What Business Can Learn from Open Source
From What Business Can Learn from Open Source:
The problem with the facetime model [working 9 to 5] is not just that it's demoralizing, but that the people pretending to work interrupt the ones actually working. I'm convinced the facetime model is the main reason large organizations have so many meetings. Per capita, large organizations accomplish very little. And yet all those people have to be on site at least eight hours a day. When so much time goes in one end and so little achievement comes out the other, something has to give. And meetings are the main mechanism for taking up the slack.
For one year I worked at a regular nine to five job, and I remember well the strange, cozy feeling that comes over one during meetings. I was very aware, because of the novelty, that I was being paid for programming. It seemed just amazing, as if there was a machine on my desk that spat out a dollar bill every two minutes no matter what I did. Even while I was in the bathroom! But because the imaginary machine was always running, I felt I always ought to be working. And so meetings felt wonderfully relaxing. They counted as work, just like programming, but they were so much easier. All you had to do was sit and look attentive.
Now that I'm working at a Fortune 500 company, I'm seeing this all the time. It's amazing how there is no movement toward any real goal, but I'm stuck in meetings six hours out of the day. No wonder.
This whole article is so true, it's not even funny.
Oh, wait. Yes, it is.
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