(That's why a textbook costs $100, but a semester of class costs $2000. Economy of scale.)

Of course, if you anticipate the discussion to mostly be back-and-forth, then a meeting could be necessary. But have an agenda and stick to it. If you just want to socialize with your coworkers, duck out early and hit the pub.

It's very difficult to hold meetings that only interrupt employees for 11 minutes. In addition to this, emails are async so they have less interruption overhead.

So being able to write very well is important, it's a very underrated skill in many companies.

There's a big difference between "no meetings ever" and this.

After too many days of back-to-back meetings from 10am to 3pm I've taken to creating a repeating lunchtime meeting with myself. Then I discovered the people who don't care if you're available or not...they consider themselves important enough that you'll drop everything for their meeting.

In this case, I'd say there's no/negligible cost to missing the meetings on a no-meeting day, unless the entire group of people have decided that it is worth breaking the no-meeting rule. Of course, you should let people know that you won't be there in advance...

I think it's largely a knee-jerk reaction against bad meetings - hour long no-point crapfests - but they don't have to be like that.

1) They are as small as possible, typically including just 2 or 3 people.

2) Are always optional.

3) Typically last around 15 minutes.

It helps to have plenty of space/rooms where you can just pull someone aside to hash out a quick issue, and a mature, responsible team that doesn't need baby sitting to get stuff done.

I think everybody's goal should be to make meetings as small as possible. If you don't know why everybody there is there, then either they're redundant, superfluous, or lost.

One thing I like to stress in my meetings that I run is that everybody knows why they are there. Even if that's just to listen. Too often, people think that because they were invited to a meeting, they need to say something. This is what generates hour-long bullshit meetings. Sometimes, you just need them to shut up, listen, and take notes.

I've found that if, when you set the meeting, you send a note to them after the invite with, "Hey, I know you're busy, but I'd like you to listen in on this so you understand what's being discussed. I'll get your feedback on it after the meeting." Works wonders and keeps meetings short.

Some meetings useful, even helpful. But holding a useful meeting is not easy, which means there are many bad meetings. And that's what we should all avoid. Not meetings all together, but bad meetings.

I've been to great meetings that were facilitated well and had clear, productive goals. Those we should keep. And fortunately, when meetings are productive, there don't need to be as many of them.

But those hour long no-point crapfests, yea, no one needs those.

That said, we do still communicate as needed for the active work. But we do so in terms of emails, chat messages, and sometimes phone calls between only the necessary parties, without any long scheduled meetings or meetings that provide value in the longer term (eg. interviews or longterm planning meetings) as opposed to helping someone do the right work today.

It works great, we've been doing it for basically the whole life of the company, and I don't see it stopping.

(always avoid double negations)

This becomes apparent when you create a truth table for it:

    !meetings != !communication

    meetings | communication | expr
    F        | F             | F
    T        | T             | F
    T        | F             | T
    F        | T             | T

"Meetings != communication" is analogous to saying "At meetings, communication doesn't necessarily occur."

In terms you would personally appreciate: (No Patrick Hernandez != No Dancing) similarly is not equivalent to (Patrick Hernandez != Dancing)

One says without Patrick Hernandez, there may be dancing. The other says with Patrick Hernandez there certainly is not any dancing ;-)

In short, I believe neilk should have used => instead of !=. Or just plain english. ;-)

We're not dealing in language, formal symbols exist to remove the ambiguity of language.

Plain and simple, the symbols used don't mean what the poster thinks they mean.

Jackalope.

If you read the above as anything other than a nuanced and well reasoned response thats your mistake, not mine.

neilk incorrectly used a comparison operator to try and point out the logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent. But thats not what was said.

At least thats what I think is happening here. I can't be sure because instead of using logic symbols they used symbols that are ambiguous at best.