Comment by duxup
4 years ago
> Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
OMG… I have customer who does this to his organization on every meeting we join. I’m guaranteed to have a good 30 (or more) minutes of discussions about some other meeting unrelated to the one they are currently in. It’s like clockwork.
He always starts it out really vague too with “it was brought to my attention <re-opens topic>”.
I’ve long wondered if anyone really does bring anything to this guy’s attention or if he just is being vague so he can hide the fact that he is just opening a can of worms, tell his anecdotes again all on his own for no reason.
I kinda wonder now.
There’s a certain type of work environment where managers are only half paying attention — they evaluate performance and reward people based on how they perform in meetings, but they don’t pay enough attention to look at the real performance of people over time.
This rewards people who are good at being performative in meetings: They try to flex their importance (“it has been brought to my attention that…”) and they try to raise issues with everything because it makes them look like they’re on top of it all.
The weird thing is that they don’t really understand what they’re doing most of the time. It’s just what they’ve been rewarded for in the past, so they’ve continued to do more of what has brought them rewards.
People complain about chatGPT being a Stochastic Parrot but we got plenty of natural ones in corporate positions
Possibilities include:
1. He's a control freak and has to have a hand in every decision.
2. He's opposed to the project and wants it to fail.
3. The previously agreed decision benefits a rival within his organization and he's trying to reverse this.
4. He loves hearing the sound of his own voice.
5. He's incapable of keeping up with the current discussion and only works out what people were saying after the meeting so brings his belated contributions to the next meeting.
I eliminated and/or monetized clients like this to death by just switching all my billing to hourly. It's incredible how quickly a dude like that will put a sock in it about the last meeting when you mention the price of revisiting a decision you already built code on top of.
Especially when it's clear you aren't trying to harvest extra hours and just don't need the hassle of accommodating their vanity.
6. The decision process is half baked, and nothing is ever completely closed. As a result, nobody shuts this guy down.
7. He's read the book linked from this thread and is actively trying to subvert the process.
:)
1 reply →
> He always starts it out really vague too with “it was brought to my attention <re-opens topic>”. I’ve long wondered if anyone really does bring anything to this guy’s attention or if he just is being vague
In USA English that's just a way to introduce a topic, like if a journalist is interviewing someone and asks something like "what would you say to those who disagree with your puppy kicking policies" it's not like they have any specific disagreers in mind it's just verbiage that is part of their question.
It might've been Dave Barry who said suggested that one say "it's been brought to my attention" as a way of signaling that one must be an important person, to have matters brought to their attention. :)
Eh? I’m just bad at email. If it’s important, my one of my bosses will bring it to my attention.