Meetings (64)

Throughout my career as an engineer I've often not spoken up for fear of not saying the right thing or looking dumb in meetings. I'm wondering what are some effective tactics to have "good" opinions in meetings and become a leader?

I've been working at this company for almost 2 years now and we recently started doing kick-off calls for big features. Before this, management would come up with features in private meetings and assign engineers tickets. We expressed our frustration with this approach so management started doing "kick-off calls" recently but would only invite 1 engineer or 1 data scientist depending on who they think should lead the feature/project. This is a 10-person company, and it feels like I have no room to be creative/propose solutions etc. I brought this up during retro and 1:1s with my manager and the answer I always got was "we don't want it to be a democracy" or "too many people/questions would drag the meeting longer than it has to" etc

I can understand this reasoning if it's a big team/company, but we're a really small team and it feels to me like they're not interested in hearing about other engineers' input, ideas etc at all. This causes me to think engineers are just here to do grunt work/grind. Am I being too cynical?

As I work remotely from UK, I have some co workers in US who are in some meeting room discussing things together. I feel it’s difficult for me to contribute from Zoom. What can I do better to get more involved?

I recently gave my first presentation ever and I was so confident about how to do it but when I saw so many people looking at my screen for the first time and going through my work with a fine-tooth comb I just froze and didn't know what to do. I've been on the team for a year and 6 months but never had to present before because I'm so used to coding heads-down.

Lots of "ums" and "buts" and a few awkward pauses and I just wanted to crawl under a table and hide. I feel so defeated because everyone will judge me and my calibre and hold it against me as an L3 who doesn't know what he's talking about. I could feel 50 eyes looking directly into my soul.

How do I recover from this? Are my chances at promo delayed? Did you experience this early in your career?

Pre-covid I used to do a bit of public speaking internally at work and sometimes at events on behalf of work.

Now I'm super rusty but have some opportunities coming up that'd also involve a technical talk component (which I have even less experience in).

What are some ways you've improved your public speaking as well as the quality of your presentations as a whole?

With all the remote work, more people are opting to not use cameras in meetings. On one hand that means you can not have to worry about looking put together, but on the other hand it makes remote work more painful

Questions for the community:

• do you prefer cameras on or off?
• if your team is primarily a camera off, do you think its worth it to ask for camera on?
• Do you find meetings more effective with cameras on?
• How does this change if you are fully remote vs. hybrid/in person

When I say meetings, I am referring to small huddles/quick zoom call with your coworker(s) to help or ask for help on some bug or brainstorm stuff. By large no one really pays a ton of attention in large more formal meetings anyways

Hey Taro members,

Since in most companies, I believe the 1:1 with Managers is biweekly or weekly I was thinking about what to communicate in every meeting. At times, I run out of things to discuss. We cover topics related to how tasks are going, feedback if any, and after that, there's not really anything else. Given the fact these meetings are recurring, I want the communication to be more natural. Any advice for that since I do realize the importance of 1:1's and would like to make the most of it?

Also, any other topics besides the ones mentioned above that should be discussed in 1:1 something I can initiate a discussion about as an Entry Level Engineer and make the most out of these 1:1s?

Thanks.

My org VP holds office hours every week. Also he sometimes does AMA sessions. I'm usually not sure what to ask so I don't avail those sessions as I don't want to ask any stupid questions.

I am onboarding at a new company. Sometimes, I feel I am completely lost when my teammates were explaining something to me. The reasons I can find may include

1. I am lacking the understanding of the architecture or the context
2. Their explanation uses phrases I do not know what they mean or how they work

In this situation, how should I respond to my teammates? Thanks in advance!

In lot of meetings I am feeling I am less knowledgeable than others and unable to add value a lot. All my peers are very smart.

When analyzing critically I feel maybe I am spending a lot of time learning and lesser doing.

What works for me is => having focus blocks. Catch is that I am getting too comfortable sometimes not having meetings. This leads to missing lot of context sometimes.

What tips does community have to to handle this pressure?

I am been working as a Senior software engineer for quite some time now. To move to the Staff level, one feedback/pointer I got was to start developing opinions on how to do certain things. When people start respecting your opinions, they start to see you as a leader.

The problem I have is, in many cases, I don't have enough relevant experience for the problem at hand. Also, I find, that in discussions I am listening more than I am speaking. Having no opinions, and finding it hard to express opinions for fear of being judged and losing respect in case my opinion is wrong, are the problems I am facing.

Is there any advice on how to develop these skills?

