{"id":402,"date":"2019-02-07T17:40:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T16:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/?p=402"},"modified":"2021-02-10T08:42:27","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T07:42:27","slug":"why-developers-and-meetings-dont-go-well-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/?p=402","title":{"rendered":"Why developers and meetings don&#8217;t go well together"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Reason 1<\/h1>\n<p>Different people have different preferred modes of communication.<br \/>\nIf they operate in their preferred mode, they are efficient and lose very little energy.<br \/>\nIf they operate in a mode that&#8217;s not preferred, they are inefficient and they lose energy.<\/p>\n<p>One of the dimensions of that is &#8220;recorded&#8221; versus &#8220;live&#8221; communication.<br \/>\nSoftware development is an extreme form of recorded communication.<br \/>\nTherefore, good software developers are usually not suited for meetings.<br \/>\nThey&#8217;ll lose a lot of energy in meetings and it distracts them big time, even way before and after the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Also, recorded communicators need time to think before they say something.<br \/>\nSo, developers often remain silent in meetings. (Which creates problems with energy feeding, see further below)<\/p>\n<p>(Casual conversation at lunch or so is a different thing&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Or software developers are actually live communicators, so they<br \/>\nhave a very hard time to switch back to software development after a meeting<br \/>\nbecause the meeting is much more in their groove than software development.<\/p>\n<h1>Reason 2<\/h1>\n<p>Some developers are high empaths.<br \/>\nThis may be a surprise, but it makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why:<br \/>\nHigh empaths pick up subtle energies and feelings of other people.<br \/>\nThis creates a lot of information which can be quite overwhelming and stressful (also depending on what is received).<br \/>\nTherefore some empaths tend to chose work where they don&#8217;t have to deal with people all the time.<br \/>\nSoftware development fulfills that to some extent.<\/p>\n<p>Meetings are often especially stressful for empaths because meetings tend<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>to get emotional<\/li>\n<li>or feelings are covered (which is even more stressful energy than open communication)<\/li>\n<li>or in extreme cases there is some form of manipulation going on<\/li>\n<li>often there is energy feeding going on. Energy usually flows from the listener to the talker.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But even meetings in a positive, relaxed atmosphere can cause distraction later on.<br \/>\nAfter all, any form of emotional stuff (even positive) can distract from software development.<\/p>\n<h1>Reason 3<\/h1>\n<p>It happens quite often that managers require from developers in a meeting to<br \/>\nspontaneously give them answers that require extensive research (such as cost estimations for new requirements),<br \/>\nand insist on a spontaneous answer. (Which can only be given by lying, i.e., telling a random number)<br \/>\nThis adds to the stress level.<\/p>\n<h1>Conclusion<\/h1>\n<p>If you want to destroy the productivity and motivation of your software developers, do as many meetings with them as possible.<\/p>\n<p>The worst for productivity are daily meetings in the middle of the morning.<br \/>\nThis is the worst because the morning is usually the most productive time,<br \/>\nand software development requires highly focused attention for long time-spans without interruption and distraction.<\/p>\n<h1>Personal note<\/h1>\n<p>Personally, I like the human connection in meetings (if there&#8217;s a good atmosphere).<br \/>\nBut I don&#8217;t like the energy feeding and that I don&#8217;t have time and solitude to think or to listen to my intuition or to my inner wisdom before I say something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reason 1 Different people have different preferred modes of communication. If they operate in their preferred mode, they are efficient and lose very little energy. If they operate in a mode that&#8217;s not preferred, they are inefficient and they lose energy. One of the dimensions of that is &#8220;recorded&#8221; versus &#8220;live&#8221; communication. Software development is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43,42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/clinhart.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}