Ah, a fellow start-uppy Paul Graham fan! His essays on Lisp were a huge influence on me. In fact, they more or less took over my life. Ain't enough Lisp in Finance: an inefficiency I intend to correct.
His essay on meetings is a treasure. I was involved in a startup which really did very little besides have meetings. It was aggravated by their open office, which meant ... lots of impromptu meetings in addition to the regularly scheduled ones. Try to work at home? Teleconferences! The only way you could create something there was by sitting in a library with your laptop. It's really impossible to get in the zone with interruptions. No biggie if your company sells potato chips or something, but you have to leave the cook alone in the kitchen if you want something more complex.
aqualung
· 4 months ago
This is a problem I've encountered for most of the past 25 years - the impression that creatives (mainly software developers in my case) aren't doing anything, or aren't "team players" because of their antipathy to meetings ... this is such a good explanation of the issue.
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His essay on meetings is a treasure. I was involved in a startup which really did very little besides have meetings. It was aggravated by their open office, which meant ... lots of impromptu meetings in addition to the regularly scheduled ones. Try to work at home? Teleconferences! The only way you could create something there was by sitting in a library with your laptop. It's really impossible to get in the zone with interruptions. No biggie if your company sells potato chips or something, but you have to leave the cook alone in the kitchen if you want something more complex.