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About 6 months ago I was hired at a startup software company as a developer. The company itself is great. I have learned a tremendous amount as I transitioned from school to industry and am thankful for the company for providing me this opportunity.

The problem:

Morale on our QA team is very poor - in stark contrast to the other teams. This can be mostly attributed to our manager who is universally disliked on our team (it must be said...).

Recently he has started targeting me:

He has complained to his manager about me foot dragging and has scheduled me for daily meetings with himself and his manager. Here's the thing - we have a Jira Kanban Board in which all my progress is tracked (and I have made significant improvements in finishing tasks rapidly) and I am forced to regurgitate the progress that is tracked on the Kanban Board during the meeting which is honestly a huge waste of time. I am also starting to feel that this manager is purposely setting me up to fail. For example, he scheduled a meeting at 9:15 AM and then emailed me at 9:10 AM to push the meeting to 10:00 AM. When I didn't receive his email, he got mad at me for not checking my email frequently (note the 5 minute notice).

There are countless other incredibly silly examples I could give.

The question:

I don't want to bring up the constant micromanagement (lets be honest, this discussion never ends well) but I am simply at my wits end when it comes to these daily meetings. It's honestly getting infuriating. How do I bring up that I don't wish to attend these meetings anymore?

A few side notes:

Normally this behavior would be a red flag about impending termination. I am not really concerned about being terminated though: I continually receive important tasks and I am not the only person that has dealt with this (according to my co-workers). According to my co-workers, this manager may be behaving this way out of self-incompetence (which I have occasionally noticed).

UPDATE:

Some great feedback and suggestions thus far. I should note that these are not stand up meetings - we already have those biweekly.

