Meetings Q&A and Videos

Big companies have multiple teams across. There will be a team just for the login, a team for backend logic, etc. There are so many teams and microservices and internal jargon all around.

Problem is during team meeting, seniors have more in depth discussion where I'm unable to provide value as good as them.

How do I get familiar with them fast? Or am I focusing on the wrong idea and should just narrow down what I'm working on and just let time do its thing?

Thanks

Hey all,

I am about to have a conversation with my manager for asking me to convert into full time.

I am an international student in USA and I have tried to search for FT’s but in current job market where a lots of companies are on hiring freeze i dint get a lot of opportunities and very few opportunities i got wanted to hire me at lower salary than I am earning in my current internship. So, I want to stick with the company am working with. Also, I loved the team and work culture there are strictly no complaints. All the team and my manager are impressed by 2 projects that I did in my duration of internship.

So in my next call what all things I should include/highlight to make the transition from an intern to full time?

With all the remote work, more people are opting to not use cameras in meetings. On one hand that means you can not have to worry about looking put together, but on the other hand it makes remote work more painful

Questions for the community:

• do you prefer cameras on or off?
• if your team is primarily a camera off, do you think its worth it to ask for camera on?
• Do you find meetings more effective with cameras on?
• How does this change if you are fully remote vs. hybrid/in person

When I say meetings, I am referring to small huddles/quick zoom call with your coworker(s) to help or ask for help on some bug or brainstorm stuff. By large no one really pays a ton of attention in large more formal meetings anyways

Hello,

I am working as an Entry level engineer at mid size product based company. In my end year performance review, I got a feedback that I can work on improving my debugging and technical skills more. As well as, knowledge of other features and overall product as a whole would need to be increased as well.

My Tech lead has offered to mentor me by conducting 1:1 sessions to help me improve at debugging and help identify patterns and teach basic principles. 2 other senior engineers on the team also reached out and offered to conduct sessions regularly with me, for which I am really grateful.

For more context, all my teammates work remotely, so it is not beneficial to go to office. My question is, how can I best utilize these sessions with the senior engineers on team to improve more and skill up? That is, what kind of preparation/ questions should I have ready to make the most of these sessions?

Throughout my career as an engineer I've often not spoken up for fear of not saying the right thing or looking dumb in meetings. I'm wondering what are some effective tactics to have "good" opinions in meetings and become a leader?

Sometimes people forget to follow up on their Action Items from meetings. They sometimes misremember meeting decisions as well. To mitigate this, I usually take detailed meeting notes in Google Docs and tag people on the Action Items they're responsible for. However, we don't always have meeting notes (e.g., for an ad hoc situation). What are some best practices for avoiding misunderstandings?

I am working on building a framework and often I need help from a IC XFN partner to keep making progress in the project. However, many times they would not respond back or give vague responses on chat threads. When I set up meeting with them, they would not be quick to respond to meetings. I once asked them that I had certain questions that I documented after going through their codebase and need answers from them, however they would not take me seriously. How do I handle this in a positive way, keep making progress and unblocking myself? I want to building meaningful relationships with XFN partners and would like them to respect me however, it seems they are not reciprocating the same

Hey Taro members,

Since in most companies, I believe the 1:1 with Managers is biweekly or weekly I was thinking about what to communicate in every meeting. At times, I run out of things to discuss. We cover topics related to how tasks are going, feedback if any, and after that, there's not really anything else. Given the fact these meetings are recurring, I want the communication to be more natural. Any advice for that since I do realize the importance of 1:1's and would like to make the most of it?

Also, any other topics besides the ones mentioned above that should be discussed in 1:1 something I can initiate a discussion about as an Entry Level Engineer and make the most out of these 1:1s?

Thanks.

I am working on a component with eta 2 weeks. This is to write just the application logic and doesn't include any infra setup or APIs. I am not blocked with any major issues. I am new to this team. My update is like I am working on xx component and continue working on it today. Can I get ideas on various ways to update?

My org VP holds office hours every week. Also he sometimes does AMA sessions. I'm usually not sure what to ask so I don't avail those sessions as I don't want to ask any stupid questions.

I just joined a new team within a Google Infra team and have been attending many team meetings and architecture planning discussions. I’m very quiet in these meetings and don’t feel comfortable saying anything - I’m afraid I’ll say something stupid, or I’ll be exposed as someone who shouldn’t be a senior engineer.

I'm an E5 at a Big Tech company. My team's working on a very ambiguous project. 3 opinionated, vocal engineers (2 E6, 1 E5) tend to sidetrack our brainstorming discussions by playing devil's advocate to shoot down ideas. How do I drive these meetings forward with this dynamic? We often rehash the same discussions over and over. When we're close to reaching a decision, oftentimes someone would throw a wrench into things. Moreover, some engineers require upfront planning and want to finalize all the details before committing, while others prefer to defer the details to future milestones. Both my manager and team are getting frustrated, but are unsure how to fix this.

I'm an E5 at a Big Tech company. There are several loud, opinionated, dominant personalities on my team. Some of them are E6. They often talk over each other as well as the rest of the team, so the rest of the team rarely contribute to discussions anymore. When a teammate (E5) presented his RFC to our team today, the dominant personalities started questioning his design decisions and talked over him when he tried to defend them. My teammate looked so discouraged and beaten down at the end of that meeting. When I brought this up to my EM in a 1:1, he said it's a people problem -- people are not being respectful. I asked my EM if he could coach those people, but he said he prefers to invest in people like me who are interested in learning & growing.

• Is this a lost cause?
• Are there techniques to handle these dominant personalities skillfully? Or do my teammates & I just need to develop "thick skin"?