It’s one-on-one time yet again this week!

I have a 1:1 with my boss every Thursday from 11:30am to 12:00 noon. They often run 45 minutes instead of the planned 30.

Why do I have these? I complained that I have too many meetings, and that it’s hard to get my work done around them (especially while burned out). So as a remedy he scheduled a weekly meeting, every Thursday, so he can make sure I’m getting enough work done. Totally makes sense, right?

And every Thursday he’s 15-25 minutes late. And because they always run long, I lose a full hour or more of time I could have used to get my work done. See the problem?

Today he was 36 minutes late.
Seriously, how disrespectful can he be?

The actual call started 53 minutes late.

Remedy for excessive meetings is more meetings. Remedy for excessive fire is more fire. And of course he shows up 36 mins late without letting you know in advance. He wants you more productive while reducing opportunities to be productive. I like how he “thinks”

And he stepped away for almost ten minutes during the call. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Get a new job bruh

He doesn't actually want to have these meetings with you, either. I would tell him straight up you want to have a free pass on skipping meetings when you have "important" stuff to do.

Do we have the same manager?
https://devrant.com/rants/4712544

I don't tolerate that shit. If a bitch can't manage his time, I'm not donating my time to enable him. The meeting's scheduled to be over at 1, and I am gone at 1.

As @bahua divulges, don't tolerate any of this shit. He's late? Not your problem.

I met a freelancer at a previous coworking place, she used to work on an hourly basis. For time spent in meetings, she would charge 1.5x and if the meetings were late, she would charge 2x for the waiting time. I only believed this after she showed me some of her invoices. I think if you got paid like that, you would feel much better. 🤭

I would ask him why he thinks these meetings are a good idea. You are clearly able to state why it is not here.
You even tried his approach so you can say:
Look these meetings help getting you up to speed, unfortunately they do nothing for me regarding the problem. Instead I end up losing a lot more time. A lot more than you would think. I need to be at least s bit prepared. The meetings always fun over. When I'm waiting for you it already fully breaks my development time and I do administrative tasks that I can interrupt at any second. So yesterday cost me nearly 2 hours of development time.

As you are obviously busy with better things to do maybe it's time to find a solution to have less meetings instead of more.

That's typical middle manager BS. the answer to everything is more meetings, always. Even if the problem is too many meetings.

@Root put a fake meeting in your calendar starting at 1pm and tell him it's really important. And then hide somewhere and do your work. Took my managers months to figure out what I've done as they don't talk much inter-department (hate/pride/etc) and are afraid to step on their peers toes.

I think he's doing all of this out of spite. Seems like your justified complaint caused his higher ups to notice as well.

Now, he's trying to purposefully waste more of your time so that, when you complain again, it would seem like YOU have a problem getting along with the plan.

Send him a calendar invite scheduling your meeting 53 minutes ahead. It is only for him

For others including you, it starts at the usual time you schedule

@asgs oh my god that is amazing. I love it so much

@Root your rants are dystopia

@kiki Yeah…

I think there's a message here. And I don't want to spoil it for you. But I can say something maybe like this.

Imagine this is a puzzle you have to solve.

And maybe start enumerating your observations.

Like this one. Complaining that you have too many meetings and you can't be productive lead to you having more meetings.

So that's clue number 1

@john-doe What, that my job sucks? That managers usually suck and that this one definitely does? That I hate my job and should leave? Wow, I never would have guessed. Great observation there.

@Root it goes much deeper than that.

@john-doe
Burnout? Absolutely.
Depression? Several years of that now.
Mental breakdowns on the reg.
Dissociation, too!

Maybe I should get a Vicodin script and start making fun of everyone I meet.

@Root I'm so sorry that people usually need their depression to become unbearably severe to actually make changes to their lives. I believe that's the case. Please prove me wrong if you feel like it, but I respect your privacy if you choose not to.

First, my depression became severe enough to make me quit my job and move back to my hometown. Then, my depression became straight up unbearable, with breakdowns, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. Then, it became so severe that I lost my ability to read, my body refused to move, and I spent days in constant terrible anxiety, with my pulse in 160-ish bpm range all day every day, peeing in my bed because I couldn't make myself to move and walk to the bathroom.

Only then the fear of death kicked in, and I actually asked my friends to get me to a proper psychiatrist who saved me. Only then I felt "you have to change your life, otherwise you'll die" thought, solid as concrete, and started to make changes.

@Root I feel much better now because of the immense work I did exploring my thought process, my life view and the whole psychiatry field (pubmed was a huge help). Three years on, I'm only starting to see the results and learning how to manage my anxiety.

There is no past kiki. They're dead. We have not a single thing in common, because they're a bouba. I see changes in my life as a factual proof of efficacy of what I did. I now have a partner whom I love, and we never had a single argument in a year now. I now have a new CTO job, with the founder gradually showing more and more trust and seeing value behind what I do. I'm now much more rational and aware. I'll continue to pursue my goal of building my mental toolkit that can handle and mitigate any kind of anxiety.

My life were never this great. I was never happier than now.

The only downside is that people require entering the stage where you have nothing to lose to even start making such changes.

@kiki thanks for the testimony. It is really important to say this kind of things. I went thru something very very similar. And I think it is just part of life. We get to a point where we must die to our old self and become a new person.

It might mean to change jobs, to move, to change partners. Sometimes it means all of the above.

@Root When life is becoming too hard, there's is almost always a need to start exploring and questioning the things that we think we know and start finding again the kid inside that can relearn to live.

I can't give you advice. There are a lot of people that want you to be better and that love you. I whish you can find them and open up to them.