James
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    BTW, my long answer on https://workplace.stackexchange.com/a/139861/72842 contains lots of advice which applies to you, and mentions ideas which are relevant here – Basile Starynkevitch Jul 08 '19 at 02:36
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    From what you describe, Peter principle applies extremely well to your manager. You might jokingly speak of it at the coffee machine with your manager (or maybe at meetings). Maybe he'll hear your non-verbal message at such a place – Basile Starynkevitch Jul 08 '19 at 02:38
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    How long are these meetings? – lucasgcb Jul 08 '19 at 10:03
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    A meeting that gets pushed to a later time doesnt seem like a problem. It's when they push them to 30 minutes before you are due to arrive in the office in the middle of the night that you should start to get angry. – zero298 Jul 08 '19 at 15:22
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    Can you refer to the Kanban board during the meetings? It might not help with your manager, but your manager's manager might start also wondering what the point of the meetings is if all the data is already available. – DaveG Jul 08 '19 at 16:47
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    You've clarified that you think these meetings are unnecessary. There are two other people involved in the meetings. What do they think? – dwizum Jul 08 '19 at 18:06
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    Ah in my experience, at my previous job, they adjusted me to two meetings a day. This added onto my stress levels and they were unhappy with my progress. It was a red flag for me because they soon after let me go - junior dev level in California -- they also assured me that this was "normal" and that other developers had to go through it - which they did. At my current employer, I only have a CR once a week and they're all unofficial meetings. – developer01 Jul 08 '19 at 23:17
  • @BasileStarynkevitch - "Bullshit jobs" - that says it all right there in two words. "you just need to grow up" are so more to chew on. I have to ask though, how many of those 60y programming did you spend doing QA.... Next, the OP will ask how to explain that I don't want to maintain old projects? – Mazura Jul 08 '19 at 23:24
  • I never was in QA activity, except marginally. Because my job description was and still is "research engineer". By official definition of CEA role, we are not allowed to compete against the private sector. Remember, I am European, and we have the Maastricht treaty... Serious QA of any software I wrote should be done outside. In simpler words, CEA is the French equivalent of the US DoE. – Basile Starynkevitch Jul 09 '19 at 05:01
  • ... the first mission of CEA, my employer, is the French nuclear deterrence. I am only related to its fourth mission. Any QA work related to the software I did write is in principle done in the private sector (because of European treaties).... In practice, for the actual code I did wrote, it has never happened (or not by me) – Basile Starynkevitch Jul 09 '19 at 05:08
  • .... so the point is that my management don't even allow me to work on serious QA activity, and of course with a PhD I am expected to do applied research, not QA. If I was expected to really do QA, that means that I am overqualified for the job. – Basile Starynkevitch Jul 09 '19 at 05:11
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    Twice a week seems pretty sparse for a stand up. Daily is incredibly common. – jpmc26 Jul 09 '19 at 08:22
  • @FrankHopkins I assumed the more frequent one because even that is sparse. – jpmc26 Jul 09 '19 at 09:55
  • In how much demand is your skillset in your area? Have you had a looksy to see if the pasture seems greener elsewhere? Toxic managers last way too long in my experience. From experience: just leave and make sure toxic managers' boss knows why you're leaving. Possibly let toxic manager know they're the reason as well. Being honest as to the reason has its own up 'n' down sides, though know-one can put blame there, especially with Morale on our QA team is very poor [..]. This can be mostly attributed to our manager who is universally disliked on our team (it must be said...). – rkeet Jul 09 '19 at 19:55
  • You are scheduled for daily meetings including your indirect manager and the indirect manager does not mind? It sounds like they know something you don’t know. – eckes Jul 09 '19 at 22:39
  • @jpmc26 It is twice a week, yes. – James Jul 10 '19 at 05:56
  • @rkeet I don't want to list my exact background because it's quite unique (who knows, maybe my employers are reading this question) but Python is HUGE where I live and I am highly employable in the pharmaceutical industry. I also get heckled by recruiters often. Ultimately finding a new job would not be difficult but for the most part I like this company and am really hoping to last at least a year. – James Jul 10 '19 at 06:05
  • @eckes He doesn't mind, no. – James Jul 10 '19 at 06:06
  • @JoeStrazzere Our core hours (when people "should" be around) are from 10:00 AM-5:00 PM. Yet these meetings are oftentimes scheduled at 9:00 AM. Not many people would willingly get up an hour earlier to show up for a meeting so I think he knows I don't want to attend. – James Jul 10 '19 at 06:12
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    @David then however, perhaps the more immediate (compromise) question would be whether you could move the meeting to a more fitting time within the core hours? Which would work well to go along with the accepted answer, a round of clarifying the meeting context and requirements ;) – Frank Hopkins Jul 10 '19 at 10:12
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    @David How about you use their own weapon - make the meeting as long as entirely possible? Make your answers long, detailed, make it look like every single task was super important, explain everything thoroughly, while constantly refering to the Kanban board (or anything else that your manager already has - emails, commits, etc.). And be polite all the time, even too polite. If your manager doesn't see that it's a waste of your time, the higher manager will see it's a waste of theirs. Make them suffer through a 3 hour meeting that could have been a Kanban board. – Rachey Jul 10 '19 at 15:20
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    @Rachey I once read somewhere that a decent way to deal with micromanagers is to update them on every little detail of one's work until they get exhausted. Definitely a tool I will keep in my toolbelt. – James Jul 11 '19 at 05:11
  • @JoeStrazzere Yes. But I was wondering how to tactfully bring this up. – James Jul 11 '19 at 05:13

6 Answers6

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TLDR: Adjust your attitude, use the meetings to your benefit.

The meeting basically sounds similar to a daily standup. Those are commonly done in Agile development processes in addition to Jira boards, as personal information can be far more detailed, filtered and allow for better feedback/questions than a board could. So such a meeting can well make sense.

Now your meetings are not exactly agile daily standup meetings and they likely have at least a performance review component if that is not their sole purpose. Still, you come across as seeing no purpose in those meetings, although the purpose is likely similar to a standup, get information prioritized and directly from the source, with the option for feedback and questions. Sometimes such meetings do not have a direct benefit for everyone though. In this case the information flow is likely mainly from you to your managers and thus will mainly be directly valuable for them. However, it can still be valuable for you as well, if you use it wisely.

Your underlying problem seems not to be the meeting, but that you feel your manager is aiming for you. In that case, the meeting with someone higher-up is your chance to prove him wrong. Make sure you come prepared and give a good impression to the manager one level up. If you have your boss's boss on your side, it will be much harder for your manager to push you around in any way. Once you have the trust of the boss of your boss and your boss feels the meetings don't help him, he may decide on his own to stop doing them.

On the other hand if you go into the meetings with an attitude that they are just a waste of your precious time, this will show and it will likely be easy for your boss to paint you as a hard to manage, stubborn employee.

