[Closed] Hands up if you've been in this meeting

almost every day....

the more telling question is which one are you?

That's a daily occurrence for me!

Taking the place of the 'expert' I wish I was invited to these meetings, currently they take place without me and I get an email detailing impossible tasks...

Nope. My tolerance of idiots wouldn't survive such a meeting.

I'm currently facing censure at work for reacting in almost exactly the same way as yer fella here, and apparently need 'training'.

The kicker is, I need to find the training myself, and report back to those who complained about me when I've 'actioned' this training. And if it doesn't meet their nebulous standards, I could face formal disciplinary action.

I wish I was joking about this, but I'm not. My missus said to me the other day: "does this mean we'll lose the house"? So while this is humorous, you can be really f*cked badly by it.

Ohhh yes, and I'm Mr Anderson frantically banging my head off the edge of table hoping for the end to come or at least unconsciousness until the "meeting" is over.

A couple of my team mates place bets with each other on how long before it will be before I pull The Face. The one that says " I want to repeatedly punch you until you understand, you **** wit". Apparently it does take long usually.

As an electronics / electrical engineer I'd say I was the Asian chap, what tends to happen is that I spend the bulk of the time explaining the laws and fundamentals of primary school physics to the marketing and sales genii ....

Oh and I'm not as diplomatic...

The best meetings are the ones where the client bring along their expert, normally another engineer and we spend most of the meeting looking at each other with increadulous looks on our faces and talking slowly to the sales and marketing children to who think that Ohms law is merely a guideline.....

I always end up inflating balloons 🙁

It's not just engineers and their yes-man line managers vs marketing idiots. Reminds me of some journalistic editorial meetings I've been to.

"Why can't we run this story?"
"Because it's not true. This is why it doesn't stack up..."
"But it sounds really good in the press release. I think we should run it anyway. Everyone else will."

As the expert the job in those meetings is to ask questions, make notes and make no comment that could be construed to be a promise. It's very hard to bite your tongue while the Salesman spouts crap and the pointless/project manager stare at you.

Sorry to hear about your situation codybrennan, sounds like you need to find something like a sales for technical people. If the salesman has been on the sales course then he will have a plan for the meeting (BS, BS, BS, BS) also ask that you have a pre meeting with your team to raise concerns and agree on a plan/agreement on how to handle stuff.

yep, saw that and it made me cry. Very well observed

Also I'm taking up 80% of the seats in the room over the course of my job - all except for the design/kitten lady

Last one that even resembled that I attended I instigated a mass walk out, they then cancelled the follow up ones others were due to attended and reviewed the whole point of the meetings we attended to the point they cancelled them altogether. 😀

Used to. Eternally grateful for the fact I dont have to any more.

Mikewsmith- yes, thats exactly what I need, thanks for the tip. You're spot on on how I should have handled it.

The gentle irony is: I identified this need myself a year ago, when taking on the job. 🙁

apologies if already done

not had one of those for a few years now as I'm freelance, but It would be the weekly meeting between internal producers (games developer) and external producer (games publisher).

And of course the engineer can be identified by the pen in his shirt pocket 🙂

That was brilliant

In my younger days I built financial models to do, amongst other things some fairly complex stuff on how to allocate money. I was forever getting questions that amounted to - can everyone get more than the average increase.

I then got promoted to the man in the suit - my brief for my expert was, lets agree beforehand that they will have no idea - agree in the meeting, then do the sensible thing outside - no-one ever really noticed.

lets agree beforehand that they will have no idea - agree in the meeting, then do the sensible thing outside

I am pretty sure that most successful projects are delivered by giving people what they want, not what they think they want.

I am pretty sure that most successful projects are delivered by giving people what they want, not what they think they want.

- Follow up meeting. Me: " Now it's not exactly what we discussed, but the work coming out of the US (Japan, Cambridge etc) indicates really strongly that people respond very positively to red lines... in red... They relate to the simplicity, it encourages [the thing you think you want].Look at Megacorp and their blue line in blue strategy, 75% growth over the last two periods. As for perpendicularity - here's some ides, I've got alternating perpendicular - technically we call this a grid, but lets not confuse things (little laugh), or a radiant spiral - appeals to the more artistic types, but maybe two much for the general public -knowing nod to marketing person. Or simple parallel lines - direct, easy to relate to, 80s retro, goes well with red lines in red. Good we're all agreed then. The bill is in the post."

Ha that is somewhat like the "middle management Managing Together" course I'm on just now just completed module 2 of 6.

I will to live is not strong just now.

been there cody.. good luck.

never be afraid to say the bleeding obvious

that was uncomfortable.

i've had to spend several hours explaining 'perpendicularity*' to people who claim to be design engineers.

[img] [/img]

(*among other things)

I'm the one that slams his fists on the table, declaring everyone is a moron, storms out and slams the door.

That meeting is why I don't have a proper job.

Our meetings aren't that productive. We all had a 3 hour skype call last month in which the only words used were "Oh person X has disconnected" "Hello, can you hear me?" "Sorry, I can't hear you" and variations thereof. But it turned out the purpose of the call was purely so we could say we'd had a call so that's all good.

There's also plenty of 'experts' - let's use IT as an example, who will advise that your project will require a new server to deliver successfully - and then ask you to specify the server, before screwing their face up and explaining DMZs and LANs and whatever else. I DON'T CARE.

You told me I need a server, so tell me which one I need, how much it costs and then go and buy it, install it and take some responsibility for it then performing as it should. Or maybe that's just me.

