AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

It's usually possible for the person running a small project to ask everyone for status and know what everyone's going to say in the meeting before the meeting.

Then the meeting is pointless. But not all projects allow for that.

Most modern companies drift toward the non-written style (effectively managing by the seat of the pants) because it has the appearance of being more effective, even when it is in fact the opposite. Business myth makes the guy who is always having meetings to appear more dynamic and effective, and is consequently rewarded by upper management.

As parent already hinted at, writing down stuff makes you vulnerable to criticism. Just stay vague, and you have a lot of wiggle room left...

Trust me, the 80% meeting workday became prevalent loooooong before the 2020s.

Personally I don't mind spending several hours solving a problem over "async communication" if that means I'm free to work on other stuff while the other party is formulating a response. Then I also get the benefit of having something in their writing to refer back to.

The kind of person who takes hours to explain something in written form are unlikely to explain it in 3 minutes in person. More likely, they set up a meeting where they waffle on about an issue, expecting the receiving end to distill some valuable information from their ramblings, and then inevitably end up complaining when the solution doesn't match their expectations (which of course were never formalized anywhere).

Nobody is complaining about 3 minute meetings... Try 30+

In the past, companies had people specialized in translating conversations into written documents: secretaries. And executives took seriously the task of reading these documents. All this seems to be gone.

When you can't write well, you "resort" to using a lot of body language and facial nuances in face-to-face communication, which works acceptably. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate well on zoom.

This "writing well" as a form of good communication is needed, but while in school, those same people who cannot write well also likely were complaining about learning how to write essays and such. Over time, this sort of lack of learning has resulted in poor written communication into adulthood i reckon.

And with the advent of LLM and all these chatGPT-esque bots writing for them, esp. in school, the level of literacy skill is only going to continue to drop!

In software, you have the privilege of writing succinctly to communicate facts. In every other industry, the message needs to be packaged with courtesies like a greeting, cushioned delivery, and salutations. It’s a big waste of time and people stop reading your messages. But don’t put a bow on it and you get labeled as an asshole. At least the AI note taker can make me sound more palatable.

This is my experience too. My meetings tend to be presentations of results. I invite the bare minimum of people who are likely to be interested, and like you, end up with a full meeting room plus others connecting online, often all over the world.

I figure, they're consenting adults, they're responsible for managing their time.

It is historical precedent. Having everyone sit slackjawed through twenty minutes of droning is no more proof that they received the relevant information than emailing them would be - that’s why schools have exams and other assessment on the knowledge they intend to impart.

I'm sympathetic to this knowing how few people actually read their emails (and slacks etc.). If you've ever sent out a 30 second survey to your coworkers, you know what I'm talking about. But I also know people don't really pay attention in these meetings either.

I feel async communication could work this way with the right cultural hygiene (e.g. consistent labeling, brevity, novelty, and relevancy), and some places I've worked were better about this than others, but they all tend to suffer from tragedy of the commons. If anyone works somewhere where you and all your coworkers actually count on each other to read emails, please tell me where!

So an email? You could not read the email, but I can just as easily not pay attention.

You have a way better chance of getting people to pay attention to a few paragraph email than that same information stretched to fill an hour.

Text-only stand-ups also have a tendency to devolve into just posting text into the void than nobody reads, so you may as well move to the even simpler "I need to discuss" flags which reduces communication even more. But then some people don't like that.

I am afraid there's no perfect solution, and it just boils down to people's preferences and the skills of people involved. And the chemistry between them.

I've been in teams which flip flopped over time between "communication worsened" and "wasting everyone's time". Being remote for 15+ years I enjoy the "convivial" side of stand-ups but I hate when they devolve into rote status reports.

Even if the final nod of agreement happens in real time the actual decision making process for critical product features should involve planning, thinking, research, etc. There should be a strong paper trail such that everyone knows what the decision is going to be prior to the "everyone gets together and declares this is how things are going to be" step.

If them missing some meetings means they're in the dark as to how those features were decided on then I can't see that as a defence of attending every meeting so much as a statement of BS meetings being so predominant in the company that all decisions are made through a BS process.

I had an engineer once show up to the re-scheduled "lets get the engineers ideas meeting before the yearly plan ships" meeting that we scheduled so they could be there who then proceeded to spent 15 minutes complaining how they didn't get any input before finally asking what the meeting was for, and finding out they had 45 minutes remaining to give feedback (they had skipped the meeting the previous day, and I wanted to make sure they gave their impact). (I tried to interject earlier but was asked "please let me talk" so I did).

100% this. As some who’s regularly derided by his colleagues for “hating meetings”: I don’t “keep meetings to a minimum”, I “keep meetings to a benefit”.

If I’ve called a meeting it’s because there’s a benefit to the instant vocal communication. If you’re not there, you’ve not attended the meeting, no matter which tools you use to record, transcribe or translate.

Conversely, if I thought I didn’t need to be in a meeting, then I wouldn’t send a tool to gather stuff for me to then just ignore the tool output - because I don’t need it.

These tools are a sign of cultural rot from both participants and the fact people are even making them shows deep flaws in how we communicate in the modern workplace.

It is helpful to communicate in advance what is the specific agenda of each meeting, so that people can make an informed decision on whether to attend.

Also, it may be helpful to have the meeting organizer send meeting notes after every meeting, including action items assigned to specific people. The notes don't need to be extensive, but there better be an executive summary of what decisions were made, if any, and any unexpected roadblocks that were found.

That's how things were done at one of the mega corps where I was employed and it worked great.

> and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

That there was a meeting where that decision was made between 55 minutes of crud doesn’t really mean anything to me though. I’m not wasting an hour of my day every day on the off chance today’s meeting will contain anything of importance.

Just tell ‘em that!

We had an internal RFC comment/discussion meeting on a proposed engineering standard. In that exact meeting, a dev flipped out and expressed exasperation that they weren’t asked to comment on the proposal. In the exact meeting that was one in a series of opportunities to comment on the proposal…

I'd tell them directly.. "You were invited to the meeting on 2025-MM-DD to discuss this, but you did not show up, nor did you follow up with organizers later. Sorry, you've missed your opportunity to comment"

Seems direct and uncontroversial, and IMHO most people react well at this.

but i didnt get invited to the meeting in the first place! and i dont think my management chain was either!

> I suppose they were simply working on their assigned tasks, listening to others in the background. How effective is that - I don't know.

If I’m doing that, I’m taking notes on the meeting. As long as the agenda items are at all relevant.

Many meetings I've been on only require my attention for a small part. So I've been doing my work and listening in background; once they start talking about part I care about I stop my work and start to actually participate.

That’s next level.

I would be updating my resume and talking to old colleagues. What a load of BS you have to deal with, man.

I like my meeting where we don’t have a fixed agenda but anyone can bring something up. If there’s nothing, we just end the meeting.

What do you do if you skip such a meeting and a decision you don't like but that you can't weigh in on anymore is taken there?

How do you deal with daily standups? or 3x a week standups?

After working for a company where every meeting had a clear agenda and meeting notes with action items were sent afterwards, I would never want to work in a place that didn't follow the same pattern.

If I have back-to-back meetings, I'll leave a few minutes early (with apologies) and also apologise to the next meeting if I'm late. If anyone calls me out, I'll apologetically claim "biological imperative". If they don't understand, I tell them that my bowels wait for no one. That is enough to get everyone to move on. No one wants to talk about someone else's bowels.