Frank Hopkins
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  • My answer was going to be similar to this. I think an adjustment to attitude is probably required. Standups are quite important in development. It also sounds like they have already noticed an attitude problem and want to keep a closer eye. Getting a meeting change with over 40 minutes prep time is completely reasonable. – Victor Procure Jul 08 '19 at 15:53
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    I've been part of quite a few agile processes, and I think stand up meetings are awesome. However, I'd be quite annoyed if this is what my organization tried to pass off a stand up. To me, this sounds like a daily performance review as a result of disciplinary probation. I'm honestly not even sure if it can be called a stand-up since it doesn't even involve the whole team. – Clay07g Jul 08 '19 at 15:56
  • @Clay07g It really depends on how the meetings actually are done, I don't think we have quite enough information to fully judge that. But either they are for information exchange similar to a standup or they are more of a performance review. In either case, the managers seem to see value in them and going in with an attitude of "hey boss let's just get rid of those meetings/performance reviews" will not go well, at least not until at least the higher level boss is either convinced that they are unnecessary from a management point of view and/or the performance review is passed. – Frank Hopkins Jul 08 '19 at 16:15
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    @Clay07g Also I'm not trying to call them a standup, but to me the description sounds quite like it on the abstract level. I bring them up, as OP seems totally averse in having such a daily meeting while at least team standups are pretty common. As here it is only OP+managers, sure the setting is slightly different as not the whole team is present, but the value of having them can be similar (in particular if OP has his separate project(s) anyway and thus is his own project team). – Frank Hopkins Jul 08 '19 at 16:21
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    "He has complained to his manager about me foot dragging and has scheduled me for daily meetings with himself and his manager." This is not a team meeting, so it's not an Agile Scrum/Stand up. – computercarguy Jul 08 '19 at 16:22
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    @computercarguy which I don't claim, I'm just saying it is very similar. daily standups have their value and being so similar it astonishes me that OP is so aversed to having a daily meeting with similar content. Also he might be a single-person team with respect to having his own independent projects, then it would actually fit (albeit still being a bit of a weird setup). – Frank Hopkins Jul 08 '19 at 16:25
  • "Morale on our QA team is very poor" From my experience, QA is a whole team effort, not individuals on separate projects. The OP mentions other teams, so there's enough people there to not have single person "teams". If this was a Scrum, the manager should have said so, and it shouldn't include the upper level manager. Scrums are supposed to be between just the team and the manager, so the manager can know what's going on daily, not for middle/upper management. This meeting is something entirely different, especially if it lasts longer than a couple minutes. – computercarguy Jul 08 '19 at 16:30
  • @computercarguy we have a whole QA team, but only one person responsible for some projects. That person doesn't take part in any QA team standups, as the projects and what they do are totally unrelated. If there was a scrum meeting it would be reasonable to have that only with her direct boss. It really depends. We don't know about how long it takes. And I'm not even claiming that what OP has is a scrum standup. But " am forced to regurgitate the progress that is tracked on the Kanban Board" sounds quite like some understanding of saying what you achieved and what you are about to do. – Frank Hopkins Jul 08 '19 at 16:35
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    "I am not the only person that has dealt with this" means to me that it's not team involvement, but rather just individuals at a time. Also, a manager that gets mad at an employee for not looking at their email every < 5 minutes is likely a bad manager. I've had a CEO send out an email during lunch, and got mad at me for being late to that company meeting at exactly 1pm, even though I left late for lunch, but before his email. I left that company because of a severe downturn of the management this meeting started. – computercarguy Jul 08 '19 at 16:36
  • @computercarguy I've nowhere claimed that the manager is particularly good. But again it depends, if OP regularly misses out on updates or did make some mistakes - in the eye of the manager - it might just be an additional straw in the heap that the manager sees. Not saying that he sees that heap correctly or that his reaction was professional. – Frank Hopkins Jul 08 '19 at 16:39
  • @Clay07g You must be the first to find standups awesome. Any link describing how to make them awesome? – BЈовић Jul 09 '19 at 16:08
  • Daily standup should NOT be about status updates. It's about roadblocks.You should be able to summarize yesterday's accomplishments in 15 seconds or less. Spend your time where it matters - on things that are stopping you from getting tasks done. If a daily 1-on-1 meeting turns into 15 minutes of talking status updates, there's big problems – corsiKa Jul 09 '19 at 19:36
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    The meeting basically sounds similar to a daily standup -> they don't. Daily stand-ups are "team things", not (nearly) one-on-one meetings. These sound like attempted dressing downs to make toxic manager look better because "he's acting on underperforming employees" (low morale -> lowers performance -> causes meeting -> lowers morale -> repeat). – rkeet Jul 09 '19 at 19:58
  • @rkeet I've already addressed the team thing for me the similarity is the content, i.e. a status update. Sure thing, I'm not saying this is mainly a plain daily, I'm referencing them to address what comes across from OP as a "they are useless timewasting no one would do" feeling. I'm well aware that they are likely done by the managers as a performance review measure and the remainder of the answer applies even more so in that case. – Frank Hopkins Jul 09 '19 at 20:05
  • @corsiKa I personally don't see a problem if the standup gets a bit longer, people over processes, remember. so if the people agree that it makes sense to quickly discuss minor issues, then so be it. Roadblocks are part of status updates. And yet again, I'm not claiming they are exactly daily standups, just that they are similar enough that one should recognize that they might have some information value. And indeed I'm well aware that the meetings are there as a form of performance review, which makes the remainder of the answer even more valid. – Frank Hopkins Jul 09 '19 at 20:09
  • For any further commenters: Yes, I've heard that the meetings of OP aren't exactly daily standups and I've never claimed that. You can save writing a comment in that direction. – Frank Hopkins Jul 09 '19 at 20:10
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    +1 for the usage of the meetings to my benefit. – James Jul 10 '19 at 05:49
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You left a comment saying:

