How to Run Engineering Team Meetings (and not waste anyone’s time)

First published by Hackernoon.

Growing pains: the affliction of all mid-size startups, Flatiron included. It used to be that everyone fit in a single room and overheard everything that was going on; now we barely fit in an auditorium. While there are many struggles in this process (office space, not knowing everyone’s name, needing a second overflow volleyball team), communication is by far the biggest. We want everyone to to be empowered with information, and we want input from as many people as possible; before you know it, our calendars are covered with meetings of all shapes and sizes with tiny “BLOCK: Work” rectangles few and far between.

The truth is, I absolutely love meetings. I love that feeling when a bunch of people get together in a room and create a solution where there had been only confusion before. I love it when someone shares an idea with the broader group and everyone learns something. I love sprint planning, when you get to the end and know you have a good, tractable, valuable set of work planned out. Basically, I love using making use of other people’s brains.

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