Companion to the article I reshared the other day, here's Charles Stross getting in on the

Companion to the article I reshared the other day, here's Charles Stross getting in on the interruptions issue...

There's a corollary of this, of course, which also happens in meetings that programmers get "invited" into, which is where the primary discussion is irrelevant to 90% of the meeting participants, people will increasingly start to switch off, and then be completely floored when you ask them for their opinion.

When this happens to me I think it's 50:50 whether I will make shit up on the spot (which is something I can always do) or whether I ask someone to repeat something until I understand what I should say.

Staying awake in meetings is hard. Back in the 90's when I was working in government I used to do that by designating myself as the recordkeeper, which is a very powerful position (i.e. the person who writes the authoritative history of the meeting). I cared more about titles in those days, I think.