Has anyone gotten out of daily 8:30am stand-up meetings?

For my current and previous jobs we have a "standup" that involves posting a status update to Slack in the morning.

I switched to writing my status update in the afternoon at the end of the day when: (1) what I was doing today was at my front of mind and easy to write down and (2) I usually have a pretty clear understanding of my plan for the next day.

Instead of struggling the next morning to write down what I did, now I can look at last night's message in the morning to get a concise plan for the day and a hint to the immediate next step. (e.g. one thing I've gotten better at as I've gained experience is being able to "pack up" notes on what I am doing, go off and do something else, and then read the notes and resume the old project quickly.)

I've never had any complaints about this in fact my boss thinks everyone in IT should write status updates as good as my own.

Someone tried to impose such a time on us. My boss said, "My people don't have to be here at that time." He set our standup at 9:50.

So, yeah. If you can get your boss onboard, a lot of things become possible.

Senior enough that you can get away with this, but not so senior that you face age-related discrimination.

Worked for me too as until my beard turned grey. After that, instead of assuming that you are a cracker-jack professional who refuses to do bullshit tasks, they assume you are an old dog who can't learn new tricks.

It also doesn’t have to be nearly as confrontational as this or the replies to this comment. Your team will probably treat you like a human being and move the meeting back an hour unless there is an important conflict.

How is the idea of telling someone that respectful in any way? You’re just laughing them off without considering it.

It seems like what you meant is that you’re respected enough to get away with what you want to do, not that it’s as 2-way a street as you first said.

> Everyone blitzes through with their report in one sentence just wanting to get back to their office and get actual work done, rendering the entire meeting useless

I'd say the cause and effect is backwards. The useless meeting rendered the messages very terse.

Similarly, I quit my full time job last year because of too much "Agile" bullshit and useless meetings. There was a management change and my job went from being highly autonomous and very productive to micromanaged and bureaucratic, with nothing getting done anymore. I complained, they asked me for feedback, and I wrote them a detailed three-page report. They read it and told me to hide it to not embarrass management. I quit a few weeks later.

Ended up doing hourly freelancing for a small company. Never had a single useless meeting. My reports are an occasional weekly summary of issues. The rest of the time I just have a timer going when I'm actually working and I bill accordingly. Extremely productive with no wasted hours on rituals and stupid ceremonies. I get paid less and don't get side perks like free lunches or company outings anymore, but I'm soooo much happier overall.

It's like that old saying, people don't quit jobs, they quit their bosses. I would've stayed at my old org for half the pay and no silly perks if they just gave me a longer leash (and ideally a different boss) instead of making me jump through endless stupid hoops. I was one of their top performers, too, something like the 95th percentile or higher in performance reviews. I tried, telling different people all the way up to the VP of my branch how bad the situation was, but nobody listened. Their loss. Not long after, the CEO brought in completely new management again and laid off most of my peers. It was just a terribly managed org at the higher levels.

In contrast, working for small companies, there's just not the luxury of paying for useless cruft and ceremonies to make middle management look important. That's a symptom of org bloat, not effective management.

Can you describe your last 3 freelance arrangements?

We use a weekly Google doc. I find Slack to be slightly too unstructured.

Whatever the medium, I find async stand up to be very effective. We do have a stand up, but we spend almost the entire time discussing real issues. Not needed? Don’t show up.

Step 1: Profit

Step 2: …

Step 3: Profit

This is what my team usually does. We just make a poll on Slack if we want changes to the process. Works like a charm for the most part.

The part that everyone forgets. The team is supposed to be empowered. These things shouldn't be forced on a team.

OP should schedule a meeting at 16:00 local and see what happens.

No, all west coast. Our team has 5 hours of daily meetings per week, most of which could be an email. Much of this time is just him reading a shared spreadsheet that we've all entered our daily focus into; so much wasted time.