This was very much a "fire drill all the time" kind of place (vs "slow and steady"). The team came to me and said:
"Alex, we keep getting bombarded by meeting requests and have no focus time."
My solution was to create a weekly "team meeting" from 8am to 11am every Friday and invite all of them to it.
They loved it!
I mentioned to them that making a meeting like this was something they could have done themselves but they responded:
"It carries more weight coming from you. Plus, if someone tries to schedule over it, they are more likely to think twice and/or I can say 'Hey, you have to talk to Alex.' "
I tried to embody this ideal when I managed a team, but realized shielding too much meant less connection of members with the wider org and too much dependency on me for context and such. Overall, this meant we were a lower value team for the org.
I have done the same. FWIW, a 2-3 hour block seems to be the sweet spot, as far as keeping it off the radar goes. Ironically, having multiple a week doesn’t seem to raise an eyebrow.
Our product security and engineering teams do the same thing to defend against the project managers - an 8am-2pm product sync every monday and friday. Its worked for years now.
This has real demand, I ended up in the Gitlab secondary youtube channel one day, ordering by most views, and I found a video [0] of a seemingly normal uninteresting meeting with millions of views. Turns out people were using this as an excuse for looking like they were busy. They disabled comments now but I saved some of them because I thought it was hilarious:
I play this when I need my family to leave me alone - so helpful
4.5K
I play this when I pretend to be busy. This meeting is literally about anything you want it to be about lol
1.5K
I love that we all arrived at this video for the same reason
2.6K
Every now and then I'll pause it at a good point in between them talking to make my own voice heard contributing to the "meeting" lol. Gets the full effect in! And the beautiful thing is their conversation just flows with it like they heard me lol.
562
I was one of those people skeptical that ad-free YouTube was worth the high price, but now firmly a convert.
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1. YouTube is my primary entertainment so I don’t mind paying for it in lieu of Netflix or Hulu or whatever
2. I like that it directly benefits the creators of the videos I watch
3. It gets everyone in my family ad free viewing for 0 effort across all devices (I primarily watch it from Apple TV app)
4. Gives you higher quality bitrate option sometimes
5. It gives me the moral and logical high ground when arguing with nerds about YouTube online
6. Can download video on most (all?) devices, comes in handy sometimes, but I don’t use it frequently
7. In the past there have been preview features / experiments that were locked behind it, I think PIP was one of them, may be wrong on that. Nice to check them out or get them first
Had they done that from day 1 you woulf have a point but it sounds like extorsion to me given youtube got rid of most of its competition and established its casi monopolistic position being adfree.
If you can. A lot of subscription TV channels have ads even though you have to pay to get them. Does paying for youtube block all ads, and if so will it continue to, or will they change as so many others have and just make your payment remove some ads? I'm not even counting sponsored content in a lot of videos as ads, but they are annoying too.
Smarttube on Android TV's works exceptionally well, too. I've seen people recommend Tizentube over it because it's nearly indistinguishable from the standard YouTube app, but with adblocking--but I actually prefer the more minimalist UI of Smarttube.
Because there's so much more value to YT premium (including YT music) that goes beyond merely blocking ads. It's really a no-brainer if you watch YT often.
I don't block ads because stealing ad revenue from companies is unethical. These companies have workers who have families that they need to feed. They provide a service for free, so it's the least I can do. I watch every ad in full.
My cousin, however, stopped blocking ads on YouTube when the YouTube warnings showed up. She is scared that at some point Google would ban Gmail accounts for doing it, and she's had hers for 10 years and really relies on it. She also says YouTube videos are really easy to download so anything she really wants from YouTube she tends to have a local copy of.
It isn’t unethical to block ads; the norm on the internet has always been that senders send any not-actively-malicious bits we want and the recipient renders them however they want (including not).
That said I’m also worried about getting banned for blocking too many YouTube ads (Google doesn’t have any obligation to send me emails after all) so I… just don’t go there.
The mafia is also made of hard working people with families to feed. Sometimes industries deserve to die. Even if the people working in them don't deserve to lose their jobs. That's life in a free market.
