How to deal with odd hours at work?
October 25, 2022 9:29 AM Subscribe
I've posted about working at a large company before but I have an issue where they change meetings at the last minute. For example I had an 8AM meeting that was changed to 7:30AM at 12:27AM. I was the only one who missed it. Is this normal behavior? Are people expected to be "on" all the time now? I never experienced it. Additional questions about sprint planning within.
No one was upset with me for missing the meeting but this has happened multiple times, especially on weekends. Company policy does not allow us to have email on our phone, I would have probably made it but I usually log in at 8AM (I specifically asked office hours and was told they were flexible). Everyone else made it and I get from chat there's a bit of anxiety of people saying they're online. This is the second company this has happened to me at, all post Covid. Is this the new normal?
Separate question it was a sprint planning meeting which usually defines which items in the backlog goes into a sprint and maybe discussing how the specific item will work. This got into heavy detail about the implementation, as in they wanted to know class names, what dependency injection would be used, etc. These are things I usually do during, you know the sprint, is this normal? I do not have implementation planned out before the sprint starts. I asked around at work and they thought I was being a bit odd for not knowing exactly how it would be built. Has the definition of sprint planning changed? I've done this my entire career and I never had experienced this.
No one was upset with me for missing the meeting but this has happened multiple times, especially on weekends. Company policy does not allow us to have email on our phone, I would have probably made it but I usually log in at 8AM (I specifically asked office hours and was told they were flexible). Everyone else made it and I get from chat there's a bit of anxiety of people saying they're online. This is the second company this has happened to me at, all post Covid. Is this the new normal?
Separate question it was a sprint planning meeting which usually defines which items in the backlog goes into a sprint and maybe discussing how the specific item will work. This got into heavy detail about the implementation, as in they wanted to know class names, what dependency injection would be used, etc. These are things I usually do during, you know the sprint, is this normal? I do not have implementation planned out before the sprint starts. I asked around at work and they thought I was being a bit odd for not knowing exactly how it would be built. Has the definition of sprint planning changed? I've done this my entire career and I never had experienced this.
This is not an OK practice, but it'll only change if it gets pushback. Unless you have specific office hours you're expected to keep, changing an early morning meeting overnight is making a lot of assumptions about how much time you're expected to be on the clock.
If you have a regular "shift" from, say, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. then maybe it's OK to swing a meeting 30 minutes forward on short-ish notice. But if you're working "flexible" office hours and the expectation is you're available at 7:30 a.m. and going to notice a meeting change made overnight... you're not in a good environment or norms aren't being enforced.
Can't speak to the level of detail they're wanting from you. If other people's work depends on knowing the class names or whatever, maybe that's reasonable? If they're just testing to see if you have that level of detail scoped out already but they don't need it for their own work...that seems red flaggy.
Is this a meeting your manager is involved in? Is there a team lead changing these times? Maybe even bring it up in a sprint? "I'm given to understand that we have flexible office hours and while I usually log in by 8 a.m. I don't log in even earlier to see if someone danced the meeting back 30 minutes. If we want anything like a reasonable work life balance we need to stick to reasonable hours and not shift meetings around early morning like this."
posted by jzb at 9:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
If you have a regular "shift" from, say, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. then maybe it's OK to swing a meeting 30 minutes forward on short-ish notice. But if you're working "flexible" office hours and the expectation is you're available at 7:30 a.m. and going to notice a meeting change made overnight... you're not in a good environment or norms aren't being enforced.
Can't speak to the level of detail they're wanting from you. If other people's work depends on knowing the class names or whatever, maybe that's reasonable? If they're just testing to see if you have that level of detail scoped out already but they don't need it for their own work...that seems red flaggy.
Is this a meeting your manager is involved in? Is there a team lead changing these times? Maybe even bring it up in a sprint? "I'm given to understand that we have flexible office hours and while I usually log in by 8 a.m. I don't log in even earlier to see if someone danced the meeting back 30 minutes. If we want anything like a reasonable work life balance we need to stick to reasonable hours and not shift meetings around early morning like this."
posted by jzb at 9:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don't think this is normal, but there are probably many other large organizations with dysfunctional processes like this. Dysfunctional because it causes employees who are operating normally and according to company procedure to miss meetings.
