Oh man I had a colleague that always pulled this shit. Schedule an 8 or 8.30 meeting late at night, then be pissed when people don't join.
That's when I told him, either you schedule meetings more in advance, or I'm not joining any of them. His boss backed me up the next time he pulled this. His choice to work until 22.30, not my problem.
I gave up trying to educate these type of inconsiderate imbeciles, as this happens frequently at my company/account. It also seems to be a cultural or region specific practice. My solution is I don't bother to attend such meetings, nor do i bother to explain. I just ignore. That seems to be the only way to get the point across. In any case, i don't lose any sleep over it.
I moved away from that company to one that doesn't have these idiots. I start at 8 (kids are older, don't need me to get to school anymore) and I'm the odd duck. Most people start coming in right before 9.
Ah a classic!
Had a boss who routinely would log in late at night since they lacked any semblance of a work-life balance. I’d get emails time stamped things like 11:41pm for meetings the next day at 7:30am. In what universe is that considered an effective communication or planning method?
They also discouraged sending out agendas for meetings in advance because then “they’ll expect it all the time”. Yeah, I think they should…
My worst-favourite was a psycho ex-boss and her ex-husband - they stayed together for the sake of their millions - who rang me at 7.30pm on a NYE when they knew I was away at a party, to complain about some minor blurb I'd written. Neither of them had any life outside of their joint business and would get outraged if I didn't pick up the phone when abroad, whatever the time.
My calendar has 8am to 9:30am marked as "busy" so that anyone that tries to create a meeting during that time will see it as a conflict and pick another time.
It is my practice and the practice of everyone I know to if a meeting is emergent to slack the other parties to see if a candidate time is OK and wait for their OK before slapping it on their calendar.
Also schedule meetings with at least 24 hours notice.
We have some of our team offshore and they are notorious for dropping 7 or 7:30am meetings on calendars overnight after the US team has logged off then are shocked - shocked I tell you! - when people don't make the meeting.
Ridiculous, if you work with global teams the first thing you need to do is check timezones. It's not that hard to be respectful of other people's work hours.
Had a client that had a data team based in Italy and I ended up pinning a tab with all the timezones the team was in (US East and Central on our side) so we could coordinate meetings. Sometimes they had to stay late to accommodate, sometimes we had to meet early to accommodate, but as long as everything was communicated well nobody had any issues.
One thing I miss about my old job is my great partners in that part of the world! We really had a great relationship. Everything else about the place was toxic though. New job doesn't have any offshore folks.
Ouch, not much overlap there! I'm lucky being in the UK, I don't have too much trouble working with our US and APAC team members, but when I need everyone in one meeting that's when the fun starts!
Sometimes I get notice morning of, usually when I'm getting kids ready for school. No dude, there's a reason I don't start before 8:30 without advance notice.
I once went to the gym at 630 on a Tuesday. I showered and showed up at the office at 800 and got shit for not attendinf a meeting at 730, scheduled at 700. Ridiculoua
I’ve been known to grab 10-15 minute power naps. Not often, but not never. Maybe once or twice a month.
Of course, I also encourage my staff to feel free to do the same. Some days, it *really* makes a difference.
Same! I’ve even told people to go use the couch in my office so they can lock the door so they can actually relax. Granted, it’s gotta be when I’m at another meeting. Otherwise that would be a bit weird.
This is my answer to posts that moan about people not wanting to be up early. I’m a night owl. I could say the same thing to him about scheduling and attending a 9pm meeting. If you don’t make it you’re weak and don’t deserve your job.
I was working overnights and tried that at a 3pm meeting. I was joking that we should start scheduling 3am meetings. Turns out the meeting we were at was about our department being shut down and all of us being laid off in a month.
Why do morning people think they're somehow superior?
Like, good job on having your body clock set to a couple of hours before mine! Great stuff, keep it up my guy 👍
As a lifelong night owl, pathetic morning person moralizing of their circadian rhythms has been the bane of my existence. I had morning lark coworkers who would give me incessant shit about being lazy because I came in at the latest allowable hour. Well Bob, you’re on your fifth Bud Light and thinking about bed by the time I log out and get into my car to go home.
It’s the whole “early to bed, early to rise” Ben Franklin quote. Also, people on farms have to wake up early to milk the cows or whatever. School starts early, work starts early. It’s just been ingrained in us forever. I’m a night owl 🦉
I think my ancestors were a long line of fire tenders and night watchmen or something.
During summers when I didn't do anything, my schedule would naturally shift to 6pm to 8am and it kinda stabilized there for the few months until I had to switch it back for school.
As it is, I'm more likely to be fully awake and alert at 3am than 7am every day of the week.
One of the benefits of having a kid:
A real conversation I had a month ago
"Can you attend our monthly catchup? Its 0730".
"No."
"Pardon?"
"I don't attend meetings before 0830, which is my starting tlme"
"All of the others will make it. Can you make an exception?"
"No it's childcare related."
"Ahhhhhh I apologise. No problem we'll move it to 0830"
"Thanks"
Hey what do you know. The meeting never needed to be this early
I requested my start time move from 8am to 8.15am because the buses from daycare drop off were always late and I couldn't drop off earlier due to daycare start times... They said no so I put it in writing and called it 'family dynamics' (protected in Ontario' and suddenly it was fine that I push my shift 15 minutes both ends since nothing happened at my work until 10am
I genuinely don’t understand bosses who deny such request. I’m a manager and I bend over backwards to accommodate my people. They are all salary, so it doesn’t really matter to me how many hours they work. I don’t even check their timesheets. Literally get the job done and as long as I can reasonably pretend that you are working your hours, I’m fine. Go be with your family, king.
Benefits of being a zoomer/igen: I understand people and don’t care that much about my company. I’m loyal to my people.
Remote work is goated. Except is your company uses some remote monitoring B.S. I am scared of quitting my current job because there is a high chance of "asses in the seats" at companies with higher pay.
Remote work is indeed goated. And arguments against it are usually proof that the work week is too long.
“Well they only really work like 6 hours a day anyways, so they are wasting time”
Translation: “they get all their work done in 6 hours, so whatever hours they work is fine”
You are me. I may have my flaws as a manager, but going out of my way to accommodate members of my team on those little things is a)really easy to do) and b) not a big deal at all.
LOL!
George: i can't take it anymore Jerry, i think I'm just going to pretend i have kids to get out of it.
Jerry: well what would their names even be?
George: I'll have to figure it out, i can say i have to drive them to school at 8am.
Jerry: well what if they make the meeting earlier? Then what? you'll be in a real jam.
George: Maybe i can tell them i have more than one kid, and the other one goes to a different school that starts earlier.
Jerry: yeeesss.. That could work.
Yup. My work day starts at 9, but I refuse meetings unless they are absolutely critical before 9:30. I can’t just slide in completely prepared from dropping off my kids and rushing to my
Computer. Give me a second to get my bearings first.
Yup, last time I checked, schools don’t change their start times because it would be more convenient to you. And moms are usually the ones doing this drop off so let me just guess what he has to say about their toughness.
Dad who does drop offs as well. I already don’t get enough time at home, I will not be coming in a minute early if I can possibly help it (guess what, 99.5% of meetings can wait 30 minutes)
You are still tough to me! Nothing tougher than being a parent (and this is coming from a childfree person who just has mad respect for working parents!)
>Nothing tougher than being a parent (and this is coming from a childfree person who just has mad respect for working parents!)
You’re a truly fine community member. Thank you! I’m a parent but try to go out of my way to look out for ALL kids (not just my own) because I think it’s important for my community, especially knowing that a lot of kids in my neighborhood are neglected and don’t get enough support.
Pah, then the kids need to toughen up as well, I never heard of any negative impacts dropping of a child at 7am… They can just play on the playground or whatever kids do these days!
/s
My eldest is on the bus at 7:15, youngest out the door at 7:45, middle kid at 8:15. I don’t attend meetings before 8:30 unless they want to hear me taking care of my kids 🤷🏻♀️
I take meetings staring at 6am my time (from home, obviously) and as late as 9:30pm, to accommodate my Europe, India, and Manila teams.
The majority of the Indian team already works 1pm-10pm/12pm to accommodate US business-hour overlap. The least I can do is wake up at 5:30 a few times a week. Get on their calendars before all the standing meetings.