There's nothing more "free market" than ads. Ads literally cost you no money (free), and you don't even have to buy the product they're advertising (freedom from market if desired). If I know I'm not going to buy the product in question, I use the time to meditate, or take a moment to enjoy a cool, crisp sip of Kool-Aid. It's delicious when prepared according to the instructions. Oh Yeah!
There's nothing more free market than an ad blocker. Alice agreed to provide a service to Bob for and bundled in ads, Bob accepted the service and declined to run that JavaScript or render those images when Alice passed them along. If I drive past a billboard or accept a flyer on the street, no one would suggest I'm obligated to look at it.
IMHO it's more ethical to block ads than not to block them because if you don't block them you're supporting unethical business models such as massive privacy invasions by collecting and selling user data, ad-based malware delivery, and scams.
Or, you know, you could just pay for a service that you enjoy. I watch a lot more YouTube and see a bigger need to keep it alive than Netflix, HBO and co for which I am paying good money already, why should YouTube be exempt from that?
Also if Netflix goes away tomorrow, you’ll find their content on torrents easily, but if YouTube goes away, we will lose decades of videos that no one has backups of. Expecting them to offer this service for free and without ads is crazy.
100% agree. I likely would have stuck with adblockers but watching on TV(s) is worth the monthly fee alone. Also you can "watch" (ie listen) in the background on the mobile app too.
One of the best products ever created, and they deserve the dough for serving me all the gigabytes. Fast, reliable, and one product not headed for KilledByGoogle. (Did I jinx it? “We’re transitioning to a vertical-video only platform to meet our billion users where they are…”)
I think a good rule of thumb is to avoid people who have this level of lack of empathy. I can be on the toilet, running, on a roller coaster, or at a myriad of different places where I don't or even can't have my phone with me. If they think, that I avoid them because of them, then that's on them, and I cannot care less. I avoid such Mexican soap opera generator people like plague.
This is hilarious but that API Design Review meeting is stressful AF. I can't have that on speaker anywhere near me and concentrate on anything else meaningful. Human voices are incredibly distracting unless there are enough of them to create a general background wall of sound - if I can pick out what individuals are saying, that's no bueno.
The scripts are hilarious, yet not inaccurate. I can't stop chuckling.
'Are you happy with that?'
'Happy is a strong word'
'OK' moves on to the next topic
Reminds me of the "boss mode" / "boss key" in old games, like MS-DOS days, which would switch the screen to some spreadsheet mockup or suchlike, updated for the current century.
My favorite was the one in Space Quest III. Instead of showing you a spreadsheet, it would pop up a dialog making it clear that you've been playing a game, and would state exactly how long you'd been playing it. You'd have to dismiss multiple such dialogs before you could get back to the game.
Do people in offices typically just blast meetings out of their computer speakers? Everyone I work with uses headphones so we're not disturbing other people in the office...
Unless you have good ANC headphones, or find something like pink noise that fits you, you're still dealing with all the talking to microphone of your colleagues.
It's hard to describe how difficult it is to hear someone talking and then a second later hear then in your headphones. It really breaks my concentration. And it's a solvable technology problem - just use the local network for people in the same subnet. But every meeting provider wants _everything_ routed through their servers. There's no escaping they prying eyes.
Only the British audio works for me, though - if I try American or International, the relevant meetings are silent with a "Join Audio" button which doesn't appear to do anything. (Firefox on MacOS, if that's useful)
Yeah we need a dial to mix accents and dialects, and level of English fluency. I could want 50% English, maybe some Northern English, Welsh or Scottish, and mix in Indian accents, various American, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Scandinavian, the odd token Aussie. Etc.
That I could enable more South African, or Middle East accents in some meetings would be true to real life as well.
Not sure I understand the site. Each option just shows a grid of names (like a Zoom call) but there's no audio or video. The "How It Works" section implies there's audio at least, but not working on Desktop Firefox / Linux.
What are all the names for the category of such software... "Self-defense Software", "Busy Simulation Software", "Faux Work Software", "Fake Meeting Software"[0], "Virtual Meeting Simulator"[1], "Prank Screens"[2], ...? Are there many others?
Trying to access this site on my corporate Windows laptop and it was blocked "by your IT admin" (in Windows itself, not the browser/proxy). So it's already on some kind of list.