I don't know... he can see all my progress on our Kanban board. I have never been told why we're having these meetings.

So instead of jumping to conclusions about being targeted, ask.

This is a chance for you to show your competence and initiative by getting a better understanding of what your managers are trying to accomplish. Treat this the same as if you were receiving a feature request from an end user: understand their goals and their intended use case, then evaluate the best way to accomplish that and implement.

Be prepared for any number of possible answers:

  • You're working on critical tasks that they want to be closely informed about and having the meeting ensures they're keeping track.
  • They want to give you a daily stand up to discuss possible impediments, be available to help you resolve them, and bring risks to their attention.
  • They just want to keep a closer eye on your performance because you needed improvement in the past.

The meeting could very well be a reflection of their trust in your ability and your importance to the company rather than a punishment. So rather than assume ill intent, pose the question.

jpmc26
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    This answer makes a great point. If we give the boss the benefit of the doubt, he may actually have a purpose for the meetings. The OP not innately knowing that purpose doesn't mean it doesn't exist. – dwizum Jul 08 '19 at 18:05
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    @dwizum Even not giving the OP's direct manager the benefit of the doubt, it's possible the higher up one called for it. If the OP doesn't even know why it's being held or anything about what's going on with it, there just isn't any way to know who did what or why. – jpmc26 Jul 08 '19 at 18:08
  • If you want to put it all on the line: "Hey boss, I've got to be painfully honest, since all my status is on the Kanban board, I started taking these meetings a little personally. I got to thinking about it, though, and realized that's just some paranoia creeping in and I'm sure there's no reason for me to feel that way. Can you help me understand exactly what you're looking for here so I can best be prepared for tomorrow's meeting. That way we can make these as productive and as efficient as possible." – FreeMan Jul 09 '19 at 15:49
  • That puts honesty up front, puts the blame for the response on yourself for feeling that the meeting is redundant (do not put the blame on the boss!!), and asks for clarity to minimize time wastage for yourself and 2 managers. "It's all got to be a misunderstanding on my part." – FreeMan Jul 09 '19 at 15:51
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    @FreeMan I wouldn't bring my personal feelings into it. I'd just discuss it in terms of having thought about the purpose and being confused about the intended goal. – jpmc26 Jul 09 '19 at 16:54
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    Add more direct questions: "what is missing on my board that makes these meetings necessary for you?" "how can I improve my record-keeping so that you feel like you're always up to date on the project's progress?" –  Jul 09 '19 at 23:12
  • I've accepted this as the answer because I feel this is the best approach. Before I mention anything, I feel it would be best to figure out the actual reasoning behind these meetings. – James Jul 10 '19 at 05:51
  • @David Good luck with it. =) I do recommend George M's advice in the comment above. I was intending to incorporate his ideas into the answer. – jpmc26 Jul 10 '19 at 06:16
  • +1 I find it's always better received if you phrase things as "why is this this way" instead of "I think you're wrong about this" – jsarbour Jul 10 '19 at 13:27
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    As an additional possible reason - I agree with asking to find out the real reason - some busy managers find it difficult to reserve a block of time without scheduling a meeting. Even if all the data is in the Kanban, the manager may not be finding the time to read it. Scheduling a meeting is an easy way to dedicate a slice of time. – Patricia Shanahan Jul 10 '19 at 14:04
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daily meetings with himself and his manager