I would consider it abnormal for any organization to have official communication on something like meeting time occur outside of business hours at all, let alone after midnight but maybe I'm old-fashioned.
This kind of practice is also quite hostile to those with child care obligations.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:40 AM on October 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
I would consider it abnormal for any organization to have official communication on something like meeting time occur outside of business hours at all, let alone after midnight but maybe I'm old-fashioned.
This kind of practice is also quite hostile to those with child care obligations.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:40 AM on October 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
I can't speak to sprint planning specifically, but more generally, my experience is that no one reasonable would expect you to have checked your email after 12:30 a.m. and to be online and ready to go before your usual start time. Sometimes there might be a last-minute change like that to accommodate something else, but the understanding then is that the side effect of it being last minute is that some people won't make it to the new meeting time, and that's fine.
If this is happening regularly and it's the same people, it might be worth having a quick check in with them just to say "Hey, just so you know, my typical workday starts at 8 so I can't usually make it to meetings that start earlier. I can do it once in a while for something important with advance notice, but not as a regular thing." (Drop the last bit, if you want. Personally I find that being willing to shift my hours a bit earlier or later, on rare occasions with sufficient notice that it's a minimal hardship, pays for itself in goodwill.)
posted by Stacey at 9:43 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
If this is happening regularly and it's the same people, it might be worth having a quick check in with them just to say "Hey, just so you know, my typical workday starts at 8 so I can't usually make it to meetings that start earlier. I can do it once in a while for something important with advance notice, but not as a regular thing." (Drop the last bit, if you want. Personally I find that being willing to shift my hours a bit earlier or later, on rare occasions with sufficient notice that it's a minimal hardship, pays for itself in goodwill.)
posted by Stacey at 9:43 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'll add actually that I think if the working hours are genuinely flexible to allow people to start at 8 or any other time routinely, meetings should never be scheduled outside of the bounds of any one team member's ordinary working hours. People make commitments for that time, like dropping kids off at day care, exercise classes, and any number of other things.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:44 AM on October 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:44 AM on October 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
As for the "is this how sprint planning works" - sometimes? At my small company, one 4-developer team mostly has implementation planned out during sprint planning (not always class names, but the broad strokes); the other 6-developer team has more of an expectation of "in sprint planning we make sure we've defined the functional spec/ 'done' criteria, figuring out how to do it is The Work." I've moved back and forth between the teams and it's an adjustment. I think the "implementation details during the sprint" thing can be useful if you're all working on tickets that have the potential to step on each other.
Changing/scheduling a first-thing-in-morning meeting any time after like 4PM the previous business day is obnoxious. Are you in a different time zone from the rest of the team? (It'd still be obnoxious if that's the case, but it's less surprising.)
Does your team use a shared calendaring system? If so it could be useful for you to mark your usual "out of office" hours and auto-decline meetings that are scheduled at/moved to times outside your usual hours.
posted by mskyle at 9:46 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Changing/scheduling a first-thing-in-morning meeting any time after like 4PM the previous business day is obnoxious. Are you in a different time zone from the rest of the team? (It'd still be obnoxious if that's the case, but it's less surprising.)
Does your team use a shared calendaring system? If so it could be useful for you to mark your usual "out of office" hours and auto-decline meetings that are scheduled at/moved to times outside your usual hours.
posted by mskyle at 9:46 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
This sort of nonsense went on for awhile at my company but they eventually cracked down on it because it is absolutely a bananapants way of doing business--everyone just needs to be checking their emails in the middle of the night and waking up hours and hours before their usual work day just in case? No.
In our case it was chiefly because certain departments are partially or entirely overseas and people just can't be fucked to learn how time zones work.
It's kind of the new normal in that "doing things the worst possible way at all times" is in fact kind of the new normal, yeah. But fuck that, it's a terrible practice, and it won't change unless people push back on it.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:53 AM on October 25, 2022 [25 favorites]
In our case it was chiefly because certain departments are partially or entirely overseas and people just can't be fucked to learn how time zones work.
