Everyone at my new job uses Clockwise, which will rearrange calendars across the org to maximize focus time for everyone (also address double-booking). This is my first time in 10 years since becoming an EM where I don't have to spend time managing my calendar every day to get focus time. The jump to my productivity is huge. Can't recommend focus time (and Clockwise!) enough. If I could buy stock in them, I would.
I hate it rearranges a meeting that I know it'd happen in a few hours, I plan my day accordingly, boom it's changed. That's frustrating. I worked at a big corp and people loved fully packed calendars with meetings. Wondered when they'd get any actual work done alone, without a meeting. My calendar was mostly empty except meetings that were crucial. Even though I was in a Principal role, new grads had more packed calendars than me. As a result, Clockwise moved most of my meetings.
This "when do you get actual work done" bugs me sometimes. It's true to some extent, but sometimes a bunch of engineers in a room together get a lot of work done. Sometimes even a lot more than if they each did their own thing, come together, and discover that it doesn't fit together.
Not all meetings are like that, yeah, and there's a limit, but meetings not being "actual work" is not generally true.
Also, since pandemic times, I've had it a few times that people were circling via chat or email on a topic forever, and a quick 15 minute online meeting (independently of whether the camera was on) resolved it immediately.
I'm not saying you cannot do any work in meetings. But if the only empty space in your calendar is lunch time and 2 or 4 hours for a whole week, as a Software Engineer, there won't be much time to do get, I repeat, actual work, which is mostly programming & debugging done, at least for most junior level positions. When an enterprise gets large enough, even just regularly checking in with projects, program managers, executives, designers, product managers was %50 of my busy time for a week. And it was exhausting. Not everywhere would be like that, but that caused a serious burnout with me and I've quit.
Ok I understand what you mean now. If there are so many meetings, then all the "meaningful" meetings become meaningless, if there's no time to actually execute what was discussed.
> Wondered when they'd get any actual work done alone, without a meeting.
Some people are not able to get work done alone and therefore drag others into meetings for the minutiae. Even worse, some people are not able to tolerate being alone, so they take every opportunity to organize meetings.