This makes things a lot easier for you. Just be really complient about anything your manager asks, but at the same time point out that he should/could already know it without the meeting.

Bring your laptop to the meeting and project the kanban board. (Or if you don't have a laptop ask the manager if he can project the board). Explain it as follows:

Let me (/could you) project the kanban board to make sure I'm not missing anything important to inform you about.
As you can see here, I've done this (points to thing), this(points to next thing) and I'm assuming the other X things I've done can be seen here, so do we really need to read them aloud in this meeting?

In other words, be extremely complient about what they're asking of you, to the point where it becomes obvious that they're just wasting your time.

For you issue of rescheduling the meeting in the last minutes you first skip your direct manager and see if you can "run into" the higher manager for the meeting. If he asks if you didn't know about the rescheduling you kindly answer:

I've checked my inbox 10 minutes ago to make sure if anything has changed. I didn't see any rescheduling. When is the meeting scheduled now so I can make sure to get there at the correct time?

This makes it clear that you have no issue with the meeting rescheduling but weren't informed in a reasonable time.

You're always staying friendly, and most importantly, entirely complient with what is asked of you. At the same time you make it obvious to your manager's manager that you're being micromanaged. If you succeed in pointing it out and nothing changes, than at the end of another truly useless meeting of you saying "as can be seen here in jira, i've been productive" you can then directly ask:

Sorry manager, but there's something I don't understand. Why do I need to be in these meetings when all I'm doing is reading the jira aloud. Would it be ok that I no longer attend these meetings so that you can go over them instead?

Make sure the other manager is still there so that your manager has no choice but to let you skip these meetings from now on, or give you a good reason to be there.

If he does give a reason be sure to make this reason a big point in the next meeting. For example: if he requires you to be there to "clarify" what was in certain issues. Be sure to specificaly ask on EACH issue if there was anything to explain. Make it obvious that now you're not only waisting your own time in the meeting, but also that of the higher manager since all you're really doing is still just reading each finished jira ticket out loud.

After a while 2 things can happen: Your manager's manager can no longer ignore the micromanagement of your manager and does something about it (win for you). Or they don't do anything about it and allows you to be bullied.

In the last case you truly are in a toxic environment. Be sure your CV is up to date and you're already looking for another job because your mental health will only keep going down. When you're confident that you will be able to find another job (you might not have one lined up just yet), make an appointment with your manager's manager without your own manager. Explain that the way your manager handles things isn't working for you and ask if you can be placed into a different team.