It's kind of the new normal in that "doing things the worst possible way at all times" is in fact kind of the new normal, yeah. But fuck that, it's a terrible practice, and it won't change unless people push back on it.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:53 AM on October 25, 2022 [25 favorites]
had an 8AM meeting that was changed to 7:30AM at 12:27AM
Is the meeting scheduler a few hours ahead of you, time zone-wise? I've seen this happen where a person on eastern standard time could never remember that a person in pacific time, who was known to work typical pacific time business hours, would not be at a 9:30 am eastern (6:30 pacific), especially if they scheduled it late the night before. I resolved it by pushing back, repeatedly.
This and the question of "what do we do during X meeting" should be covered in a team norms document, though. Since you mention sprint planning, I assume/am hoping your team has access to some sort of agile coach, delivery manager, scrum master, (or even in some companies a product person in an agile lead role). Please approach them, either one on one or in a retrospective, and ask about accessing - or creating, if it doesn't exist - a team norms doc, sometimes called a team agreement. This will get everyone on the same page. Because there is no normal outside of what you define for yourselves.
posted by okayokayigive at 10:01 AM on October 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
Is the meeting scheduler a few hours ahead of you, time zone-wise? I've seen this happen where a person on eastern standard time could never remember that a person in pacific time, who was known to work typical pacific time business hours, would not be at a 9:30 am eastern (6:30 pacific), especially if they scheduled it late the night before. I resolved it by pushing back, repeatedly.
This and the question of "what do we do during X meeting" should be covered in a team norms document, though. Since you mention sprint planning, I assume/am hoping your team has access to some sort of agile coach, delivery manager, scrum master, (or even in some companies a product person in an agile lead role). Please approach them, either one on one or in a retrospective, and ask about accessing - or creating, if it doesn't exist - a team norms doc, sometimes called a team agreement. This will get everyone on the same page. Because there is no normal outside of what you define for yourselves.
posted by okayokayigive at 10:01 AM on October 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
If you are working with people in different time zones, you might block your calendar at the times that are outside your typical working hours. (I keep meaning to do this myself on days when I need to pick up my kids on time, because I am on Eastern time and my colleagues on Central sometimes try to schedule things at their 4:00 PM.)
posted by madcaptenor at 10:11 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by madcaptenor at 10:11 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Skip meetings that are before your normal working hours, unless you are explicitly asked to attend. It's completely normal, especially now that we have jobs that have employees all around the world.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:13 AM on October 25, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:13 AM on October 25, 2022 [8 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks all again I haven't been in a large company (300k+) and we usually have a PM, business analyst, documentation, etc. But the client pushed back and didn't want to pay for those roles. Usually agile meetings (retros, sprint planning, backlog grooming) are well defined in agendas but they seem to be just kind of really focused on the sale and getting something out the door. I'm still navigating how large companies work they seem way more concerned with just churning out products quickly regardless of quality and randomly setting meetings if the client seems upset. I am guessing this isn't a step up but maybe a bit of a offshore mill.
posted by geoff. at 10:14 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 10:14 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
And asking for things way before they are needed is a common IT delaying tactic. "I can't do my job until XXX gives me the specs and I need 6 weeks, so if you give them to me at the prescribed appropriate time that's too late"
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:15 AM on October 25, 2022
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:15 AM on October 25, 2022
At least at my company, you have to set your own business hours in the calendaring system and it's supposed to only show you as available for meetings during those hours. However from personal experience - if there are a lot of people on a meeting, it is very difficult to schedule something soon that 100% of people are available, so you just choose a time, some people can't make it, and you send them a summary email later. If your presence is absolutely required for a meeting, it is contingent on the organizer to make sure that you are available during that time, and also that you accept that meeting. And regardless, some people just no-show to meetings for a range of acceptable reasons (sickness, work emergency, etc.).
When you have people in widely disparate time zones, scheduling is impossible and that's when you need to do an email/chat round to see who's actually available.