I would like to understand how can I drive an effective Tech discovery session (just had a PRD walkthrough) with the team (remotely working) before we start writing a detailed system design document. The engineers are mostly L4 and are still learning how to effectively collaborate instead of full blown meeting.

Big companies have multiple teams across. There will be a team just for the login, a team for backend logic, etc. There are so many teams and microservices and internal jargon all around.

Problem is during team meeting, seniors have more in depth discussion where I'm unable to provide value as good as them.

How do I get familiar with them fast? Or am I focusing on the wrong idea and should just narrow down what I'm working on and just let time do its thing?

Thanks

Sometimes I sit in meetings that I feel aren't really necessary. How can I better identify whether these meetings are necessary and propose a better asynchronous form of communication (slack post, quip doc, etc) if they aren't?

Some of these meetings include status update meetings (besides standup), and meetings where people are there just to absorb knowledge. Is it a general rule of thumb to have meetings primarily to get alignment on decisions? Are there cases where we can get alignment asynchronously as well via commenting on a slack post/quip doc, etc.

Hello,

I am working as an Entry level engineer at mid size product based company. In my end year performance review, I got a feedback that I can work on improving my debugging and technical skills more. As well as, knowledge of other features and overall product as a whole would need to be increased as well.

My Tech lead has offered to mentor me by conducting 1:1 sessions to help me improve at debugging and help identify patterns and teach basic principles. 2 other senior engineers on the team also reached out and offered to conduct sessions regularly with me, for which I am really grateful.

For more context, all my teammates work remotely, so it is not beneficial to go to office. My question is, how can I best utilize these sessions with the senior engineers on team to improve more and skill up? That is, what kind of preparation/ questions should I have ready to make the most of these sessions?

What does a typical day working as a software engineer (say mid-level) in FAANG look like? I know there are at least 2 important variables, namely a) the person (how good they are at managing time, how motivated they are, how good their technical and soft skills are, etc.) and b) the team and company they are on.

I'm curious about the nitty-gritty of it, namely how much time is spent coding, how much time in meetings, how much time for breaks and lunch, how common is it to work overtime, etc. I'm looking for both the good and the bad, not the shiny, social-media-friendly videos made by people.

I have read time and again (including from Alex) that many if not most FAANG engineers work evenings and weekends. I just read that today from an ex-Facebook LinkedIn influencer I follow who was talking about his own 1 (unpleasant) year there.

I know my question might be so broad as to be meaningless given the number of engineers and situations there are, but if I can get the day of "Joe or Jane average FAANG engineer" who spends 2-3 years and then leaves, that's what I'm looking for. Not the talented and ambitious few who are able to work long and smart and able to rise up the ranks to staff.

I am a mid level engineer and I work for a manager who has micromanaging tendencies. Some of these tendencies include,

1. Going deep into implementation details of tasks that engineers are working on. I have been in meetings/discussions where proposed solutions by engineers have been ripped apart by this manager without them having enough context about why the engineer is doing it a certain way. This almost always leads into the engineer having to explain the nitty gritty implementation details to this manager to convince them that the engineer is doing the right thing. Overall, the manager shows very little trust on the decisions taken by the engineers.
2. When there arises a situation that the manager wants something from an engineer, they will want it immediately i.e. within the next few hours, eod etc. The manager is aware that the engineer is working on a bunch of things but they will not show any regard for that fact. This means that the engineer has to put everything they are working on aside to produce the thing that the manager wants. The problem is that this happens very often and it results in engineers either having to overwork to get their job done or affecting quality of their work.
3. The manager will put the engineers under extreme pressure to deliver projects on or before the deadline. This includes minor nudges in meetings, lunches, team activities etc. reminding engineers of the timeline to having 2 hour meetings to discuss where we are in terms of meeting the deadline.

I have a few questions based on the above context.

1. How to deal with such managers?
2. Is it sustainable long term to work for such a manager? I am considering getting to the next level in my role within the next 2 years, would it be advisable to continue working with this person?
3. Do most managers have more trust on their directs than described in the above situations?

I'm an E5 at a Big Tech company. There are several loud, opinionated, dominant personalities on my team. Some of them are E6. They often talk over each other as well as the rest of the team, so the rest of the team rarely contribute to discussions anymore. When a teammate (E5) presented his RFC to our team today, the dominant personalities started questioning his design decisions and talked over him when he tried to defend them. My teammate looked so discouraged and beaten down at the end of that meeting. When I brought this up to my EM in a 1:1, he said it's a people problem -- people are not being respectful. I asked my EM if he could coach those people, but he said he prefers to invest in people like me who are interested in learning & growing.

