out.

[ndiddy]

Do they make their employees ask for the hall pass to go to the bathroom as well?

[SoftTalker]

Not that I've experienced, I guess that isn't as big a problem as people being distracted by their phones.

[OutOfHere]

After seeing this happen for years, it comes down to one simple thing, at least while at the office. Is the employee getting paid enough? If they are, they will use the phone less. The more junior the employee, the worse they're getting paid, and so the more they will use their phone.

[OutOfHere]

I am not going to allow anyone else to touch my phone, even by mistake. In fact it is zipped to my clothing, so I don't lose it by accident either. If I were to leave it in a box, if will definitely get lost one day.

[SoftTalker]

Well I’m sure it would be acceptable to lock your phone in your desk and not bring it to the meeting at all

[harry8]

How do you get management to take their job seriously? Sure if we had magic perfect meeting dust but people are mostly lazy…

[dijksterhuis]

i sort of agree wit your sentiment, although probably would use more nuanced language about it.

i’ve had this exact conversation with my 70+ still working father so many times now. i’ve heard the rant in the article over and over again. and, like, he blames remote work too. “its the fucking zoom bullshit”.

but then i explain to him how i do remote work and suddenly gets it. like, remote working means you are required to work in a more direct and efficient way. you have to work hard at comms. you have to write everything with purpose. no “oh hey did you look at X”. instead “hey we need X done by T because otherwise Y. if you need to speak to P about it, they’re available this afternoon. contact me if anything is unclear and i’ll explain it to you on a call asap. let me know when you’ve read this please.”. like, i’ve debugged a production outage on my phone with other devs while in a doctors waiting room.

the problem is, yeah, a lot of people do treat it like a chance to sit at home doing the bare minimum.

and i think you kind of hit the nail on the head for something i hadn’t clocked. they can get away with it because “management” utterly suck at their jobs and haven’t adapted. like, i hear about people stuck in zoom meetings all the time… WHY?!? you don’t need face to face comms to work remotely. at all. it’s clinging on to the old ways of doing things!

up until now i’d been putting it down to a purely generational “can’t teach old dogs new tricks” thing. maybe it kind of is, just not in a way i’d seen before.

[spondylosaurus]

Bingo. Remote work requires/rewards good communication, and amplifies the ill effects of poor communication. You have to put in the effort, but a lot of people don't know how or don't think they need to!

[lotsofpulp]

> i’ve had this exact conversation with my 70+ still working father so many times now.

> but then i explain to him how i do remote work and suddenly gets it.

I don’t understand how he gets it if you have to have the same conversation numerous times.

[dijksterhuis]

he gets it on that call.... then he gets pissed off about it all over the next few months after he's forgotten our call about it. then he complains about it on the phone to me. then i remind him, then he remembers or i explain it again.

repeat.

[isoprophlex]

> the problem is, yeah, a lot of people do treat it like a chance to sit at home doing the bare minimum

The thing is... I've been in offices before COVID that were full of people doing the bare minimum. And they were able to do that because management, generally, has always sucked and was never good at their jobs.

[greesil]

What I've noticed is that people don't seem to have the attention span to read the document or memo I wrote, and the meeting is so they can get the TL;DR.

[dijksterhuis]

oh god yeah these people do my head in. i haven’t found a good strategy for them yet.

[rcarmo]

The Amazon Way used to be for you to send out a memo so that people would be productive at a meeting, and cancel the meeting on the spot if more than a third hadn’t read it or read enough of it.

[greesil]

"used to"? What do they do now?

[greesil]

Constantly passive aggressively say "as per my document" in the meeting. I see the upside of companies that have memo culture.

[Swizec]

If you can tldr your memo or message, maybe you should write a shorter memo or message.

People are busy. Nobody got time for waffle. Get to the point or get out of the way.

[greesil]

Read the book The Mythical Man Month, then work at a big company, and then you'll appreciate the challenges of organizing five different teams to accomplish a large and complex task.