Do developers really spend that much of their time in meetings? When I have worked closely with dev teams, it seems like there are a few regular short coordination meetings that are over quickly. Then there are occasionally more substantial meetings where they are working out architectural questions.
As a program manager, I usually have 4-5 meetings a day because that kind of is my job to review and coordinate. Developers are only rarely in those meetings.
Also, a single meeting is extremely expensive for a developer's productivity. I generally think the developer productivity cost is about twice the amount of time it actually takes. And it's even worse when they're staggered throughout the day. Two one hour meetings is more like requesting 4 hours (or more, depending on what time of the day they take place in).
Managers not realizing this is one of the major failings of modern day software development.
When I was a lead before retiring last year, I went to all the meetings instead of my team, but always kept them in the loop via Slack as to what was important during the meeting. I also wrote as much code as they did so was always understanding how the meeting decisions might relate to our codebase and future efforts. Of course it added a lot of extra hours to my workweek doing both, but I never had much issue over my career multitasking.
It's not easy or fun sitting in too many meetings though as I always asked a lot of questions to ensure product/design/execs could adequately explain what they were asking for; asking enough questions like this made sure we didn't waste too much time doing things that were likely to change. Meetings can be useful if you participation helps the workload; but it can drag down you and your team's productivity if it does nothing but waste time. Often people whose entire life is going to meetings don't understand how they can affect success simply by sucking up huge hours every day.
It varies by org.
I’ve been on teams where the only recurring meeting was a 30min weekly.
On the other hand I’ve been on teams with 25+ devs on 6+ hours/week of recurring meetings together.. plus any ad-hocs, project or task specific meetings, etc. Some were 2 full hours long and could run over to 3 hours. Was insane.
Yes but the function isn't workinghours - meetinglength > timeneededforwork
The function is workinghours modulo meetingtimes > timeneededfordiscreteworkingblocks
A task that requires four hours of concentration cannot get done in a day with a five-minute mid-morning coordination meeting and a five-minute mid-afternoon admin huddle.
I’ve had stints where it’s mostly meetings with an hour here or there of actual work. Too much talking about doing stuff instead of doing the thing. More process to ensure quality instead of just making someone responsible for it.
They tend to have trouble working well with other teams. Business owners constantly pestering them for updates and just one more change. Other groups refusing to engage.
Program Managers are a little like defensive backs within an organization.
As a program manager, I usually have 4-5 meetings a day because that kind of is my job to review and coordinate. Developers are only rarely in those meetings.