• Is this a lost cause?
• Are there techniques to handle these dominant personalities skillfully? Or do my teammates & I just need to develop "thick skin"?

I'm an E5 at a Big Tech company. My team's working on a very ambiguous project. 3 opinionated, vocal engineers (2 E6, 1 E5) tend to sidetrack our brainstorming discussions by playing devil's advocate to shoot down ideas. How do I drive these meetings forward with this dynamic? We often rehash the same discussions over and over. When we're close to reaching a decision, oftentimes someone would throw a wrench into things. Moreover, some engineers require upfront planning and want to finalize all the details before committing, while others prefer to defer the details to future milestones. Both my manager and team are getting frustrated, but are unsure how to fix this.

Finding a solution is one thing but you don’t understand it unless you can communicate it and others can understand it too

This becomes specially important when you are blocked and adds an extra layer of complexity when finding a solution can already be a challenge

What good practises can one apply to get better at this?

As a senior IC, I am included as part of leadership meetings (Director+). I gain a lot of early insights into business direction, which is great. However I would like to see how i can take part in the discussions and have effective conversations?

I am looking for a book suggestion and/or framework to use on how to go about improving on this?

Few dimensions which could impact this -

1. Personality of the individual
2. Awareness/one’s expertise of the topic being discussed

Hey all,

I am about to have a conversation with my manager for asking me to convert into full time.

I am an international student in USA and I have tried to search for FT’s but in current job market where a lots of companies are on hiring freeze i dint get a lot of opportunities and very few opportunities i got wanted to hire me at lower salary than I am earning in my current internship. So, I want to stick with the company am working with. Also, I loved the team and work culture there are strictly no complaints. All the team and my manager are impressed by 2 projects that I did in my duration of internship.

So in my next call what all things I should include/highlight to make the transition from an intern to full time?

is a nice series explaining what is wanted and talks about further iteration, but how can this happen in parallel or complementary if there is an environment that is doing SCRUM by the book?

I am mostly concerned about the time for meetings, since the ideal in this project is to make the engineers who will develop somewhat part of the design process to increase agency and accountability.

Sometimes people forget to follow up on their Action Items from meetings. They sometimes misremember meeting decisions as well. To mitigate this, I usually take detailed meeting notes in Google Docs and tag people on the Action Items they're responsible for. However, we don't always have meeting notes (e.g., for an ad hoc situation). What are some best practices for avoiding misunderstandings?

I'm an E5 iOS at a Big Tech company. I'm in the process of switching teams. While they're figuring out the paperwork, I've been invited to their roadmapping and architectural discussions.

The 2 E6s are dominating the discussions. The E6 iOS has been on the project since its inception a year ago and has all the context; the E6 backend has been helping out our team with the discussions and may eventually join our team. I'm the newest team member so I have the least context. The E6 backend's proposals usually sound like great ideas to me, but the E6 iOS often shoots them down and provides historical context on why those are bad ideas.

In my 1:1, my manager asked me why I'm not participating in the discussions. When I told him I don't have context, he told me to participate anyway. How do I participate effectively when I don't have context?

I've read in a number of places that it's great to tackle your most important tasks first thing in your day, spending 2-4 hours of solid work right from the start. However, I've noticed that it's hard for me to do this in large part because I have my morning scrum an hour into my day and currently have to participate in another team's scrum as well. These meetings often combine to ~45 minutes. Therefore, I'm more inclined to do maintenance tasks and low-hanging fruit, as well as other, smaller-leverage activities like browsing Taro.

I'm assuming morning scrums are the norm, so any tips to get high-leverage work done with a scrum smack in the middle of my morning? Now that I think about it, starting earlier would be one solution. Others are welcome.

My friend just introduced me to his friend who works at this big tech company that I would love to join. I'll meet this friend in a couple of days, and I wonder how I can make the best use of this opportunity. How would I handle this in the best way possible?

(I'm a software engineer with 2 years of experience and a computer science degree)

I am working on a component with eta 2 weeks. This is to write just the application logic and doesn't include any infra setup or APIs. I am not blocked with any major issues. I am new to this team. My update is like I am working on xx component and continue working on it today. Can I get ideas on various ways to update?