Sprint planning: the person running the meeting is supposed to make sure the meeting is a good use of time for all members. Implementation details usually aren't, although it is quite easy to fall into the trap of doing a little too much. If someone else's work this sprint depends on these details and they're demanding them at the beginning of the sprint, their expectations are miscalibrated, or you need a separate sprint item that says "come up with shared interface" that has to be done before they can start their sprint item.
posted by meowzilla at 10:28 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
When you have people in widely disparate time zones, scheduling is impossible and that's when you need to do an email/chat round to see who's actually available.
Sprint planning: the person running the meeting is supposed to make sure the meeting is a good use of time for all members. Implementation details usually aren't, although it is quite easy to fall into the trap of doing a little too much. If someone else's work this sprint depends on these details and they're demanding them at the beginning of the sprint, their expectations are miscalibrated, or you need a separate sprint item that says "come up with shared interface" that has to be done before they can start their sprint item.
posted by meowzilla at 10:28 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
Um, this is not normal in general. This may be normal for your company's culture, though, which is where you have a problem. It sounds like other people have learned that they have to wake up early and start checking their emails to make these surprise meetings. "Flexible" office hours may be the issue here. I don't know how many early birds you have at your company, but if most people are already working at 7:30 and you're not....
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:00 AM on October 25, 2022
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:00 AM on October 25, 2022
I had an 8AM meeting that was changed to 7:30AM at 12:27AM. I was the only one who missed it. Is this normal behavior?My corporate experience has been in large multinational companies, and whether this is normal has been team or project-dependent. When i worked as part of a team where the architect and other business analysts were based in Europe, it wasn't unusual for a reschedule email for a regular 7:30 am (U.S. Eastern time) meeting to go out at 5:30 am (U.S. Eastern time) that day. It wasn't exactly "normal" but it wasn't an unusual occurrence. As others have said this came from the difficulty in scheduling calls for participants across multiple time zones. Folks were very understanding if you missed a call due to a reschedule like that, though.
As for sprint planning, I agree discussion of implementation details is not typically part of such meetings. But again different teams / projects / business units may have different practices, due to differing levels of Agile maturity or familiarity. Personally, I've seen sprint planning or backlog refinement calls get hijacked for detailed implementation or design discussions when the folks in the call only have superficial knowledge of Agile practices. Another contributing factor seems to have been Covid and folks who were collocated now working remotely, and not having the opportunity to have impromptu technical discussions, and so any kind of team call became an outlet for such discussions, regardless of the actual purpose of the call. The way I got around this in a previous team was setting up a regular team call for architecture / design / implementation issues - gradually the team culture changed to people proposing moving the discussion to this call if people started getting into implementation details during a sprint planning call, say.
posted by needled at 11:08 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mention of a client makes this sound like a consulting or outsourcing situation? I think that may drive several different dynamics than you'd get with a generic "big company" environment, because there's an outside party who has significant influence on how things are being done (to the point of causing the team to not even have all of the roles it typically would have, it sounds like). This might be important context to people answering these questions.
That said, I've experienced meetings being changed at the last minute like that, but I pretty much just ignore them. I can't be expected to have seen that update before the meeting time, and if my attendance is critical, it's on the meeting organizer to both schedule it at a time that I can attend, and make sure I am aware of it. To be honest, there have been cases where I did see the update because I happened to check my email late at night, and just pretended I didn't. Maybe that makes me a bad employee, but I don't want to reinforce that kind of behavior by allowing it to work...
Everyone does sprint planning differently, they all do it "wrong," and this is why I hate what Agile has become. That's all I'll say about that.
posted by primethyme at 11:37 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
That said, I've experienced meetings being changed at the last minute like that, but I pretty much just ignore them. I can't be expected to have seen that update before the meeting time, and if my attendance is critical, it's on the meeting organizer to both schedule it at a time that I can attend, and make sure I am aware of it. To be honest, there have been cases where I did see the update because I happened to check my email late at night, and just pretended I didn't. Maybe that makes me a bad employee, but I don't want to reinforce that kind of behavior by allowing it to work...
