alt Hacker NewsStandard procedure at the time for a meeting was:
- no PowerPoint
- 1-6 page write up of the problem, proposed solution and timeline, and alternate methods that were not chosen
- meeting participants ideally have already read the paper, but given 10-20 minutes in silence to read and mark up their thoughts.
- presenter says their piece, mostly just summarizing the paper and clarifying tricky sections
- intellectual bloodbath as all participants try to poke holes and see around corners not foreseen by the presenter
- follow up next week, until the group/manager is satisfied about the direction of the project
Replies
I wonder if the 1-6 pages are all AI written nowadays and if people are allowed to use AI to summarize the pages. Anyone know?
We have a bunch of Amazon transplants who newly arrived at my company and have started doing this. I thought I would love it, because I'm a good writer, a great reader, not great at PowerPoint or meeting gamesmanship, etc. Turns out I kind of hate it. The silent reading time is annoying, especially when you've already read the doc or when most people are on zoom, etc. The intellectual bloodbath doesn't happen at my company. The most senior people are given the floor and they usually spout nonsense because they haven't had time to read the doc, are miles away from the intellectual details, are too busy playing office politics, etc. And then there's just as much meeting gamesmanship as before. I was hoping decision would be more scientific but that just hasn't happened. Maybe we're doing it wrong. Maybe we've hired the Amazon rejects. I don't know. Hoping it improves.
It's almost like working with a coding agent.
This is great when everyone is smart, aligned in the purpose, has no politics, dog in the fight, but awful everywhere else.
It's the difference between peer review by leaders in the field trying to make your paper better, and juniors wanting to be heard or insecure academics trying to get an ego boost by nit picking and wasting time.
Intellectual bloodbath sounds like so much of the latter with point scoring being the goal.