Ah that problem, it's mostly to avoid turning up on site and finding that nothing works with your set-up. The words you were looking for were not I DONT CARE it's let me find somebody to answer your important questions for you.

I miss the days when I was a whelp analyst - experts could just do a little backwards whistle through their teeth, say "it'll be tricky, we can do it, but it'll cost you" and clients would be so grateful...

I think my brother would empathise with Anderson. When he worked in reprographics an architect came in and asked for his drawing to be 'reduced by 300%'. He politely had to explain that 300% was three times larger, not any amount smaller. And a long conversation ensued where he had to try an extract exactly what he wanted

reduced by 30% - ie 70% of the original size? No.
30% of the original size? No.
reduced by a third? reduced to a third of the size? No
1/300th of the original size? No.

Eventually his boss joined in, siding with the customer "look, its simple, just reduce it by 300%"

Eventually he just scanned it and printed it out exactly half size handed it over and that, apparently, was exactly what was asked for.

I'm sufficiently short of tolerance for people like that that I no longer get invited to meetings of this sort. It's easier for everyone that way and prevents me from having to be a first aider on a regular basis.

Bigblackshed, I too possess the un-poker face that gives away my utter contempt for these supermen who navigate our great company forward "in spite of" Engineering.

Video was too good. Got my back up.

Get that from time to time with zombie maggots trying to increase their career profile.

[img] [/img]

Oh god no! Someone from here just sent that around ^^

The Face is the blankness that drops over, whilst the internals are savagely fighting one another for the right to KILL the stupid person that is talking complete and utter bollocks on the other side of the room.

The only reason I got my now job was the General Manager liked the fact that during the interview, the so called "expert" on the panel was talking crap and I was not afraid to tell him so. I reminded him of him.

I used to HATE getting invited to meetings as the 'expert' when, in reality, my expertise wasn't actually needed...

i remember once getting invited to a meeting where some security company (Spin or Swivel or something I think it was called) were demonstrating their alternative to two-factor auth to the company I worked for. Half way through the meeting, I was asked what I thought so far and I said I didn't think it was very good and described how to obtain a user's login credentials if you have control of the network they are calling from. (you just need a fairly simple proxy at the router and to recognise a couple of requests. You don't even need to be able to read the content, it's vulnerable even if connection is SSL...)

Amazingly, I actually got 'told off' by my boss at the time for not being impressed by the product :-/

Can't win.

Rachel

I can recall a meeting where I was repeatedly kicked under the table by my boss.

Funny that all the 'experts' are busy on this thread. Presumably all the marketing and sales team are out doing some proper work!

You told me I need a server, so tell me which one I need, how much it costs and then go and buy it, install it and take some responsibility for it then performing as it should. Or maybe that's just me.

Not just you....I've had that conversation too....in the end I refused to pay for the contract architects time, and asked a friend who knows about these things for the answer and pretended I had spec'd the server myself and that I no longer needed their experts 'help'

Funny that all the 'experts' are busy on this thread

Not at work. 😉

In Engineering, we get this a lot. Customers and managers are not experts but they are in charge. They say inaccurate things of which they do not really understand the meaning and implications, and need you to make sense of them.

Anderson's analysis and explanation was crap and he was at fault for confusing them and being disrespectful. IMO, the best option was to draw seven visible blue lines radiating from a point.

* We only have blue ink, but blue better reflects your core values (phew!)
* By radiating, the lines meet at once place: the heart of your initiative, which is what the creative guy probably meant anyway
* Good quality normal ink looks good and is used by your competitors for a reason: transparent ink makes printing too expensive.

All the 'experts' need to try seeing things from another person's perspective. The video was a bit of reductio ad absurdum, the main problem I experience isn't a lack of understanding from non-technical people, but a lack of flexible thinking, and intellectual bullying from 'experts'.

It's fine being an expert, but if you can't explain things to people then you need to change your personal style. Likewise, it's all very well demonstrating your expertise through highlighting the faults in any solution, but if you can't collaboratively think around the problem and evaluate alternatives then you're no good either.

Some people on this thread appear to have hindered their own career/progress through being unable to moderate their own behaviours to be more compatible with others - you can definitely get useful training for this. I thought it was useless until I did some courses which identified exactly what I did wrong in this sort of interaction, and why my actions caused negative reactions in people with a different style/approach, was quite an epiphany even though I'd always thought I was quite self aware.

Fortunately, or maybe it's unfortunately, I never get invited to those type of meetings.
I'm the guy on the shop floor in boots and overalls who gets given a tin of green paint and a triangular template then gets told to paint seven perpendicular red lines.

Fortunately, or maybe it's unfortunately, I never get invited to those type of meetings.
I'm the guy on the shop floor in boots and overalls who gets given a tin of green paint and a triangular template then gets told to paint seven perpendicular red lines.

We all had a 3 hour skype call last month in which the only words used were "Oh person X has disconnected" "Hello, can you hear me?"

I'm off work with the lurgy at the moment. A colleague is filling in for me. I've just got an email from him, "Do you have to deal with this crap every day? It's driving me mad, I'm going round the bend."

Yup.

bainbrge - Member
I thought it was useless until I did some courses which identified exactly what I did wrong in this sort of interaction, and why my actions caused negative reactions in people with a different style/approach, was quite an epiphany even though I'd always thought I was quite self aware.

Amen. I'd be very grateful to you, bainbrge, if you could tell me which ones helped?

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