Everyone does sprint planning differently, they all do it "wrong," and this is why I hate what Agile has become. That's all I'll say about that.
posted by primethyme at 11:37 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I also am wondering if this is a time zone thing. I grew up on the east coast, and if the person scheduling the meeting is there, well, I think there's sometimes east coast US privilege in terms of time zones. Like, everyone else in the country knows how time zones work in a way folks on the east coast don't always remember to consider.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:38 AM on October 25, 2022
posted by bluedaisy at 11:38 AM on October 25, 2022
My husband works with overseas teams and he gives out information on how and when to override his phone being on silent. The sudden 4:30 am meeting is one of them.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:41 AM on October 25, 2022
posted by warriorqueen at 11:41 AM on October 25, 2022
I have not worked at very large companies either, but this is dysfunctional and not reasonable.
I also don't think it has anything to do with the industry or size. I worked in an academic job that was similar to this, where my co-lecturers would be sending harried emails about last minute changes to the lecture well past midnight. At my tech jobs in small to medium sized companies OTOH? Working hours are strictly respected and if any meeting or task needs to go outside them, they are requested well in advance with many thanks and apologies.
The particulars of your situation, though, sound like you're in the west coast working with east coast individuals, or some such? And perhaps some nocturnal coworker who was awake at 3:27 am rescheduled the meeting from 11 am Eastern to 10:30 am -- which is not an issue generally for those in the Eastern time zone. It sounds like you need to speak up and make it known that your working hours are different and give some guidelines on how flexible you are. Do you have anything in your contract requiring you to work Eastern hours? If so, you may be out of luck and might have to regularly be prepared to start meetings at 9 am Eastern if needed.
posted by redlines at 12:12 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I also don't think it has anything to do with the industry or size. I worked in an academic job that was similar to this, where my co-lecturers would be sending harried emails about last minute changes to the lecture well past midnight. At my tech jobs in small to medium sized companies OTOH? Working hours are strictly respected and if any meeting or task needs to go outside them, they are requested well in advance with many thanks and apologies.
The particulars of your situation, though, sound like you're in the west coast working with east coast individuals, or some such? And perhaps some nocturnal coworker who was awake at 3:27 am rescheduled the meeting from 11 am Eastern to 10:30 am -- which is not an issue generally for those in the Eastern time zone. It sounds like you need to speak up and make it known that your working hours are different and give some guidelines on how flexible you are. Do you have anything in your contract requiring you to work Eastern hours? If so, you may be out of luck and might have to regularly be prepared to start meetings at 9 am Eastern if needed.
posted by redlines at 12:12 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I work for a large company with an all-remote workforce distributed across many time zones around the world. I also plan a lot of meetings in my job.
The “available working hours” feature in Google Calendar (and I think Outlook as well) is my best friend. When I’m scheduling meetings, I always respect the working hours of the required attendees, unless I have their explicit permission in advance (“hey Anna the only time the Italian team has available is 7:30am your time - can you make it ?”).
If I were to reschedule a meeting at the last minute outside of someone’s working hours, I would not expect their attendance. I would only do that as a last resort, and only if the unavailable folks were not required attendees. And then I would send the unavailable folks a follow up message acknowledging that I didn’t expect them to change their schedule (“hey Al, so sorry I had to move this meeting before your day started. Of course I didn’t expect you to get the invite before logging in - I’ll send you the recording so you can catch up”).
posted by rodneyaug at 12:17 PM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
The “available working hours” feature in Google Calendar (and I think Outlook as well) is my best friend. When I’m scheduling meetings, I always respect the working hours of the required attendees, unless I have their explicit permission in advance (“hey Anna the only time the Italian team has available is 7:30am your time - can you make it ?”).
If I were to reschedule a meeting at the last minute outside of someone’s working hours, I would not expect their attendance. I would only do that as a last resort, and only if the unavailable folks were not required attendees. And then I would send the unavailable folks a follow up message acknowledging that I didn’t expect them to change their schedule (“hey Al, so sorry I had to move this meeting before your day started. Of course I didn’t expect you to get the invite before logging in - I’ll send you the recording so you can catch up”).
posted by rodneyaug at 12:17 PM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I think there's sometimes east coast US privilege in terms of time zones. Like, everyone else in the country knows how time zones work in a way folks on the east coast don't always remember to consider.
