Remote Work and Meeting Culture

I am really glad about the paradigm shift the pandemic brought into my workplace with regards to remote work. Being able to stay at home 80% of my time is something I grew to be fond of and it helped a lot overcoming some personally challenging situations during the pandemic. I really enjoy the benefits and having the possibility to adjust my space to my needs which really helps to bring me more often into the flow which is beneficial for both me and my employer.

Sure there are distractions you will never have at the office. But it’s also easier to structure your work around your personal life and still deliver as it gives you greater flexibility. There’s also no denying that remote working fuels my self exploitation more than being on prem as it’s easier to just spin up the machine and start to work on stuff e.g. later in the evening but overall for me, personally, the benefits for both me and my employer outweigh the problems. With one notable exception that I absolutely dislike about remote working and that’s about meetings. Not neccessarily about the meetings themselves but how people in online meetings attend to them in a fashion that seems to be more and more common: inattentive to a point that said attendees almost are phased out of the meeting. I have witnessed more than one meeting in which everybody was leaving but one who apparently did not realize that the meeting concluded.

Signs of which are attendess which do not really attend the meeting but instead go on and work on different things, accept a phone call, read their e-mails or the newest messages in the chat. Obviously they feel like the meeting is a waste of their time but it’s definetely wasted time for others which are e.g. waiting for a response from someone who’s just not paying attention. And most likely it really is wasted time for both of them. This is not something that’s novel or unique to online meetings. You can observe it in presence meetings, …