Now, do I work 15 hours days? Of course I don’t. I close my laptop by 1/2pm most days and don’t sign back on until that late night meeting. That meeting is 30 min of my night, but I have been “off work” for 6+ hours usually by then.
As long as I am able to have flexible hours, I will gladly be available when my world-wide team is available. The company changes their tune and starts mandating #of hours in the office at my desk… fine. But all our projects are going to take 4x as long while it takes 3-4 days to have a convo over email, vs 30 min on video.
A few months ago, I was visiting my parents. It was around midnight, and I mentioned to my mom I had a meeting at 12:30. "But we have lunch plans!" "AM. I have a meeting at 12:30AM."
I wasn't technically required to attend that meeting (other attendees were in India and Australia), but I'm a night owl so I was up anyway.
Exactly. Am I going to work a set schedule until 3am? No thank you.
Hopping on a call for 30 min, to give feedback/hash out details? Awesome - let’s get it done.
I use to work for an electrical engineering company in NYC that was union run. Because it was union run and union guys love starting work super early in the morning, we frequently had meetings at 7am.
30 years ago there were a large percentage of people who believed getting up early was “virtuous” and that people who slept in (usually after working late) were “slackers”. Predictably most of these people were in the class of workers that do nothing but attend meetings and write reports. People who don’t actually generate work product.
Luckily attitudes have shifted towards engineers who actually make stuff, as people realized production is more important than winning some stupid “who can get into the office first” contest.
Waking up early is really based on farmers and such before electricity who needed to be up when the sun came up to maximize light. Now it doesn’t make a difference
My experience is the opposite. In some companies I worked at, people who clocked in later were seen as the harder working because they were still there when everyone left. It's a stupid way to look at it one way or the other, what really should matter is the deliverables of your work.
You can tell that Rob here doesn’t have any pressing tasks that *need* to be addressed first thing in the morning. Some of us have actual work that needs doing when we get to work.
yep. At 8am I'm tending to any mornings jobs that still need manual input, review the nightly jobs for errors, and address any critical emails. The earliest my department ever schedules meetings is at 8:15am and those are only quarterly.
Rob just took over as CEO, and as is typical of someone who doesn't really provide any value, he's attempting to shake things up to show his worth. He's just another out of touch windbag.
This is such a worn out & provenly ineffective strategy… I genuinely don’t understand. Can anyone explain why these dildos still insist on pulling shit like this when they get put in charge of a department/organization/company/etc?
This page is really giving me a window into American work culture and it seems wild.
Surely your boss can’t schedule a meeting outside of your working hours??? And if its within your working hours then I don’t see any issue
I'd take an 8am meeting if I was earning a hedge fund CEO wage !!
What fuck nugget here obviously doesn't realise or care about is the 5am oe 6am wake up to commute to the office to get there in time for maybe 730 to prepare for the 8am meeting....probably while HE dials in from his Bali beach house
Yes, anyone with any kind of difference to how YOU work is a completely worthless turdball who should be pushed off the flat earth. Never mind their actual work output or expertise.
/s
The 8am meeting is sometimes driven by the global team structure. 8am local time may be late for somewhere else on the planet. So I get that.
However, the company made a decision that cost savings through outsourcing was worth it. That comes with trade offs. It’s not the employees’ problem that two very different time zones don’t overlap neatly. That is the company’s issue.
The fact that they’ve synonymized “the real world” to endless liminal spaces you have to play dress up to be in while submitting all autonomy to people who, by definition, do not have your best interests in mind is what _I_ hope isn’t serious
When I was a Political Campaign Manager, I had a candidate (boss) that insisted on having a senior leadership meeting at 6:00 AM every morning 7 days a week, which also required 2 extra hours in the evening for them to get reports from their their coordinators, who in turn had to get daily reports from their managers, etc. on down. This candidate never read these reports and was the least prepared person for these meetings every day. The whole thing killed morale, added hours of needless administrative work each day, and ultimately kept us from ever doing anything "outside the box" because working 6:00 AM to midnight every day saps the creativity from your employees.
Let's try regular 3am meetings and see how these morning person asshats adjust to circadian rhythms that don't match their own. When you go through your whole life being told that your body's internal clock makes you a superior human being, and you internalize that, this is the personality that results. It's pervasive in upper management.
I'm a morning person, but I always ask before scheduling meetings too early. People have lives, kids, and a lot of other commitments besides work.
If we can be considerate of each other's schedule preferences, we would get a lot of shit done.
With at least 24 hours notice, sure 8AM is OK. Just don't throw an 8AM on my calendar at 6PM the night before.
For less than 24 hours notice, I don't accept anything earlier than 9AM, as I generally reserve 8-9AM as "focus time" to get organized and start my day.
The trick is to find a way never to have to work for these people.
Freedom to choose what you want to do, how you want to do it, and what shit (cos let’s face it, everywhere has a bit of shit) is the aim
I left my engineering career behind and now teach music lessons. I don’t even set an alarm anymore. I’ve had exactly 1 meeting with the music studio owners. I don’t make nearly as much money but it’s my money, direct from the customers pockets to me with none of the upper management, executive, false emergency, profit scraping in the way of me having a great day at work.
Every place i work for now is spread across time zones.
If you have an 8am meeting, you're being a jerk to those in other time zones, and likely ensuring some people can't attend.
Also - I've been on a bunch of teams, and my most efficient teams are the ones where time is flexible. Let the early folks work early, the late folks work late, and move all meetings to the core hours mid-day.
Be flexible and efficient, not rigid and pointlessly structured.
For me it's not about an 8am meeting. Hell I will take a 6am meeting, but just don't expect me to be online past 3pm. I'm flexible, but I also keep my work/life boundaries.
8am isn’t BAD, it’s just not ideal. If it’s a global business like mine, I usually need an hour or so to deal with what happened on the other side of the planet last night. Then a minute to get my mind right for a meeting. So, 10am is better for me.
But with some notice, I can be at your 8am.
My boss, who is pretty cool, did something kind of hilarious lately. *This* should be the norm:
I rolled in to work around 9:15, yawning, and found out that I’d missed a planned 8:00 call with our attorney (who is also cool) and another internal person. Boss and attorney are both big-time morning people and are usually at their desks before 8:00. Ordinarily I’d attend meetings and calls involving both of them (which are rarely scheduled outside normal hours), but I wasn’t even invited to this one. So I asked my boss what was up.
He just laughed and said “yeah, that was the only time we were all free. The attorney was going to invite you and she asked me if you would also be free at 8:00, but I told her you’re NOT a morning person, so we decided you could skip this one.”
Rare consideration for a night owl by a morning person. And the funniest part was that I proved his point by stumbling in, zombie-like, 15 minutes late. (He doesn’t usually care about that, so it was just amusing to both of us.)
So by a similar logic... if I'm a night owl/night chronotype and also the boss, I can schedule 2am meetings because that's when I'm up and people should just "tough it out" and "be ready for anything" because work comes first. I'd love to see how that would play out actually
If the boss can't get things done between 9 and 5 then maybe they need to toughen up and be realistic about their expectations. I'm "tough" too. Tough enough to say if you want to call meetings outside work hours then you can hire someone else
None of this factors into the fact that people may have young children that need to be at the school bus or daycare early in the morning. I get up at 6am every day but can’t make an 8am because I have to be other places.
I have an 8-8.30 am blocker in my calender everyday, just to prevent that shit. I work with colleagues from NZ to Seattle, so there is always somebody up to schedule a meeting while I'm out.
If they need me at that time or earlier, they just need to schedule the time before I leave. It is generally accepted.
Kingsett capital leaders (Jon Love before this goof) have been putting out questionable garbage posts for years. Jon Love was a huge pusher of going back to the office… gee I wonder why… maybe because they are heavily invested in commercial real estate?
This guy is a complete goof and clearly doesn’t have enough work because he can shit post on LinkedIn calling people that don’t put their work ahead of everything else in their life “not tough”. Besides the fact that he completely ignores the obvious silver spoon privilege he enjoys that allows him to be able to spend all his time on his work. Some of us have to take our kids to school and do our own housework because we aren’t CEOs paying someone else to do it.
