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imiricHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

From my experience as a SWE over the past ~15 years working in teams ranging from 10+ engineers in …

From my experience as a SWE over the past ~15 years working in teams ranging from 10+ engineers in large companies doing daily in-person standups, to ~5 engineers in small remote-first companies doing daily videocall or async standups, and everything in between: the standup ceremony is a waste of everyone's time. Its only purpose is social/political as with any meeting, and giving micromanaging managers something to do and something to report to their higher-ups (I've been part of teams where the "Scrum Master" and even "Product Owner" attends the standup...). Which is fine if that's the way the company works and the participants enjoy the ceremony for personal reasons, but there are no tweaks to the standup formula that makes teams more productive or functional. If I'm working on a solo project, nobody cares about the details of my progress besides the users I'm building it for. Whether this is an API for someone who is part of the standup, or a feature for someone in the company, I would communicate with them directly when needed. …

Original discussionWhen a team is too big145 source comments · at import
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EtheryteHN

> This was less disruptive than taking 30 minutes (less than 3 minutes per person) for the daily standup, which often dragged to 45 minutes and sometimes even an entire hour! More than anything, this sounds like no one was actually leading or moderating the standups. If you have standups daily, you should be able to give an update on what your status is in a minute tops, given it's business as usual. If there's any followup discussions to be had or questions to be resolved, the startup is not the right place to do that, everyone who is interested or affected can continue the discussion after the standup. This requires discipline from both the person leading and the participants, but we're talking about a professional setting here, this isn't a big ask. Having spent some time living in Sweden, the situation described in the article is not too surprising to me. Swedes are incredibly noncon…

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lepolasHN

As with many things, it depends on the team. Some teams and people really do seem to need some amount of daily direction to have confidence in the work they are doing, and that does have a meaningful impact on productivity. My bias is always to only participate in frequent recurring meetings as a last resort, but sometimes they seem to be necessary.

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lovichHN

> giving engineers autonomy That is almost as offensive as a slur to management in 95% of companies

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