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0 pointsdjbusby2y ago0 comments

Lots of cash can be burned in meetings and by managers of managers. I'm sure my case is not unique here but, meetings that cost $100k are common at $BigCo. And there dozens of those per day.

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8 comments · 1 top-level

paulddraper2y ago· 7 in thread

You have 5-hour long meetings with 40 people each costing $500/hr?

EwanG2y ago

Let me introduce you to the world of PI planning where two days of every quarter are spent with approximately 100 people (developers, program managers, etc) for each line of business to plan out the next quarter of work - even if 90% of it is continuing the work from the last quarter...

azemetre2y ago

Two days sounds lucky. I've been in SAFE plans where it took an entire week to plan things, it was unreal. Like you I met people I've never seen or heard of from the company all giving their input on software I'm creating. I'd never see them again until the next SAFE planning, only this time it felt like 1 SWE out of maybe 15 (yes there were only 3 teams of 5 devs, put 100+ in these SAFE meetings) contributed anything meaningful.

Company wasted so much money, then the org shut down for spending $500 per customer per year in maintenance (this was a health insurance company) whereas the main company would only spend $70 per customer per year. You'd think leadership of the org would get fired for this but they were rewarded with other positions within the company to do the same thing.

Unreal. Why do shareholder's put up with this? I guess the healthcare monopoly is the only reason to.

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edwardsdl2y ago

… and inevitably three weeks later priorities change and it all goes out the window.

spenczar52y ago

AWS has (or had) a weekly 2-hour operational status meeting. It has over 200 people in it, a mix of distinguished and principal engineers, very senior managers, etc. That meeting easily crossed the $100k-per-pop threshold. Worth it, though, that was actually a pretty great institution.

paulddraper2y ago

> 200 people

> 2 hours

> weekly

Kill me

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EDIT: also, 200 people for 2 hours is only 100k if average salary is $500k/year

djbusbyOP2y ago

Sometimes the meet has folk that are even more expensive (not me). Sometimes theres more than 50. Four hours of meetings, six hours of wall-clock

Edit: some companies have >20k employees. My first years at MS (late 90s) had these "war room" like 2x a week, 50 people, multiple VPs in the room, 2h. But there were other groups doing their war rooms too.

Tangurena22y ago

I was involved in a large software project with a large financial institution. Every weekday, there was an hour long status meeting. Based on what my company billed my time at (and presuming the other 40 companies billed their staff time likewise), that morning status call cost about $50k.

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