This is definitely true. Nobody is waiting until 11:00am EST for the California folks before scheduling any meetings. And nobody east of Nevada is attending a 4:30PST meeting for the west coasters unless they are explicitly asked.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:51 PM on October 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is definitely true. Nobody is waiting until 11:00am EST for the California folks before scheduling any meetings. And nobody east of Nevada is attending a 4:30PST meeting for the west coasters unless they are explicitly asked.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:51 PM on October 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
I work at a huge multinational company with large concentrations of people in the US Eastern, Central European and assorted Asian time zones. Effectively there is no good time to have a meeting with everyone.
Does rescheduling like you experience happen? Yes. But it certainly isn't common and tends to be either meetings where total attendance is never expected or there is a core attendee list whose availability is catered to for whatever reason.
This would never happen big, organizational type meetings.
posted by mmascolino at 1:12 PM on October 25, 2022
Does rescheduling like you experience happen? Yes. But it certainly isn't common and tends to be either meetings where total attendance is never expected or there is a core attendee list whose availability is catered to for whatever reason.
This would never happen big, organizational type meetings.
posted by mmascolino at 1:12 PM on October 25, 2022
Changing the meeting like that is pretty weird, and if I did that I would assume almost everyone would show up at 8AM. (I just wouldn't ever do that.) I am very surprised you are the only one who missed it.
Re: how much actually gets defined before a sprint starts, I find this varies dramatically from team to team. And even from story to story; like some stories, people might have anxiety about because a lot of other things connect to them, or people hold strong opinions about them, and want them very well-defined. Other stories, people don't care about the details and are fine with the assigned eng deciding during the sprint.
posted by amaire at 2:10 PM on October 25, 2022
Re: how much actually gets defined before a sprint starts, I find this varies dramatically from team to team. And even from story to story; like some stories, people might have anxiety about because a lot of other things connect to them, or people hold strong opinions about them, and want them very well-defined. Other stories, people don't care about the details and are fine with the assigned eng deciding during the sprint.
posted by amaire at 2:10 PM on October 25, 2022
The detailed discussion of implementation during sprint planning reminds me of times when I was working as a PM in a company with both in-house and outsourced developers. The in-house devs would often want to be sure the outsourced devs started out on the right foot, to prevent having to correct or rework things later in the sprint. Sometimes it was a trust issue, but other times it boiled down to the high learning curve of our product. This was at a company of ~150 people.
posted by neushoorn at 3:07 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by neushoorn at 3:07 PM on October 25, 2022
Response by poster: So that's correct we're external development. The team is in India, Europe and East Coast. I'm not obviously going to be working 24/7 and if they need me I need 24 hour notice outside of business hours is what I told them.
Re: sprint planning. I can't possibly know every implementation detail before the project begins or else it would be you know done. I've suggested the team invest in agile training but cost is an issue. I find at larger companies they rely on the fact they're large companies and due to the bare minimum which actually has some plusses but also feels just about politics. Obviously I'm looking for another line of work where I can help drive the discussion and deliver something other than the cheapest product but it is good to know that I'm not completely screwing up. I find it odd that other people in EST/CT time zones were able to make it but I think the culture is just to be up around 5AM which I specifically asked about during the interview but you know how people tell you what you want to hear.
posted by geoff. at 3:49 PM on October 25, 2022
Re: sprint planning. I can't possibly know every implementation detail before the project begins or else it would be you know done. I've suggested the team invest in agile training but cost is an issue. I find at larger companies they rely on the fact they're large companies and due to the bare minimum which actually has some plusses but also feels just about politics. Obviously I'm looking for another line of work where I can help drive the discussion and deliver something other than the cheapest product but it is good to know that I'm not completely screwing up. I find it odd that other people in EST/CT time zones were able to make it but I think the culture is just to be up around 5AM which I specifically asked about during the interview but you know how people tell you what you want to hear.
posted by geoff. at 3:49 PM on October 25, 2022
I had a couple other thoughts to add.
