Nice one
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Fluent companyspeech
It's just being highly effective at applying peer to peer team interaction synergistics skills.
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Had a manager saying that. Declined meeting. Manager: Pikachu-face.
Had to attend anyways ofc. Wasted my time 100% + the time the manager "explained" why I couldn't just decline a meeting.
Yeah, that's not cool at all. Gotta mean it if you're gonna say it.
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I hate corpo bs speak. Makes me wish I was German or something.
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When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings.
My biggest piece of advice to junior staff is: if you're not provided an agenda prior to a meeting, your attendance is not required. RSVP with Yes if it sounds interesting/beneficial and you have the time, otherwise Nope (or Tentative) your way out of it.
The obvious caveat is if that meeting is called by someone with role power over you. In which case: as they clearly don't respect your time, it's on you to (politely) ask them to provide an agenda. It may also indirectly train them to be less shit.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Just noped out of my last job cos the new manager was randomly calling me without a heads up to understand what the next steps are. Aka asking me and the other team member to do his work for him. I see highly competent people struggling to find jobs and guys like this in F500 companies ā and canāt help but wonder whatās wrong with selection.
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One thing Iāve learned is that sometimes you need to let the problems happen. You can raise hell and keep talking about how more hands are needed, but unless issues actually start coming up and affecting people, then no one is going to care/listen.
I had a job in the past that was vastly understaffed. I kept getting more and more, and working longer hours. I brought this up with management many times but nothing was happening. āNot in the budget to hire moreā is what I kept getting.
When it got to be too much, I decided I would only work 40 hours, and whatever happens, happens. Our lives are too short to be wasted away at work.
So tasks started to take longer, and whenever something needed doing, it was added to the queue and prioritized appropriately. Sometimes that meant I couldnāt get to it in weeks. At first, I came under fire. āWhy havenāt you done this yet??ā But each time I explained my situation. āThereās not enough hands and I am doing the best I can with the resources given to meā. And guess what? Most people empathized and understood my predicament. So now I have an army of colleagues who understand the issue here, and now the issue gets more visibility with management as more people rally to my side.
A few months of this, and they decide to hire two more positions to help with the overload of work.
Itās a risky move for sure. They could just fire you and dig themselves into a deeper hole. But then if they do that, is that really the type of environment youād want to work in anyway?
People are surprisingly understanding when you explain yourself. You donāt need to fix everything and everyoneās problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to let the problems happen and observe how others deal with it.
Badass. Great job!!! Self advocacy can be so powerful with a little luck
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When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings.
My biggest piece of advice to junior staff is: if you're not provided an agenda prior to a meeting, your attendance is not required. RSVP with Yes if it sounds interesting/beneficial and you have the time, otherwise Nope (or Tentative) your way out of it.
The obvious caveat is if that meeting is called by someone with role power over you. In which case: as they clearly don't respect your time, it's on you to (politely) ask them to provide an agenda. It may also indirectly train them to be less shit.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings.
I feel/felt similarly but I am now calling for meetings because it seems to be the easiest way to get my peers and superiors to do their fucking job so that I'm not stuck in limbo waiting for their parts to be finished. It seems like they only respond to slack mentions / emails / task assignments at random which leaves important, unanswered requests/questions just sitting there.
Sorry, this past year I've been working with another department for a project that, due to aforementioned woes, has run about 6-12 months more than it needs to.
I'm in the public sector and everyone is very busy and pulled in many directions so I kind of get it... but I want to be done with this thing.
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Do whatever you want, mate. Decline the meeting?
I think OP's screenshot is tactful and effective. It's similar to my approach. Which starts:
"Thanks for the invitation, what's on the agenda?"
Then I decide to accept or politely decline and ask for minutes.
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"What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included" is a perfectly polite series of words to use. The wording matters far less than the tone of voice.
I vastly prefer clear and direct questions over the reply that sounds passive aggressive from the very beginning.
"why do I need to be included" sounds a bit harsh and could be met with "because I said so". instead maybe try something along the lines of "how will this meeting benefit my work?" or "how might I contribute?"
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do you need my presence here
Sounds like you were summoned by ouija board.
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The original way the first person asked was polite, if intoned gently.
The recommended response is corpospeak.
Corpospeak is never polite.
It just pretends to be.
Like a sociopath.
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I work on the floor in a pretty specialized role, so I can always just use the excuse of having to attend to any given machine coincidentally whenever they want to have a meeting I don't feel like attending.
None of the managers really understand what we do, so they don't challenge the excuses ever.
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"why do I need to be included" sounds a bit harsh and could be met with "because I said so". instead maybe try something along the lines of "how will this meeting benefit my work?" or "how might I contribute?"
"Please see the agenda for our topics."
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When I started my career I quickly became convinced that meetings are the opposite of work. Now a large part of my career is hosting meetings.