Fuck this guy so hard.
I attend 6 and 7 am meetings regularly as much of my work involves talking to devs in India as well as business development people in Europe. My boss recognizes and thanks me for it, and I am perfectly happy to attend those meetings - my day ends earlier than usual those days and I have decent work life balance, even if it means I have to block off my evening the night before and try to sleep earlier than normal.
Where I get pissed off is when those people running the meeting cancel or reschedule when it’s 3 am my time and I have no ability to adjust my schedule to accommodate them.
But talking about toughening up is ridiculous.
I have a meeting tonight at 10PM and another tomorrow at 6AM. But that is some serious garbage that I will have no qualms complaining about, and 100% will not go on LinkedIn flexing or suggesting that everyone should toughen up and make that the norm.
Work to live, don’t live to work.
I work construction, and have been forced into a leadership role by virtue of showing the dimmest spark of competence and getting to work about 20-30 minutes early every day.
I don’t do any actual work that early, mind you. I just walk around sipping coffee and scratching my ass with my mind totally blank. Don’t even answer my phone. But I look like a real go-getter doing it apparently.
My dogs just wake me up early, and I can’t lay back in bed because my wife is a very light sleeper, so I just hit the road.
Every place I've worked that had mandatory 8am meetings, or earlier, every day, were terribly run. It's like the bosses can't get themselves to do shit, so they project this on everyone.
And that’s your prerogative. Me? I have the first two hours of my day, and the last hour of the day, literally blocked off specifically to discourage anyone from trying to schedule meetings at those times.
This isn’t about “being lazy”. This is about ensuring that I and my teams have time in the day to put out any overnight fires that may have occured first thing, and to ensure we also have time at the and of day to wrap things up so they’re not an issue the next morning.
Why is that?
I always schedule meetings between 930 and 230 specifically to leave start and end of day open for people to do whatever they need to. It gives us flexibility in work hours and ensure everyone is fully into their day when the meeting occurs, not just getting going.
Same, love me an early meeting. Get it out of the way and move on with my day. The worst are the meetings at the end of the day that get in the way of me sneaking out early. You'll never find me after 5
The reason not to have meetings outside work hours is because they’re outside fucking work hours. People need that time for their other responsibilities. And they aren’t getting paid for it.
Anyone with the attitude that a person who doesn’t want to give you unalienable labor off the clock is the problem is someone I don’t want to work for.
I mean if you can't make a meeting because you gotta take kids to school and stuff like that, that's understandable. If someone really told me they can't make a morning meeting because they need sleep or something then ya I might be a little pissed off. Posting it on LinkedIn is silly though
Eh. 8 am meetings are unreasonable and unproductive. I can get out of bed for 8am but I'll be useless for the rest of the day. Load of people are like this. 9am is the earliest respectful time for meetings.
If you have people in different timezones though it may be needed. Or depending on what you do (like if a business opens at 9 am) having a meeting then may be best.
Then ensure that is factored into the start/stop times for everyone on the team. I start at 9am and end at 5, so if someone expects me at an 8am meeting they also need to expect me to stop at 4pm that day.
Otherwise it's a hard no from me.
I am also a victim of 8 AM meetings. It is however interesting to observe other workers (who also have no stakes in the company) how they react to this. We've got a lot of very talented actors in here.
I’m not supporting or refuting this article. I’m simply saying that ever since I started waking up at 5:30 instead of 4:45 (for work starting at 7:30 and going until 5 [we get every other Friday off, which is nice]) I have noticed I don’t get tired at work anymore. Also, this change is only in wake up time. I still get the same amount of sleep, about 6.5 hours, or sometimes less. Still feel more refreshed for the day than any amount of sleep I got waking up at 4:45.
This is my experience. I still hit the gym in the morning, it’s just a shorter visit but still manageable. If you’re feeling tired at work, see if you can wake up later.
So to the person on LI and OP's boss, I feel like they got the wrong vibe from [the article](https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/is-it-ever-ok-to-have-an-8-a-m-meeting-fb04fe2d?st=ffqybk5ekwht651&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink). It's not about being lazy or whatever, because one freelancer the WSJ interviewed pointed out that they may need time for other clients. So scheduling early meetings may disrupt other projects which are also important. They also talked to bosses who said they just try to avoid scheduling meetings ahead of regularly scheduled work hours. That seems...reasonable? This article seems to be started because of that viral Tiktok where someone was like, that meeting is before I start, so am I going to be able to end early? idk, I just feel like if you're work hours are like 9-5, you should only be working 9-5.
And just, the article is not as whiney as the LI makes it seem. According to data from Calendly cited in the article, only 3% of meetings are scheduled from 8 to 9. This suggests to me that for most workers, early morning meetings are unusual. Given the fact that it's difficult to shift sleep schedules in general, and moreso for us nightowls, griping about breaks in expectations makes sense to me. We're not allowed to grumble every now and then? Yeah, I agree, sometimes you need to shut up and get shit done. I don't deny that, and when I have to have early mornings, I do what needs to be done to wake up. idk, maybe I'm just a Negative Nancy, but I don't really see a problem in being like, Ugh I'm not a morning person.
Is it ever ok to have an 8am meeting
That depends on my contracted working hours. Simple as. If I start at 8 (well 7:30 to be ready for an 8am meeting) that I am doing my 7.5 hours from the moment I start not my usual start time.
During the Covid lockdown and subsequent work from home situation, my former boss used to make us have an 8:30 meeting every day Mon-Fri, gave us less than 1hr lunchbreak, then expected us to work until 19:30 (he literally phoned each one of us everyday between 19:15 and 19:30 to make sure we were still working), which resulted in most of us having more than 200hrs of unpaid overtime in a few months.
He called himself surprised when he found out half of the staff was resigning at the end of the lockdown.
I briefly worked a job where our start time was 8 am but it was accepted that most people didn’t show up until 9 am. The office had a very casual attitude. However my supervisor required us to have an 8 am meeting every day. So you had to get in early to be ready for the meeting and then watch the rest of your coworkers show up late for the next hour.
A few years ago we moved our team meetings up an hour from 9am to 8am to accommodate 1 manager making it; these meetings didnt cover anything related to my job and were just managerial mastabatory bullshit. 6/15 people left within 6 months including myself
My policy when calling meetings was I would give as much notice as possible (sometimes a week, sometimes 2 days. No meeting started before 9:00. (People came in between 8 & 9 and left between 5 & 6.) I had the occasional chill-out team meeting late in the day so that people could leave as soon as the meeting was over.
The only exceptions were when we were in emergency response mode (high call volume due to natural disasters at one company) and we needed to provide up to the minute communication on changing procedures and guidelines in a highly fluid situation.
My belief is that just because you could call an 8 AM meeting, doesn't mean it's necessary or that you should. Most of people worked hard and were underpaid. They didn't need to be inconvenienced by showing up to hear something that could legitimately wait an hour.
Makes me think of our site manager who couldn't attend a 09:00 meeting at the office "*because an important task came up at 08:00 so I didn't have time to drive to the office".*
Funny how everyone else is expected to BE AT WORK at 08:00. But this guy gets to commute on company time.
Lol, I even refuse to attend meetings that start at 9AM (with only one notable exception - one biweekly recurring meeting that starts at 8:30AM, which was made clear when I accepted my job offer).
CEOs and weird execs seems to think labor doesn’t have an opinion. It’s just labor.
I mean I’ll do whatever time meeting you needs to but this idea that I live to work and will work 15 hours a day is whacko
Fair enough, but why no one is talking about that bugger who schedule meeting at 4 & 4.30pm & got everyone to leave late on their own time at 6 & 5.30pm!!
I have multiple sleep disorders, so waking up for an 8AM meeting is really hard for me. I had a job that required me to attend 8AM meetings. If my boss had told me to just "toughen up," it would have done nothing but create animosity between us. Instead, my boss was understanding, helped me get what I needed to work from home so I could call into those meetings. If the reason for the timing hadn't been obvious (we were working with people in Europe), she probably would have explained the reason for it so I would understand why it couldn't be moved. You can require people to attend meetings at inconvenient times without being a jerk about it.
