Meetings Ate My Programming Job
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
There was a time when I thought software development would involve software development.
I’m not talking about AI here, this isn’t a post about how AI has eaten our jobs and reduced us to prompt monkeys.
This is about a time in the dark, distant past when I thought software developers spent their entire day writing code, solving problems and making the world a better place.
I know. Rookie mistake.
The Dream
When we learned to program I think most of us would sit problem solving for long hours, dark nights before seeing a simple typo stopped a compile. Days where a dependency would prevent print logging from working, hours lost to editing the wrong file.
Then suddenly (for most of us) we started to git gud. Things started to work, and code started to make sense. Architecture solutions began to make problem solving easier and we started to add value in our chosen companies.
We all thought spending all day coding and pushing features would be a pleasure. Indeed it was.
Then our calendars started to fill up.
Standup.
Refinement.
Backlog grooming.
Sprint planning.
Retro.
Technical sync.
Cross-functional alignment.
Architecture review.
“Quick catch-up.”
“Quick catch-up” that somehow lasts 58 minutes.
The modern software developer doesn’t write code. They attend meetings about eventually writing code.
Which now is done by the machine itself.
Which means some of us (actually, me) start to question whether any of it is worth doing anymore.
Corporate Theater
At some point software engineering stopped being engineering and became corporate theater.
This is at the expense of giving programmers enough time to actually think, to actually solve problems. When a manager sees an empty calendar they think it’s a good time to have a quick sync and discuss something “the business” wants to do (not them, “the business”).
“Why is Ahmed free between 2 and 3? Get him into a workshop immediately”
This runs contrary to the work that actually needs to take place. You can’t spend 45 minutes discussing Jira ticket statuses, jump into Teams for a “quick stakeholder update”, and then immediately solve a difficult concurrency issue.
Your brain doesn’t work like that. The interruptions build up to a lost day, and long sessions where you read the same line of code six times yet still cannot understand it. Did you already reply to that Slack message from this morning, by the way?
Standups Aren’t Standups Anymore
The Agile Manifesto probably didn’t intend for software developers to spend half their lives narrating their existence to middle management.
Yet here we are.
I’ve worked in teams with two standups per day.
Two.
Apparently one status meeting wasn’t enough suffering.
The funny thing is nobody listens anyway. Developers repeat the same update for three consecutive days and nobody notices because everybody is waiting for their own turn to speak before going back on mute.
The Cult of Visibility
A lot of meetings exist for one reason only, and that is for people to prove that they are working.
That’s it.
Not collaboration.
Not decision-making.
Not problem-solving.
Visibility.
Managers want reassurance that software developers haven’t wandered off to play PlayStation or start a second remote job selling consultancy services during office hours.
Ironically, the developers who avoid meetings are often the ones actually producing software.
I’ve noticed a strange pattern over the years. The best engineers are usually the people trying to escape unnecessary calls as quickly as possible.
Not because they’re antisocial.
Because they want to work.
Or at least write that important AI prompt.
Conclusion
I don’t know, because I’m not one. But do 10x developers feel this way too? Genuinely interested in the answer to this one.
About The Author
Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper and regularly publishes articles through Medium.com
The Secret Developer suspects half of Agile could be replaced by a shared Google Doc and a little bit of courage.