Imus
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  • +1 but I think using "I" statements to compose the request may come across as a bit too personal (which isn't the point 'cause OP is getting paid either way), what really needs to come across is the clarification of what is it that the Jira board doesn't cover that the meeting is supplementing; if they can't answer this they may cancel the meetings themselves or maybe OP can offer to fix whatever it is in order to save work hours for the company. – lucasgcb Jul 08 '19 at 10:21
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    I am a bit torn by this answer. It almost feels like passive aggressive behavior towards the middle manager. On the other hand maybe the top manager needs to see that the middle manager is doing a bad job. – Thomas Jul 08 '19 at 15:28
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    I'm not a native english speaker, but 'as you can see here' used while explaining the log sounds bad even when translated in my language. Putting myself in OP manager's shoes I cannot read it in a positive way. – Paolo Jul 08 '19 at 18:26
  • Downvoted as a slimeball tactic. This really can paint the OP in a bad light rather than their manager. – ivan_pozdeev Jul 09 '19 at 00:50
  • To handle things exactly as advised here will definitely give both managers the idea that you consider these meetings to be a pointless annoyance. Which, if the question is accurate to the situation, could be totally justified. But gauge the personalities involved. It might not go well with some people. – wberry Jul 09 '19 at 02:26
  • The beginning of the answer is better than the end. Of course you need to have your board right there with you, even if your manager keeps you from projecting it and you end up reading from it verbatim. How could you do any work without your board? Doesn't it contain all your notes about what you're doing? It can't possibly be seen as passive-aggressive that you'd refer to it at all times –  Jul 09 '19 at 23:19
  • As to asking the question directly of why you're wasting your time here, I'd skip that. Much better to demonstrate to the top level that middle level is wasting all of your times from not reading something which he has complete access to at all times. Let them reach their own conclusions –  Jul 09 '19 at 23:20
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Take control of the meetings. If he can't lead these meetings in an efficient and productive manner, then you have to.

On the next Monday (or first meeting of the week), go through your Jira list as normal and as efficiently as possible. Then directly move into your workload for the rest of the week, telling him what work items you have and how long they will take. Propose your own priority for those items and explain why.

Doing this negates the need for these same meetings for the rest of the week (unless something meaningful changes), so hopefully you can get on with your week.

3

And you're sure these aren't regular "stand up" meetings? (They don't sound like it, if it's just you and 2 managers).

Create a Jira task for "daily update meeting" and log work (time) against it. If it gets moved, log the additional time in between if its insufficient for you to get anything meaningful done. What you're looking to achieve is to document the wasted time in addition to the meeting itself.

After a couple of weeks when your progress is addressed during this meeting, you need to demonstrate using the Jira log what the effects of this have been.

Warning: This is quite a confrontational approach, and you will really annoy your boss if the first time he hears about this is in a meeting in front of his own boss ("oh sorry. I thought you knew what I was doing?" - innocent face).

UPDATE In response to comments about tainting Jira or being "snarky", I maybe miscommunicated. What I meant is to keep an accurate record of how time is being spent, for good or bad.

You might think its useless / wasted, but management may disagree and that's their prerogative. Just record that x mins was spent waiting for a meeting that didn't happen, or that no task could be usefully done in the time between then and rescheduled meeting. Unless there's some background admin.

You don't need to add sarcastic comments; just be honest about where the time has gone. @rkeet's comment about billable hours comes closest to my own experience in these matters.

It's academic now, as this question has better and more popular answers.

Justin
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  • Nobody likes smart asses, a tainted Jira log even less so. If it gets to a point you feel you will be questioned about hours the managers themselves booked, then I'd say you are better off looking for a better job because that's awful management and the boat will sink at some point. – lucasgcb Jul 08 '19 at 10:09
  • This is something, I'd do a write-up for. If I'm booking a meeting as a manager, I know its time-value. Getting a snarky Jira ticket for it would put an employee on my watch list. – Victor Procure Jul 08 '19 at 15:47
  • @VictorProcure might actually be a thing to do though if you're performance is also based on Euro's earned per hour (e.g. billable hours), then it would be a smart way to keep track of such things (though, needn't limit it to just these meetings, log every meeting and properly accredit to what it was for, like customers, performance, wasted time due to moved meetings, etc.) – rkeet Jul 09 '19 at 20:03
  • rkeet is right, the way to get around the smatass label is to log every meeting. As in "I feel I could be more productive if I didn't spend 15/week in meetings, but whatever, obviously I do what y'all want me to' –  Jul 09 '19 at 23:17
2

If you think you're being productive but your manager doesn't, you probably don't understand his priorities, or are missing something he thinks is important. It's also possible that he's not noticing the things you have done if it wasn't the one thing he wanted done.

Use these meetings to find out what he expects you to do today. Then at the next meeting you can say "Yesterday you asked for A, B and C, which I did, and also E, D and F"

It's also a chance to ask if there's anything you could do better.

If he has to acknowledge that you've done everything he asked and did a good job on it, in front of his boss, he won't be able to complain about you. You will start to look like his best team member, and the meetings should soon stop.

Otherwise, the company is paying for your time and they can decide if they want you to spend it in pointless meetings.

Robin Bennett
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