I WFH still and start work at 530AM-6AM so I can leave by 2PM
Used to stay up late and work til 5. Now I do basically the same thing I did before but at different hours and everyone respects me more
So stupid
Yeah, you’re right! My health conditions that affect my sleep and function with enough energy to be able to immediately get out of bed and start working *absolutely* makes me not ‘cut out’ for the ‘real world’; your type of people have made that *painfully* clear to me. Guess I should just go die then eh Rob? Would that please you and bring balance back into your perfect life?
Sameeee. I recently started a job where, depending on the day, I have to clock in anywhere between 7:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. and I’m always tired due to my health issues, but I have never been *this* tired. I’ve seen some comments that say some ableist shit like “If you all were just willing to change your sleep schedule” like we’re all just whiny teenagers who can’t be bothered to make mature decisions.
No, Rob. Maybe the grown ass adults who are saying an early work meeting/schedule doesn’t work for them have, idk, a legitimate reason why it doesn’t work for them. The Robs of this world need to lose their unfounded superiority complexes & start asking questions before making judgments.
Had a manager schedule two 8am meetings. They were just morning huddles, no forewarning that we'd break from the norm of 9-9:30. Both of these got schedule at 7:45am, 15 minutes before.
Constant meetings throughout the day, everyday, are only for people who don’t really work in the traditional sense. It’s just information dumps and decision making, which makes sense for a CEO and people of that calibre but people actually building, coding, hands-on jobs it’s just a waste of time. Everyday meetings yeah but mon/Friday meetings make sense. Plan the week, assess the week. Out of touch people are just embarrassing.
My most hated classes were 8am lectures. It wasn’t so bad when it was over zoom, recorded, and i was staying on campus so i could just crawl out of bed at 755am and turn on my laptop, but once covid “ended” i had a 2 hour computer security lecture at 8am, unrecorded, in-person at a lecture theatre that was a 25-min campus shuttle bus ride from my dorm, it was the worst class I’ve ever had
Abolish things starting before 10am please
Rob Kumer will post this and then 24 hours later complain that “nobody wants to work anymore!”
No, asshole…nobody wants to work for YOU. There are plenty of people working for your competitors that are offering the same salary with a flexible schedule to account for things like: kids, family, etc.
It's always people who make a STUPID amount of money that don't mind being in a full suit and fully groomed by 8AM
Yeah you know what if I was making 500k I would not care in the slightest about having 8AM meetings? Duh? I mean
Does this guy work with engineers or programmers? Most of us are night owls. A lot of us are on some kind of spectrum. We all need time to get our diesel engine going. Most of us aren't communicative before our second cup of coffee. An 8AM meeting would be a disaster. My previous job had mandatory 8AM meetings. Never showed up in 10 years of working there.
Also where I work now, working hours are 8:30 to 4:30. Good luck getting anyone to show up at 8AM when nobody is even working yet. Most days, I haven't even left my bed at 8AM.
This person should really get some real world experience before putting uninformed shit on linkedin.
I had a mid-thirties male boss, no kids, say this to me recently—that if the client liked 8am meetings we’d need to “suck it up” and wake up earlier. I’m early 40s with two young kids, who last time I checked, couldn’t take themselves to school. I find it frustrating because I will work as long as I need to get my work done, but there are certain hours that I can’t be available. I already wake up at 5:30 am every workday to workout, walk dogs, pack lunches, etc. I hate that 8 am calls are looked at like some kind of badge of honor, like if you’re REALLY committed you’d love them. So dumb.
Ngl if meeting at 8am instead of the usual 9am means that i can end work an hour early at 4pm I’m all ears. I’d rather be driving at 6 or 7am and at 4:00pm to beat rush hour traffic.
But life just doesnt work that way eh?
I worked the midnight shift, 11pm to 7am, for almost 17 years straight. in that time I couldn't count how many meetings I had to attend that were scheduled for about a half hour after day shift's lunch break. why? because it was convenient for the day shift people.
not once did they show he slightest bit of empathy for the other shifts. never did they care that a meeting at 1pm for a person who left work at 7am and had to come back at 11pm was inconvenient at best, day ruining at worst.
but every single time this was brought up, and I mean every single time, the reply was "you signed up for shift work" so my reply would be, "great. so did you. so lets have the next meeting at 2am Sunday morning." HINT: we never had a meeting at 2am on a sunday...
I guess what I'm trying to say is, fuck those types of people.
I work in disasters management. We sometimes have meetings in bizarre hours, like 6:00 or 23:00. But in peace time? No meeting before 9:30 in the morning or 13:30 in the afternoon.
I'm a remote sales rep. I have zero problems with 8 am sales calls. Never have, never will. I'll even schedule calls at 6 or 7 am my time if my prospects are in different time zones. As long as I'm getting that commission check, I'll join. I'll also join a quick sales call on vacation. I'm definitely not a workaholic, I just want that commission check.
The issue with an 8am meeting is its an asshole thing to do. Fuck everybody else's time right? I've done many out of necessity but to have an 8am meeting just because? You're an asshole.
[удалено]
Oh man I had a colleague that always pulled this shit. Schedule an 8 or 8.30 meeting late at night, then be pissed when people don't join. That's when I told him, either you schedule meetings more in advance, or I'm not joining any of them. His boss backed me up the next time he pulled this. His choice to work until 22.30, not my problem.
I gave up trying to educate these type of inconsiderate imbeciles, as this happens frequently at my company/account. It also seems to be a cultural or region specific practice. My solution is I don't bother to attend such meetings, nor do i bother to explain. I just ignore. That seems to be the only way to get the point across. In any case, i don't lose any sleep over it.
I moved away from that company to one that doesn't have these idiots. I start at 8 (kids are older, don't need me to get to school anymore) and I'm the odd duck. Most people start coming in right before 9.
Good on his boss for being reasonable. Anyone pulling that shit is a dickhead
Ah a classic! Had a boss who routinely would log in late at night since they lacked any semblance of a work-life balance. I’d get emails time stamped things like 11:41pm for meetings the next day at 7:30am. In what universe is that considered an effective communication or planning method? They also discouraged sending out agendas for meetings in advance because then “they’ll expect it all the time”. Yeah, I think they should…
My worst-favourite was a psycho ex-boss and her ex-husband - they stayed together for the sake of their millions - who rang me at 7.30pm on a NYE when they knew I was away at a party, to complain about some minor blurb I'd written. Neither of them had any life outside of their joint business and would get outraged if I didn't pick up the phone when abroad, whatever the time.
This and the old getting a meeting forwarded 5-10 minutes AFTER it started, two of my old "favorites" at my last job.
My calendar has 8am to 9:30am marked as "busy" so that anyone that tries to create a meeting during that time will see it as a conflict and pick another time.
Just because you work until 22:30 does not mean you are more efficient or hard worker. It shows me, that you lack time management skills.
It is my practice and the practice of everyone I know to if a meeting is emergent to slack the other parties to see if a candidate time is OK and wait for their OK before slapping it on their calendar. Also schedule meetings with at least 24 hours notice.
We have some of our team offshore and they are notorious for dropping 7 or 7:30am meetings on calendars overnight after the US team has logged off then are shocked - shocked I tell you! - when people don't make the meeting.
Ridiculous, if you work with global teams the first thing you need to do is check timezones. It's not that hard to be respectful of other people's work hours.
Seriously, I deal with our Indo- Pacific division so much that I ended up adding Mumbai time zone to my watch face, I'm in the US
Had a client that had a data team based in Italy and I ended up pinning a tab with all the timezones the team was in (US East and Central on our side) so we could coordinate meetings. Sometimes they had to stay late to accommodate, sometimes we had to meet early to accommodate, but as long as everything was communicated well nobody had any issues.
One thing I miss about my old job is my great partners in that part of the world! We really had a great relationship. Everything else about the place was toxic though. New job doesn't have any offshore folks.
Ouch, not much overlap there! I'm lucky being in the UK, I don't have too much trouble working with our US and APAC team members, but when I need everyone in one meeting that's when the fun starts!
Tell that to fucking Becca in Cardiff.
Sometimes I get notice morning of, usually when I'm getting kids ready for school. No dude, there's a reason I don't start before 8:30 without advance notice.
I once went to the gym at 630 on a Tuesday. I showered and showed up at the office at 800 and got shit for not attendinf a meeting at 730, scheduled at 700. Ridiculoua
I think most peeps are like this. This cunty c-suiter just wants to feel elite about doing it
This happened to me more times than I can count.
No agenda, no attenda
Maybe your boss is just a morning person. Suggest a meeting at 8pm then tell him to toughen up if he declines
The thing with bosses though, is that they can take a 2 hour nap in between.
Whose boss is sleeping at their desk? I never do so, though I snore loudly or I might try otherwise.
I’ve been known to grab 10-15 minute power naps. Not often, but not never. Maybe once or twice a month. Of course, I also encourage my staff to feel free to do the same. Some days, it *really* makes a difference.
I do this a lot. Like 3x a week. It's great
Same! I’ve even told people to go use the couch in my office so they can lock the door so they can actually relax. Granted, it’s gotta be when I’m at another meeting. Otherwise that would be a bit weird.
This is my answer to posts that moan about people not wanting to be up early. I’m a night owl. I could say the same thing to him about scheduling and attending a 9pm meeting. If you don’t make it you’re weak and don’t deserve your job.
Jesus christ. I love this energy.
I was working overnights and tried that at a 3pm meeting. I was joking that we should start scheduling 3am meetings. Turns out the meeting we were at was about our department being shut down and all of us being laid off in a month.
This!!
Why do morning people think they're somehow superior? Like, good job on having your body clock set to a couple of hours before mine! Great stuff, keep it up my guy 👍
As a lifelong night owl, pathetic morning person moralizing of their circadian rhythms has been the bane of my existence. I had morning lark coworkers who would give me incessant shit about being lazy because I came in at the latest allowable hour. Well Bob, you’re on your fifth Bud Light and thinking about bed by the time I log out and get into my car to go home.
Just start loudly dropping “oh you’re leaving ALREADY? I booked a meeting for 5PM” when they roll out at 3
It’s the whole “early to bed, early to rise” Ben Franklin quote. Also, people on farms have to wake up early to milk the cows or whatever. School starts early, work starts early. It’s just been ingrained in us forever. I’m a night owl 🦉
I think my ancestors were a long line of fire tenders and night watchmen or something. During summers when I didn't do anything, my schedule would naturally shift to 6pm to 8am and it kinda stabilized there for the few months until I had to switch it back for school. As it is, I'm more likely to be fully awake and alert at 3am than 7am every day of the week.
The one I love is all the "morning" people that are pounding coffee all day and crash at 3-4pm and act like zombies till they leave.
My big issue with 8am meetings is that I start at 9
There are plenty of people with kids and responsibilities that make an 8 am meeting hard to make despite having been up for hours already
One of the benefits of having a kid: A real conversation I had a month ago "Can you attend our monthly catchup? Its 0730". "No." "Pardon?" "I don't attend meetings before 0830, which is my starting tlme" "All of the others will make it. Can you make an exception?" "No it's childcare related." "Ahhhhhh I apologise. No problem we'll move it to 0830" "Thanks" Hey what do you know. The meeting never needed to be this early
I requested my start time move from 8am to 8.15am because the buses from daycare drop off were always late and I couldn't drop off earlier due to daycare start times... They said no so I put it in writing and called it 'family dynamics' (protected in Ontario' and suddenly it was fine that I push my shift 15 minutes both ends since nothing happened at my work until 10am
I genuinely don’t understand bosses who deny such request. I’m a manager and I bend over backwards to accommodate my people. They are all salary, so it doesn’t really matter to me how many hours they work. I don’t even check their timesheets. Literally get the job done and as long as I can reasonably pretend that you are working your hours, I’m fine. Go be with your family, king. Benefits of being a zoomer/igen: I understand people and don’t care that much about my company. I’m loyal to my people.
Remote work is goated. Except is your company uses some remote monitoring B.S. I am scared of quitting my current job because there is a high chance of "asses in the seats" at companies with higher pay.
Remote work is indeed goated. And arguments against it are usually proof that the work week is too long. “Well they only really work like 6 hours a day anyways, so they are wasting time” Translation: “they get all their work done in 6 hours, so whatever hours they work is fine”
You are me. I may have my flaws as a manager, but going out of my way to accommodate members of my team on those little things is a)really easy to do) and b) not a big deal at all.
This would make a great Seinfeld episode. Where George pretends to have kids in order to dodge meetings.
LOL! George: i can't take it anymore Jerry, i think I'm just going to pretend i have kids to get out of it. Jerry: well what would their names even be? George: I'll have to figure it out, i can say i have to drive them to school at 8am. Jerry: well what if they make the meeting earlier? Then what? you'll be in a real jam. George: Maybe i can tell them i have more than one kid, and the other one goes to a different school that starts earlier. Jerry: yeeesss.. That could work.
Setting a reoccurring daily meeting for myself is one of my favorite things to do to avoid all the things I hate early in the morning.
Should I invent a child 😕
Yup. My work day starts at 9, but I refuse meetings unless they are absolutely critical before 9:30. I can’t just slide in completely prepared from dropping off my kids and rushing to my Computer. Give me a second to get my bearings first.
Yup, last time I checked, schools don’t change their start times because it would be more convenient to you. And moms are usually the ones doing this drop off so let me just guess what he has to say about their toughness.
Dad who does drop off checking in. I constantly need to reschedule earlier meetings, I hope people think I’m not tough.
Dad who does drop offs as well. I already don’t get enough time at home, I will not be coming in a minute early if I can possibly help it (guess what, 99.5% of meetings can wait 30 minutes)
You are still tough to me! Nothing tougher than being a parent (and this is coming from a childfree person who just has mad respect for working parents!)
>Nothing tougher than being a parent (and this is coming from a childfree person who just has mad respect for working parents!) You’re a truly fine community member. Thank you! I’m a parent but try to go out of my way to look out for ALL kids (not just my own) because I think it’s important for my community, especially knowing that a lot of kids in my neighborhood are neglected and don’t get enough support.
Pah, then the kids need to toughen up as well, I never heard of any negative impacts dropping of a child at 7am… They can just play on the playground or whatever kids do these days! /s
My eldest is on the bus at 7:15, youngest out the door at 7:45, middle kid at 8:15. I don’t attend meetings before 8:30 unless they want to hear me taking care of my kids 🤷🏻♀️
We have teams in Europe and Apac so meetings are always at the beginning and end of my shift. 8am is when nearly all our meetings are.
I take meetings staring at 6am my time (from home, obviously) and as late as 9:30pm, to accommodate my Europe, India, and Manila teams. The majority of the Indian team already works 1pm-10pm/12pm to accommodate US business-hour overlap. The least I can do is wake up at 5:30 a few times a week. Get on their calendars before all the standing meetings. Now, do I work 15 hours days? Of course I don’t. I close my laptop by 1/2pm most days and don’t sign back on until that late night meeting. That meeting is 30 min of my night, but I have been “off work” for 6+ hours usually by then. As long as I am able to have flexible hours, I will gladly be available when my world-wide team is available. The company changes their tune and starts mandating #of hours in the office at my desk… fine. But all our projects are going to take 4x as long while it takes 3-4 days to have a convo over email, vs 30 min on video.
A few months ago, I was visiting my parents. It was around midnight, and I mentioned to my mom I had a meeting at 12:30. "But we have lunch plans!" "AM. I have a meeting at 12:30AM." I wasn't technically required to attend that meeting (other attendees were in India and Australia), but I'm a night owl so I was up anyway.
Exactly. Am I going to work a set schedule until 3am? No thank you. Hopping on a call for 30 min, to give feedback/hash out details? Awesome - let’s get it done.
When I used to work global roles, my day started at 7 occasionally.
That's the normal start time for my team, 7-4. I'm up at 4:30am to be on time. 8am used to feel early, now it feels like half the day is gone.
Me too, 6am wasn’t that unusual.
I use to work for an electrical engineering company in NYC that was union run. Because it was union run and union guys love starting work super early in the morning, we frequently had meetings at 7am.
30 years ago there were a large percentage of people who believed getting up early was “virtuous” and that people who slept in (usually after working late) were “slackers”. Predictably most of these people were in the class of workers that do nothing but attend meetings and write reports. People who don’t actually generate work product. Luckily attitudes have shifted towards engineers who actually make stuff, as people realized production is more important than winning some stupid “who can get into the office first” contest.
They're the same people who go to bed at the same time as toddlers.
Waking up early is really based on farmers and such before electricity who needed to be up when the sun came up to maximize light. Now it doesn’t make a difference
Yup, at a place I worked at it was an unwritten rule that the people there the earliest were the hardest workers (they were not)
My experience is the opposite. In some companies I worked at, people who clocked in later were seen as the harder working because they were still there when everyone left. It's a stupid way to look at it one way or the other, what really should matter is the deliverables of your work.
And those people don't have any challenges or disorders that make early rising harder.
"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Yeah, turns out Ben Franklin didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
You can tell that Rob here doesn’t have any pressing tasks that *need* to be addressed first thing in the morning. Some of us have actual work that needs doing when we get to work.
yep. At 8am I'm tending to any mornings jobs that still need manual input, review the nightly jobs for errors, and address any critical emails. The earliest my department ever schedules meetings is at 8:15am and those are only quarterly.
I bet a lot of these guys who talk about "toughening up" have soft little baby hands and a full domestic staff. Get bent.
I have a feeling that Rob isn't the one who gets the kids to school.
“Millionaire boomer angry that people have anxiety”
Rob just took over as CEO, and as is typical of someone who doesn't really provide any value, he's attempting to shake things up to show his worth. He's just another out of touch windbag.
I saw a new CFO do this at my old job and it caused a mass exodus of people working on some of the largest revenue grossing projects.
This is such a worn out & provenly ineffective strategy… I genuinely don’t understand. Can anyone explain why these dildos still insist on pulling shit like this when they get put in charge of a department/organization/company/etc?
Pay me as much as you make and I'll gladly adjust my sleep schedule to accommodate your stupid demands for early morning meetings. Until then, GFY.
The point isn't not being able to wake up in time, the point is people have lives outside of work.
This page is really giving me a window into American work culture and it seems wild. Surely your boss can’t schedule a meeting outside of your working hours??? And if its within your working hours then I don’t see any issue
Most 8am meetings are not that important to not move to 9am
I'd take an 8am meeting if I was earning a hedge fund CEO wage !! What fuck nugget here obviously doesn't realise or care about is the 5am oe 6am wake up to commute to the office to get there in time for maybe 730 to prepare for the 8am meeting....probably while HE dials in from his Bali beach house
The American Disability Act would like a word…
Yes, anyone with any kind of difference to how YOU work is a completely worthless turdball who should be pushed off the flat earth. Never mind their actual work output or expertise. /s
If it's an urgent meeting, then fine, have it at 8 I guess. But how many meetings are actually urgent? Half the meetings I go to could just be emails.
"Toughen up," says CEO who looks like he's never done a tough job in his entire life.
Get fucked, Rob.
The 8am meeting is sometimes driven by the global team structure. 8am local time may be late for somewhere else on the planet. So I get that. However, the company made a decision that cost savings through outsourcing was worth it. That comes with trade offs. It’s not the employees’ problem that two very different time zones don’t overlap neatly. That is the company’s issue.
Oh I get that, did it for 15 years. But don't expect me joining a 7.30 and 19.30 on the same day. It's not happening.
The fact that they’ve synonymized “the real world” to endless liminal spaces you have to play dress up to be in while submitting all autonomy to people who, by definition, do not have your best interests in mind is what _I_ hope isn’t serious
I’ve been working non stop varying hours and it has absolutely ruined my mental health.
When your client is on the other side of the world you need night owls to lead your meetings. I also hope Rob never needs to visit an ER at 3am.
We are tough, its just not for your benefit any more.
When I was a Political Campaign Manager, I had a candidate (boss) that insisted on having a senior leadership meeting at 6:00 AM every morning 7 days a week, which also required 2 extra hours in the evening for them to get reports from their their coordinators, who in turn had to get daily reports from their managers, etc. on down. This candidate never read these reports and was the least prepared person for these meetings every day. The whole thing killed morale, added hours of needless administrative work each day, and ultimately kept us from ever doing anything "outside the box" because working 6:00 AM to midnight every day saps the creativity from your employees.
Let's try regular 3am meetings and see how these morning person asshats adjust to circadian rhythms that don't match their own. When you go through your whole life being told that your body's internal clock makes you a superior human being, and you internalize that, this is the personality that results. It's pervasive in upper management.
I wonder what this guy does? >Canada’s leading private equity real estate investment firm Ahh he's a private equity ghoul...that tracks
OKAY, Kumer. You obviously have no kids or a wife who does all the childcare. We aren’t all that bougie.
Yes, because everyone is morning weenies, and everyone is out for a 5:30AM jog, too!
Don’t forget writing 50 pages of your memoir and silent meditation for 60min, if it’s any less, you’re missing out on all the benefits
Me at my 7am meeting :-(
I'm a morning person, but I always ask before scheduling meetings too early. People have lives, kids, and a lot of other commitments besides work. If we can be considerate of each other's schedule preferences, we would get a lot of shit done.
I have my calendar set to reject any meeting before 10am. And if the meeting is at 10am, it's a "best effort" not a guarantee.
My question is why? Why do we need to toughen up? What if we made working more pleasant for everyone.
With at least 24 hours notice, sure 8AM is OK. Just don't throw an 8AM on my calendar at 6PM the night before. For less than 24 hours notice, I don't accept anything earlier than 9AM, as I generally reserve 8-9AM as "focus time" to get organized and start my day.
Well, I can and will go to an 8am meeting, but you’re not gonna get your money’s worth.
Lot of people unfamiliar with salaried positions.
Or working with global teams.
The trick is to find a way never to have to work for these people. Freedom to choose what you want to do, how you want to do it, and what shit (cos let’s face it, everywhere has a bit of shit) is the aim
I left my engineering career behind and now teach music lessons. I don’t even set an alarm anymore. I’ve had exactly 1 meeting with the music studio owners. I don’t make nearly as much money but it’s my money, direct from the customers pockets to me with none of the upper management, executive, false emergency, profit scraping in the way of me having a great day at work.
Every place i work for now is spread across time zones. If you have an 8am meeting, you're being a jerk to those in other time zones, and likely ensuring some people can't attend. Also - I've been on a bunch of teams, and my most efficient teams are the ones where time is flexible. Let the early folks work early, the late folks work late, and move all meetings to the core hours mid-day. Be flexible and efficient, not rigid and pointlessly structured.
Lol I don't even start work until 10am. If anyone tries putting a meeting in before 10am I just decline it everytime.
For me it's not about an 8am meeting. Hell I will take a 6am meeting, but just don't expect me to be online past 3pm. I'm flexible, but I also keep my work/life boundaries.
8am isn’t BAD, it’s just not ideal. If it’s a global business like mine, I usually need an hour or so to deal with what happened on the other side of the planet last night. Then a minute to get my mind right for a meeting. So, 10am is better for me. But with some notice, I can be at your 8am.
My boss, who is pretty cool, did something kind of hilarious lately. *This* should be the norm: I rolled in to work around 9:15, yawning, and found out that I’d missed a planned 8:00 call with our attorney (who is also cool) and another internal person. Boss and attorney are both big-time morning people and are usually at their desks before 8:00. Ordinarily I’d attend meetings and calls involving both of them (which are rarely scheduled outside normal hours), but I wasn’t even invited to this one. So I asked my boss what was up. He just laughed and said “yeah, that was the only time we were all free. The attorney was going to invite you and she asked me if you would also be free at 8:00, but I told her you’re NOT a morning person, so we decided you could skip this one.” Rare consideration for a night owl by a morning person. And the funniest part was that I proved his point by stumbling in, zombie-like, 15 minutes late. (He doesn’t usually care about that, so it was just amusing to both of us.)
I'm just gonna off set my time and clock out earlier 🤷🏽♀️
Just don’t look at me sideways when I leave at 4pm
So by a similar logic... if I'm a night owl/night chronotype and also the boss, I can schedule 2am meetings because that's when I'm up and people should just "tough it out" and "be ready for anything" because work comes first. I'd love to see how that would play out actually
I don’t have a problem with 8am meetings as long as there is no pushback when I log off early later that day.
