Last evening marked my last "evening" meeting for this quarter.* Half of my team is in Noida, India and most of the folks that work in the office there have a pretty long commute. After I had worked with the team for a time and gained their trust, they started talking to me about the way we ran our meetings. Someone that I work with had not seen his kid in THREE DAYS because he had to leave the house before the family woke up and got home after they were in bed. This was in a regular week, not even during a milestone.
Naturally, I was horrified.
I should first say that my team, in its entirety from Seattle to Noida and everywhere in between, kicks ass. It is chock full of hard working, passionate and amazing people who love our product and are willing to go the extra mile to make it as awesome as possible. I have personally always been a proponent of work-life balance. When I was purely an individual contributor, I always made sure that I took care of myself because I knew if I got too burned out I would be completely worthless as an employee.
While I do not have anyone reporting to me in my current role, I am on the management team and am responsible for monitoring the overall health of the project. One of my most critical responsibilities is identifying, understanding and working with the rest of the management team to address any and all types of problems that I observe during our product development cycle. This said, there are obviously times in the project where work-life balance has to be sacrificed a little, but this should NEVER be "the norm". If people have to make a habit of working overtime every week, that means we are failing them.
So, one of the big ticket items on my plate during my visit to Noida last December was to agree upon a fair approach to meetings so that we had to share the burden across geographies. The approach we decided on was that we would switch per quarter, one with all standing meetings evening time US and morning time Noida, then vice versa. The US took the first shift of having all evening meetings.
It has sucked.
I'm still happy we did it, I still feel as though it was the right decision. I think it is important that this burden is shared. However, I am ECSTATIC to have a quarter of morning meetings. Now...next week when I have to get up at 5:00 AM to make my 7:00 AM meetings I'll probably be singing a different tune, but at least I'll be able to have a relaxing dinner with my family and not have to tell everyone they need to be quiet so that nobody on the phone can hear them when I'm not on mute.
* This is a rule for standing meetings only. I'm sure there will be occasions when an emergency comes up and I have to dial in to an evening call...but it will not be three-four nights a week. :-)
Naturally, I was horrified.
I should first say that my team, in its entirety from Seattle to Noida and everywhere in between, kicks ass. It is chock full of hard working, passionate and amazing people who love our product and are willing to go the extra mile to make it as awesome as possible. I have personally always been a proponent of work-life balance. When I was purely an individual contributor, I always made sure that I took care of myself because I knew if I got too burned out I would be completely worthless as an employee.
While I do not have anyone reporting to me in my current role, I am on the management team and am responsible for monitoring the overall health of the project. One of my most critical responsibilities is identifying, understanding and working with the rest of the management team to address any and all types of problems that I observe during our product development cycle. This said, there are obviously times in the project where work-life balance has to be sacrificed a little, but this should NEVER be "the norm". If people have to make a habit of working overtime every week, that means we are failing them.
So, one of the big ticket items on my plate during my visit to Noida last December was to agree upon a fair approach to meetings so that we had to share the burden across geographies. The approach we decided on was that we would switch per quarter, one with all standing meetings evening time US and morning time Noida, then vice versa. The US took the first shift of having all evening meetings.
It has sucked.
I'm still happy we did it, I still feel as though it was the right decision. I think it is important that this burden is shared. However, I am ECSTATIC to have a quarter of morning meetings. Now...next week when I have to get up at 5:00 AM to make my 7:00 AM meetings I'll probably be singing a different tune, but at least I'll be able to have a relaxing dinner with my family and not have to tell everyone they need to be quiet so that nobody on the phone can hear them when I'm not on mute.
* This is a rule for standing meetings only. I'm sure there will be occasions when an emergency comes up and I have to dial in to an evening call...but it will not be three-four nights a week. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment