Atwood leaves StackExchange … Coding Horror is resurected?

Although some meetings are inevitable, even necessary, the principle he’s advocating here is an important one. Meetings should be viewed skeptically from the outset, as risks to productivity. We have meetings because we think we need them, but all too often, meetings are where work ends up going to die. I have a handful of principles that I employ to keep my meetings useful:

  1. No meeting should ever be more than an hour, under penalty of death.

    The first and most important constraint on any meeting is the most precious imaginable resource at any company: time. If you can’t fit your meeting in about an hour, there is something deeply wrong with it, and you should fix that first. Either it involves too many people, the scope of the meeting is too broad, or there’s a general lack of focus necessary to keep the meeting on track. I challenge anyone to remember anything that happens in a multi-hour meeting. When all else fails, please keep it short!…