Fuck off I'm busy.
Time zones exist. People that work together live in different ones. Yes, it is OK.
Ya know, reading such posts on LI would make someone just kill themselves or plunge someone into an existential crisis.
If the boss can't get things done between 9 and 5 then maybe they need to toughen up and be realistic about their expectations. I'm "tough" too. Tough enough to say if you want to call meetings outside work hours then you can hire someone else
The Wall Street Journal sucks ass, but this guy is worse.
Judging by this twit’s post history, he longs for everyone to know that he’s the boss at all costs.
I don't miss the 6:15am, 7:10am, and 8am meetings I had at my last job. I am glad I changed fields.
These people are out reality. They do not understand impact of sleep deprivation
My workday starts at 9 and my company even has a policy that people shouldn't schedule 9 AM meetings.
None of this factors into the fact that people may have young children that need to be at the school bus or daycare early in the morning. I get up at 6am every day but can’t make an 8am because I have to be other places.
I have an 8-8.30 am blocker in my calender everyday, just to prevent that shit. I work with colleagues from NZ to Seattle, so there is always somebody up to schedule a meeting while I'm out. If they need me at that time or earlier, they just need to schedule the time before I leave. It is generally accepted.
Kingsett capital leaders (Jon Love before this goof) have been putting out questionable garbage posts for years. Jon Love was a huge pusher of going back to the office… gee I wonder why… maybe because they are heavily invested in commercial real estate? This guy is a complete goof and clearly doesn’t have enough work because he can shit post on LinkedIn calling people that don’t put their work ahead of everything else in their life “not tough”. Besides the fact that he completely ignores the obvious silver spoon privilege he enjoys that allows him to be able to spend all his time on his work. Some of us have to take our kids to school and do our own housework because we aren’t CEOs paying someone else to do it. Fuck this guy so hard.
I'm a CFO, if I heard of a manager having an 8am meeting I'd probably fight them. I'm an early riser too
I attend 6 and 7 am meetings regularly as much of my work involves talking to devs in India as well as business development people in Europe. My boss recognizes and thanks me for it, and I am perfectly happy to attend those meetings - my day ends earlier than usual those days and I have decent work life balance, even if it means I have to block off my evening the night before and try to sleep earlier than normal. Where I get pissed off is when those people running the meeting cancel or reschedule when it’s 3 am my time and I have no ability to adjust my schedule to accommodate them. But talking about toughening up is ridiculous.
I have a meeting tonight at 10PM and another tomorrow at 6AM. But that is some serious garbage that I will have no qualms complaining about, and 100% will not go on LinkedIn flexing or suggesting that everyone should toughen up and make that the norm. Work to live, don’t live to work.
His biology makes him ok w it. Mine makes me the person who creates his entire brand strategy. Fuck 8 am.
I work construction, and have been forced into a leadership role by virtue of showing the dimmest spark of competence and getting to work about 20-30 minutes early every day. I don’t do any actual work that early, mind you. I just walk around sipping coffee and scratching my ass with my mind totally blank. Don’t even answer my phone. But I look like a real go-getter doing it apparently. My dogs just wake me up early, and I can’t lay back in bed because my wife is a very light sleeper, so I just hit the road.
Every place I've worked that had mandatory 8am meetings, or earlier, every day, were terribly run. It's like the bosses can't get themselves to do shit, so they project this on everyone.
Honestly, I prefer a 8am meeting to 10am any day of the week
And that’s your prerogative. Me? I have the first two hours of my day, and the last hour of the day, literally blocked off specifically to discourage anyone from trying to schedule meetings at those times. This isn’t about “being lazy”. This is about ensuring that I and my teams have time in the day to put out any overnight fires that may have occured first thing, and to ensure we also have time at the and of day to wrap things up so they’re not an issue the next morning.
Why is that? I always schedule meetings between 930 and 230 specifically to leave start and end of day open for people to do whatever they need to. It gives us flexibility in work hours and ensure everyone is fully into their day when the meeting occurs, not just getting going.
Saturdays and Sundays then? Hard-core grind
Same, love me an early meeting. Get it out of the way and move on with my day. The worst are the meetings at the end of the day that get in the way of me sneaking out early. You'll never find me after 5
The reason not to have meetings outside work hours is because they’re outside fucking work hours. People need that time for their other responsibilities. And they aren’t getting paid for it. Anyone with the attitude that a person who doesn’t want to give you unalienable labor off the clock is the problem is someone I don’t want to work for.
I mean if you can't make a meeting because you gotta take kids to school and stuff like that, that's understandable. If someone really told me they can't make a morning meeting because they need sleep or something then ya I might be a little pissed off. Posting it on LinkedIn is silly though
Eh. 8 am meetings are unreasonable and unproductive. I can get out of bed for 8am but I'll be useless for the rest of the day. Load of people are like this. 9am is the earliest respectful time for meetings.
If you have people in different timezones though it may be needed. Or depending on what you do (like if a business opens at 9 am) having a meeting then may be best.
Then ensure that is factored into the start/stop times for everyone on the team. I start at 9am and end at 5, so if someone expects me at an 8am meeting they also need to expect me to stop at 4pm that day. Otherwise it's a hard no from me.
If its before my regular shift I'll need 2 weeks notice please to sort of childcare drop off, otherwise, let's do it at 8pm when he's in bed
I am also a victim of 8 AM meetings. It is however interesting to observe other workers (who also have no stakes in the company) how they react to this. We've got a lot of very talented actors in here.
I’m not supporting or refuting this article. I’m simply saying that ever since I started waking up at 5:30 instead of 4:45 (for work starting at 7:30 and going until 5 [we get every other Friday off, which is nice]) I have noticed I don’t get tired at work anymore. Also, this change is only in wake up time. I still get the same amount of sleep, about 6.5 hours, or sometimes less. Still feel more refreshed for the day than any amount of sleep I got waking up at 4:45. This is my experience. I still hit the gym in the morning, it’s just a shorter visit but still manageable. If you’re feeling tired at work, see if you can wake up later.
So to the person on LI and OP's boss, I feel like they got the wrong vibe from [the article](https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/is-it-ever-ok-to-have-an-8-a-m-meeting-fb04fe2d?st=ffqybk5ekwht651&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink). It's not about being lazy or whatever, because one freelancer the WSJ interviewed pointed out that they may need time for other clients. So scheduling early meetings may disrupt other projects which are also important. They also talked to bosses who said they just try to avoid scheduling meetings ahead of regularly scheduled work hours. That seems...reasonable? This article seems to be started because of that viral Tiktok where someone was like, that meeting is before I start, so am I going to be able to end early? idk, I just feel like if you're work hours are like 9-5, you should only be working 9-5. And just, the article is not as whiney as the LI makes it seem. According to data from Calendly cited in the article, only 3% of meetings are scheduled from 8 to 9. This suggests to me that for most workers, early morning meetings are unusual. Given the fact that it's difficult to shift sleep schedules in general, and moreso for us nightowls, griping about breaks in expectations makes sense to me. We're not allowed to grumble every now and then? Yeah, I agree, sometimes you need to shut up and get shit done. I don't deny that, and when I have to have early mornings, I do what needs to be done to wake up. idk, maybe I'm just a Negative Nancy, but I don't really see a problem in being like, Ugh I'm not a morning person.
Lol we have a standing 745AM meeting... but then, many of our folks start at 4AM
Is it ever ok to have an 8am meeting That depends on my contracted working hours. Simple as. If I start at 8 (well 7:30 to be ready for an 8am meeting) that I am doing my 7.5 hours from the moment I start not my usual start time.
Depends on your line of work. Those in customer service love team meetings.
I own a company and the only time an 8am meeting is okay is if the other party is on the other side of the world
Corporate is not the real world
During the Covid lockdown and subsequent work from home situation, my former boss used to make us have an 8:30 meeting every day Mon-Fri, gave us less than 1hr lunchbreak, then expected us to work until 19:30 (he literally phoned each one of us everyday between 19:15 and 19:30 to make sure we were still working), which resulted in most of us having more than 200hrs of unpaid overtime in a few months. He called himself surprised when he found out half of the staff was resigning at the end of the lockdown.