I feel/felt similarly but I am now calling for meetings because it seems to be the easiest way to get my peers and superiors to do their fucking job so that I'm not stuck in limbo waiting for their parts to be finished. It seems like they only respond to slack mentions / emails / task assignments at random which leaves important, unanswered requests/questions just sitting there.
Sorry, this past year I've been working with another department for a project that, due to aforementioned woes, has run about 6-12 months more than it needs to.
I'm in the public sector and everyone is very busy and pulled in many directions so I kind of get it... but I want to be done with this thing.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Also in the public sector and when I started, project managers were required to include everyone under the sun for pointless update meetings every two weeks for the PM to read out the reports everyone gave them so nobody missed anything. By the time they were done everyone wanted to bail, including me. They were meetings that could be an email, and if there were issues then additional meetings were scheduled.
Over time I have been promoted up through PM and now get to define the best practices for projects including meetings. My meetings are productive and people actually want to show up as they are discussions where work might be canceled or put off so people don't get overloaded. I make sure everyone is included without putting anyone on the spot. The departments we work with to create web apps like us more since we started giving reasons for saying no instead of working devs to death in overtime because PMs were not allowed to say no.
I do have one project that is an albatross I can't kill because of the sunk cost fallacy, but at least it is one small project that gets raised every few months to get put on the backburner while the largest and most complex project is now running smoothly. Other PMs have also improved their interactions when they were given examples in how to more clearly communicate their challenges, although a few don't want to give up the 'do everything asked' approach.
We have also had 5 developers who left for the private sector come back over the last 10 years because of the work culture. The grass wasn't greener, but they did come back with new skills and a better appreciation for the improved communication and overtime is almost entirely voluntary!
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I hate corpo bs speak. Makes me wish I was German or something.
Oh, unfortunately we have that here, too.
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The original way the first person asked was polite, if intoned gently.
The recommended response is corpospeak.
Corpospeak is never polite.
It just pretends to be.
Like a sociopath.
True but that seems to be what she was actually asking for. Her question would be too straightforward, she wanted to get out of the meeting without even hinting at that
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I work on the floor in a pretty specialized role, so I can always just use the excuse of having to attend to any given machine coincidentally whenever they want to have a meeting I don't feel like attending.
None of the managers really understand what we do, so they don't challenge the excuses ever.
You'd be promoted to 'hated manager' soon
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The original way the first person asked was polite, if intoned gently.
The recommended response is corpospeak.
Corpospeak is never polite.
It just pretends to be.
Like a sociopath.
Corpospeak [...] Like a sociopath.
And this is why LLMs are so well suited for the task! People get genuinely excited by the prospect of using AI to read/reply email... because they don't mean actual thoughtful email written with intent, maybe even emotions or even reasoning. No... no they mean corpospeak that is entirely pointless, empty of meaning and definitely written for a human by human, but rather for a cog, to another lifeless cog in the corporation.
This is why people are investing tons of money and expending tons of CO2.
What a fucking farce of a species we are.
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Corpospeak [...] Like a sociopath.
And this is why LLMs are so well suited for the task! People get genuinely excited by the prospect of using AI to read/reply email... because they don't mean actual thoughtful email written with intent, maybe even emotions or even reasoning. No... no they mean corpospeak that is entirely pointless, empty of meaning and definitely written for a human by human, but rather for a cog, to another lifeless cog in the corporation.
This is why people are investing tons of money and expending tons of CO2.
What a fucking farce of a species we are.
All things considered our species is doing relatively well. Having the ability to assign purpose and use tools does cause us to get stuck in a stupid rut all too often, though.
I can't fathom why a person would willingly use corpospeak. I can't imagine anyone actually likes to speak that way.
I would invite the reader to always call it out when it occurs, and call for all involved parties to speak plain.
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It's not my fault, but it is definitely my problem if I'm in a position to help people and decide not to. Make no mistake, I raise holy hell while I'm doing it, but the lack of workers doesn't lessen the amount of work that needs to get done. Maybe it's just naivete, but I'm idealistic enough to believe that helping students is the most important thing I can do, so I only say yes to things that are directly helping students, faculty, and staff (admin and their busy work can fuck right off with their bloated salaries and support staff)
Never do more than what is in your contract.
It is not like the company is going to pay you more than what is written in there. So why should you compensate when they clearly wouldn't?
It is not your job to get everything done. But it is their job to make sure there are enough people for the work available.
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Yeah I'll tell that to HR when I'm getting laid off again, I'm sure they will totally get it and reconsider
wrote on last edited by [email protected]If HR can't understand that, then it isn't a decent work environment to begin with.
You can always try to explain it by calculating the cost of you sitting uselessly in meetings. Your hourly wage X amount of hours in meetings. I'm sure they will take your side.