During design meetings, when there are questions that causes circling around a topic that is marked as out of topic. Even though I tell people that it is out of topic as we don't have time to build it and no plan to build it in future and people are still ask questions about same topic. When I personally feel its a nice to have feature but the scope has already been defined, what to tell and move forward to continue with the rest of the design?

I have communication issues. Especially in a new team, it takes lot of time to grasp what others are saying. During design discussions and post scrums -

1. When there are varying opinions and I still don't understand how to proceed next, what to say?
2. When there is an alignment and I am not confident if I have understand correctly, what to say?

I am working on building a framework and often I need help from a IC XFN partner to keep making progress in the project. However, many times they would not respond back or give vague responses on chat threads. When I set up meeting with them, they would not be quick to respond to meetings. I once asked them that I had certain questions that I documented after going through their codebase and need answers from them, however they would not take me seriously. How do I handle this in a positive way, keep making progress and unblocking myself? I want to building meaningful relationships with XFN partners and would like them to respect me however, it seems they are not reciprocating the same

There were some great tips on this question, that was previously asked. Our team is pretty good at steps 1 & 2 that Alex mentions regarding setting an agenda and sending the invite beforehand. However, the team really struggles to make sure the meeting agenda is achieved. We have a lot of great discussions but they are not related to the objective of the meeting. How can we bring the discussion back to the main agenda without being rude and cutting potentially important tangents?

I was wondering if you have any thoughts about how to run a meeting/brainstorming session effectively keeping a time check and also ensuring that everyone in the meeting gets a chance to speak. Although this is not a new situation, I have struggled with cutting people off when they sort of hijack the meeting taking all the time leaving others checked out. They don't necessarily mean any harm most of the times or don't intend to steal the thunder but as an organizer it is my responsibility to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance to speak. The main challenge is that most of the times what they are talking makes sense atleast 70-80% of the content so I find it difficult to cut them off easily without being rude or disrespectful. Being rude/disrespectful is the last thing I want to do! And a few are fast speakers that don’t catch cues of someone attempting to say something. Again, not at all a new situation and I think I do an okay job if not a great job in navigating through this but was curious to know additional thoughts and perspectives.

A new CTO was assigned in our organisation. If I get the chance to have a sync, what are the things I can and should discuss about ?

I've gotten feedback that I'm more on the quiet side and that I could be more active in meetings. However, I feel like I don't have much to add when it comes to meetings. I want to say something that's insightful and adds value to the conversation, but I'm unsure how to come up with that level of material, especially on-the-spot during the meeting. How do I figure out what to say?

I'm relatively new to Meta, so I'm having trouble processing things in meetings as they happen, making them a substantial waste of time for me overall. I don't want to seem dumb, so I would to avoid asking a bunch of questions during meetings to make people explain what they just said. What can I do to make meetings more productive for me?

I have my 1:1 catch up call scheduled with my manager soon, this is the first 1:1 / call I'll be having with him since I met him in the interview. What are some of the good questions I can ask w.r.t to the team and the work that I'll be doing? He had taken my System Design interview and there he went on to talk about the team for 15 mins where we discussed about the team work, team size, on call structure, wlb etc. One important point which I feel is that I won't be joining the team immediately, there's still 3 months time.

Every quarter, manager asks few question like what are things that went well for team? what are things that didn't went well? what are your top priorities as a team member? What is best way to answer these questions (as someone who's been in company for less than a year)?

I read , and I like the advice about doing homework so you can be more effective once the meeting comes.

However, I imagine there's a potential negative extreme here in spending too much time preparing for the meeting. What's a reasonable amount of time here?

My manager has given me feedback that I could be more active in meetings, which would help me find my place within the team. However, I find it hard to participate in meetings a lot of the time, because I don't know the technical source material they're talking about. This leads to me learning as I'm in the meeting, and I don't have any remaining mental bandwidth to speak up.

When it comes to meeting types, I'm good with those like retros and brainstorms but those that are more technical like tech reviews and project planning can be hard to a large voice in.

I've done various presentations throughout my career, and I always get stressed out doing them. I'll make slides/a script beforehand and pull all-nighters the day before. I'm okay presenting in front of smaller groups, but it's hard in front of larger groups.

How can I get more comfortable with this, especially with higher stakes presentations like those trying to get buy-in from a large group of senior+ engineers and tech leads?

I just joined a new team within a Google Infra team and have been attending many team meetings and architecture planning discussions. I’m very quiet in these meetings and don’t feel comfortable saying anything - I’m afraid I’ll say something stupid, or I’ll be exposed as someone who shouldn’t be a senior engineer.