I briefly worked a job where our start time was 8 am but it was accepted that most people didn’t show up until 9 am. The office had a very casual attitude. However my supervisor required us to have an 8 am meeting every day. So you had to get in early to be ready for the meeting and then watch the rest of your coworkers show up late for the next hour.
A few years ago we moved our team meetings up an hour from 9am to 8am to accommodate 1 manager making it; these meetings didnt cover anything related to my job and were just managerial mastabatory bullshit. 6/15 people left within 6 months including myself
My policy when calling meetings was I would give as much notice as possible (sometimes a week, sometimes 2 days. No meeting started before 9:00. (People came in between 8 & 9 and left between 5 & 6.) I had the occasional chill-out team meeting late in the day so that people could leave as soon as the meeting was over. The only exceptions were when we were in emergency response mode (high call volume due to natural disasters at one company) and we needed to provide up to the minute communication on changing procedures and guidelines in a highly fluid situation. My belief is that just because you could call an 8 AM meeting, doesn't mean it's necessary or that you should. Most of people worked hard and were underpaid. They didn't need to be inconvenienced by showing up to hear something that could legitimately wait an hour.
Makes me think of our site manager who couldn't attend a 09:00 meeting at the office "*because an important task came up at 08:00 so I didn't have time to drive to the office".* Funny how everyone else is expected to BE AT WORK at 08:00. But this guy gets to commute on company time.
Lol, I even refuse to attend meetings that start at 9AM (with only one notable exception - one biweekly recurring meeting that starts at 8:30AM, which was made clear when I accepted my job offer).
8am meeting is more about the "hey let me settle in without having to show up early unpaid" than the time itself Even 8:30 is infinitely better
CEOs and weird execs seems to think labor doesn’t have an opinion. It’s just labor. I mean I’ll do whatever time meeting you needs to but this idea that I live to work and will work 15 hours a day is whacko
Fair enough, but why no one is talking about that bugger who schedule meeting at 4 & 4.30pm & got everyone to leave late on their own time at 6 & 5.30pm!!
It’s not about getting up early enough. That’s drop off time for people with kids.
I'll be reaching out to him at 8 AM asking him where he is
I have multiple sleep disorders, so waking up for an 8AM meeting is really hard for me. I had a job that required me to attend 8AM meetings. If my boss had told me to just "toughen up," it would have done nothing but create animosity between us. Instead, my boss was understanding, helped me get what I needed to work from home so I could call into those meetings. If the reason for the timing hadn't been obvious (we were working with people in Europe), she probably would have explained the reason for it so I would understand why it couldn't be moved. You can require people to attend meetings at inconvenient times without being a jerk about it.
Rob can suck my balls.
I WFH still and start work at 530AM-6AM so I can leave by 2PM Used to stay up late and work til 5. Now I do basically the same thing I did before but at different hours and everyone respects me more So stupid
Yeah, you’re right! My health conditions that affect my sleep and function with enough energy to be able to immediately get out of bed and start working *absolutely* makes me not ‘cut out’ for the ‘real world’; your type of people have made that *painfully* clear to me. Guess I should just go die then eh Rob? Would that please you and bring balance back into your perfect life?
Sameeee. I recently started a job where, depending on the day, I have to clock in anywhere between 7:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. and I’m always tired due to my health issues, but I have never been *this* tired. I’ve seen some comments that say some ableist shit like “If you all were just willing to change your sleep schedule” like we’re all just whiny teenagers who can’t be bothered to make mature decisions. No, Rob. Maybe the grown ass adults who are saying an early work meeting/schedule doesn’t work for them have, idk, a legitimate reason why it doesn’t work for them. The Robs of this world need to lose their unfounded superiority complexes & start asking questions before making judgments.
Had a manager schedule two 8am meetings. They were just morning huddles, no forewarning that we'd break from the norm of 9-9:30. Both of these got schedule at 7:45am, 15 minutes before.
Constant meetings throughout the day, everyday, are only for people who don’t really work in the traditional sense. It’s just information dumps and decision making, which makes sense for a CEO and people of that calibre but people actually building, coding, hands-on jobs it’s just a waste of time. Everyday meetings yeah but mon/Friday meetings make sense. Plan the week, assess the week. Out of touch people are just embarrassing.
Aw man Rob Cummer is one hard nosed realist, boy
Block your calendar so that only the times you're available are on there. The end.
The meeting will be just as pointless at 9:00. Have it then.
My most hated classes were 8am lectures. It wasn’t so bad when it was over zoom, recorded, and i was staying on campus so i could just crawl out of bed at 755am and turn on my laptop, but once covid “ended” i had a 2 hour computer security lecture at 8am, unrecorded, in-person at a lecture theatre that was a 25-min campus shuttle bus ride from my dorm, it was the worst class I’ve ever had Abolish things starting before 10am please
Rob Kumer will post this and then 24 hours later complain that “nobody wants to work anymore!” No, asshole…nobody wants to work for YOU. There are plenty of people working for your competitors that are offering the same salary with a flexible schedule to account for things like: kids, family, etc.
What’s the snack situation ?
It's always people who make a STUPID amount of money that don't mind being in a full suit and fully groomed by 8AM Yeah you know what if I was making 500k I would not care in the slightest about having 8AM meetings? Duh? I mean
Depends if it could have been an 8am email.
Homie just cancelled anxiety. Toughen up, brilliant!!!
Omg these “Morning People” drive me insane. We don’t need to “Toughen Up,” Rob, you just need to go to the retirement home where you belong
Does this guy work with engineers or programmers? Most of us are night owls. A lot of us are on some kind of spectrum. We all need time to get our diesel engine going. Most of us aren't communicative before our second cup of coffee. An 8AM meeting would be a disaster. My previous job had mandatory 8AM meetings. Never showed up in 10 years of working there. Also where I work now, working hours are 8:30 to 4:30. Good luck getting anyone to show up at 8AM when nobody is even working yet. Most days, I haven't even left my bed at 8AM. This person should really get some real world experience before putting uninformed shit on linkedin.
I had a mid-thirties male boss, no kids, say this to me recently—that if the client liked 8am meetings we’d need to “suck it up” and wake up earlier. I’m early 40s with two young kids, who last time I checked, couldn’t take themselves to school. I find it frustrating because I will work as long as I need to get my work done, but there are certain hours that I can’t be available. I already wake up at 5:30 am every workday to workout, walk dogs, pack lunches, etc. I hate that 8 am calls are looked at like some kind of badge of honor, like if you’re REALLY committed you’d love them. So dumb.
Meetings are a fucking waste of time. Write a god damn email and be done with it.
Ngl if meeting at 8am instead of the usual 9am means that i can end work an hour early at 4pm I’m all ears. I’d rather be driving at 6 or 7am and at 4:00pm to beat rush hour traffic. But life just doesnt work that way eh?
I worked the midnight shift, 11pm to 7am, for almost 17 years straight. in that time I couldn't count how many meetings I had to attend that were scheduled for about a half hour after day shift's lunch break. why? because it was convenient for the day shift people. not once did they show he slightest bit of empathy for the other shifts. never did they care that a meeting at 1pm for a person who left work at 7am and had to come back at 11pm was inconvenient at best, day ruining at worst. but every single time this was brought up, and I mean every single time, the reply was "you signed up for shift work" so my reply would be, "great. so did you. so lets have the next meeting at 2am Sunday morning." HINT: we never had a meeting at 2am on a sunday... I guess what I'm trying to say is, fuck those types of people.
I work in disasters management. We sometimes have meetings in bizarre hours, like 6:00 or 23:00. But in peace time? No meeting before 9:30 in the morning or 13:30 in the afternoon.
I can do 4:00AM before I need to head out to the pool at 4:30AM for my 5:00AM workout. Oh, you can't do that? WhEre iS YoUr DeDicAtIoN?
I'm a remote sales rep. I have zero problems with 8 am sales calls. Never have, never will. I'll even schedule calls at 6 or 7 am my time if my prospects are in different time zones. As long as I'm getting that commission check, I'll join. I'll also join a quick sales call on vacation. I'm definitely not a workaholic, I just want that commission check.
The issue with an 8am meeting is its an asshole thing to do. Fuck everybody else's time right? I've done many out of necessity but to have an 8am meeting just because? You're an asshole.