Takes me back. I remember there was a version of the fake Windows 8 update sequence that had it infinitely loop between "Working on updates..." and the frowny-face :( BSOD
Simple solution for focus time. If it stops people from setting up an actual meeting for something that fits in an email, it is already doing critical infrastructure work.
I am missing something about how this could hypothetically be useful. If I played this in the background it would be far too distracting to get any actual work done.
what a fucking stupid meetings with stupid accents and stupid people talking stupid corporate shit making it sound like they are engineering a rocket. ffs, you are the plumbers writing the cruds.
smart meetings have `pauses`, `thoughts` and `i don't knows`. this is so fucking stupid that i find it lame enough not to use it.
This is hilarious, but I think people should be addressing the real issue instead of this, maybe that work environment isn’t for you and it’s time to look somewhere if you need to pretend. Just say you’re busy or fill your calendar with whatever you are working on without a meeting, in fact, a lot of meetings is a sign of a wasted time so if I see someone (especially technical) is doing a lot of meeting I know they are wasting time or slacking.
This was very much a "fire drill all the time" kind of place (vs "slow and steady"). The team came to me and said:
"Alex, we keep getting bombarded by meeting requests and have no focus time."
My solution was to create a weekly "team meeting" from 8am to 11am every Friday and invite all of them to it.
They loved it!
I mentioned to them that making a meeting like this was something they could have done themselves but they responded:
"It carries more weight coming from you. Plus, if someone tries to schedule over it, they are more likely to think twice and/or I can say 'Hey, you have to talk to Alex.' "
If you're management, that's literally your job. Synthesize and communicate the important context bits.
I play this when I need my family to leave me alone - so helpful 4.5K I play this when I pretend to be busy. This meeting is literally about anything you want it to be about lol 1.5K I love that we all arrived at this video for the same reason 2.6K Every now and then I'll pause it at a good point in between them talking to make my own voice heard contributing to the "meeting" lol. Gets the full effect in! And the beautiful thing is their conversation just flows with it like they heard me lol. 562
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBVtvOpU80Q
Get it! The best deal in streaming content. Unlocks such a better experience you’ll find a dozen whole new areas of valuable & enjoyable content to explore.
2. I like that it directly benefits the creators of the videos I watch
3. It gets everyone in my family ad free viewing for 0 effort across all devices (I primarily watch it from Apple TV app)
4. Gives you higher quality bitrate option sometimes
5. It gives me the moral and logical high ground when arguing with nerds about YouTube online
6. Can download video on most (all?) devices, comes in handy sometimes, but I don’t use it frequently
7. In the past there have been preview features / experiments that were locked behind it, I think PIP was one of them, may be wrong on that. Nice to check them out or get them first
My cousin, however, stopped blocking ads on YouTube when the YouTube warnings showed up. She is scared that at some point Google would ban Gmail accounts for doing it, and she's had hers for 10 years and really relies on it. She also says YouTube videos are really easy to download so anything she really wants from YouTube she tends to have a local copy of.
That said I’m also worried about getting banned for blocking too many YouTube ads (Google doesn’t have any obligation to send me emails after all) so I… just don’t go there.
I watch YouTube alot btw. :D
Sounds like something people low on the corporate ladder say
https://biobreak.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/bo...
I worked at a callcenter that had a problem that sometimes that would happen. The pet theory was that meant they were recording the call to audit it.
You end up stuttering because you think the caller is talking and you want to listen to them, but it's just your own voice back.
You do eventually learn to deal with it, but it was always terrible.
Only the British audio works for me, though - if I try American or International, the relevant meetings are silent with a "Join Audio" button which doesn't appear to do anything. (Firefox on MacOS, if that's useful)
Sad, I wanted the international broken Zoom call
That I could enable more South African, or Middle East accents in some meetings would be true to real life as well.
Not Finnish. The silence would not work :)
It's basically big corp ASMR.
[0]: https://fakemeeting.app/
[1]: https://z.tools/t/fake-meeting
[2]: https://www.whitescreen.online/
I’ve used a few tts providers and although a technical marvel they are all still easily identifiable as ai. Humans are very good at spotting fakes.
This project might work better with mostly canned audio clips of real humans.
EDIT: seems like British audio does work
smart meetings have `pauses`, `thoughts` and `i don't knows`. this is so fucking stupid that i find it lame enough not to use it.