It seems as though you're drawing a lot of conclusions about large organizations based on this one that may not be justified. Those organizations vary a lot I think in work culture (and this kind of thing is, I think, very driven by culture rather than intentional structure or policy).
I find sometimes the benefit of a good larger workplace is actually the opposite of this kind of issue, where there can be more formal structures in place and norms against intruding on one's life. This may be promoted by more formalized and assertive HR for example, people having had the time to draft policies about things, or just the good management often necessary to succeed as a larger organization.
By contrast, a smaller, newer workplace might have more intrusions on personal life due to the perception of needing to sacrifice to keep the business going, the reduction in the structure needed for a larger workplace to function, and knowing your colleagues better and perhaps feeling more comfortable making certain demands on them. Such places may promote people having work as a more dominant part of life.
On the other hand, large workplaces can also be deeply dysfunctional, the consequences of dysfunction can be greater given the complexity of collaboratively accomplishing the large projects involved, and the ability to change anything as one person much less.
That said, it sounds like it's worth asserting yourself within your team. It might also be useful to develop some relationships with colleagues at the same level so you can find out, for example, if someone has asserted the same concern in the past and how such things are usually received. You could invite them for virtual coffee or something.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:02 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
It seems as though you're drawing a lot of conclusions about large organizations based on this one that may not be justified. Those organizations vary a lot I think in work culture (and this kind of thing is, I think, very driven by culture rather than intentional structure or policy).
I find sometimes the benefit of a good larger workplace is actually the opposite of this kind of issue, where there can be more formal structures in place and norms against intruding on one's life. This may be promoted by more formalized and assertive HR for example, people having had the time to draft policies about things, or just the good management often necessary to succeed as a larger organization.
By contrast, a smaller, newer workplace might have more intrusions on personal life due to the perception of needing to sacrifice to keep the business going, the reduction in the structure needed for a larger workplace to function, and knowing your colleagues better and perhaps feeling more comfortable making certain demands on them. Such places may promote people having work as a more dominant part of life.
On the other hand, large workplaces can also be deeply dysfunctional, the consequences of dysfunction can be greater given the complexity of collaboratively accomplishing the large projects involved, and the ability to change anything as one person much less.
That said, it sounds like it's worth asserting yourself within your team. It might also be useful to develop some relationships with colleagues at the same level so you can find out, for example, if someone has asserted the same concern in the past and how such things are usually received. You could invite them for virtual coffee or something.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:02 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I can't speak to sprints (no experience) but have worked "flexible hours" and one thing that helped was that there were "core hours" that had to be covered. For one example flex hours could be from 6:00 to 19:00 but 08:00 to 17:00 had to be _covered_ by employees in each group. Once core hours were established, meeting times could not be outside core hours.
posted by TimHare at 10:36 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by TimHare at 10:36 PM on October 25, 2022
Changing a meeting at such short notice overnight is not normal in my company. It sounds like someone not knowing or not caring about time zones.
That's absolutely not what Sprint Planning is about, see the Scrum Guide section about it. It sounds like they're in the common place of doing "wagile", waterfall development disguised as agile.
It sounds like this company has a pretty messed up corporate culture. You can either leave, live with it, or try to change what you can within your team/unit.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:43 AM on October 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
That's absolutely not what Sprint Planning is about, see the Scrum Guide section about it. It sounds like they're in the common place of doing "wagile", waterfall development disguised as agile.
It sounds like this company has a pretty messed up corporate culture. You can either leave, live with it, or try to change what you can within your team/unit.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:43 AM on October 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
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For Sprint Planning, I feel like implementation details are for . . .implementation. I think that it's a bad practice to get bogged down in the minutia of HOW because your information is probably relatively low at Sprint Planning and you cannot be sure of the HOW at this point. Once you're an expert in a product or have been on the Sprint team for a longer time, confidence will go up, but I still don't think getting into class names at a Sprint Planning session is in the spirit of the meeting's purpose.
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [27 favorites]