Meetings eating up a big chunk of time

It's been almost two years since I have been working for a startup and I report to a founder. The work has been quite remote and the teams collaborate remotely. How often should I have one to one sessions with my manager? The last time we had a one to one was during my appraisal which happened a year ago post which we never met 1:1. However, we meet once a week on a group staff meetings which is driven on a specific business agenda? Is this something healthy?

I’m currently working for a big bank for a little bit over a year and I want to switch departments internally but finding it relatively difficult. I am currently working in the frauds department and I intend to switch into a risk/controls/strategy role but do not know what exactly do I need to do for that. Any folks who maybe made a switch into these departments from a different one would be kind enough to guide a lost soul like me? Your suggestions would really be appreciated.

It’s should and will always be about how productive those hours actually are. You see, no knowledge worker puts out more than 2.5 to 5 hours of real work in a day. That’s 12.5 to 25 hours of productive work in a week. The rest? It’s just meetings, updates and moving things around. Five-day work weeks? If you’re measuring by butts in seats, sure. But if you’re looking at actual output, it’s a joke. We need to obsess over productive time, not clocking hours. The attendance/week hours mindset is a pseudo-metric killing the workforce, making us focus on quantity over quality. Think about it: As a knowledge worker - your days are filled with meetings, status updates, and email threads. How much of that is real, impactful work? Very little. We’re stuck in busyness, mistaking it for productivity. But then again, if orgs obsess on outcomes only, employees will call them out: 'You don’t see my effort to go from A to Z, you don’t acknowledge it.' Hence, orgs measure you by hours. And for those thinking, 'Pay me by hours, overtime factored in' – great on paper, but useless for knowledge workers. IMHO, we are way more more comfortable measuring by hours than outcomes. We rave about deep work, about focus hours, but in reality we laude how long someone stays logged in. Weird isn't it.

Not sure why companies or upper management don't realise the loss of productivity which majorly results into employees being asked to stretch sooner or later.

I’m part of one standup where they start discussing in details. I’m like why??? People trying here to flex here by doing in details is this happening to you all?

I've had the fortune of having worked in 3 countries so far. India is by far the most exciting place to be in 2024. But there's something about our work ethic that just concerns me. In both white and blue collar. In most other countries, I've observed people strictly sticking to the 9 to 5, working diligently in those hours - not wasting too much time on chai sutta breaks, instagram browsing, gupshup etc. They work for 8 hours, then leave. And think about work directly the next day. In India, most of us spend more hours - but very obviously very few of those hours are productive. In fact, I lately feel that too many people around me are doing even 2-3 hours of work on a good day. We end up just staying around, passing time, and then go back home. When we could have achieved so much more. Work ethic has fallen. Work hours have gone up. We need to be more mindful of our actions, we need to work well at work, and then do well at home. I think it's a function of being over populated. There are 1.5-2 people doing what 1 person should be doing, hence this effect. Needs to be fixed, it's the sign of a major problem in the workforce. Thoughts?

I have 1.7 years experience. worked in 2 startups as solo product deisgners. legal tech and ed tech.Did everything from research, ui ,moodbboard,illustration, motion,... since I never had seniors just curious to know...

Currently working in a startup company Usually, I do my work in the given time, but due to some dependencies on me and after meetings on around 6-7PM some tasks are allocated to me that should be picked on the next day but due to "bhai plz Kar de" culture it is picked on the same which is not sometimes favorable and will cost around ending my day around 11 or 12 Should this be embraced and how to tackle these things?