Regarding too much meetings

[Nik]

Hi all,

So I just started work at a company recently, and I notice that the culture seems to be very meeting-intensive. To summarize, they basically have a inter-department meeting totalling 4 hours a day, give or take, and that's not including the smaller / individual meetings and discussions within each team itself. This happens to everyone except for 1 - 2 people because of their job scope.

Because I'm new, I haven't been involved too much in all these meetings yet.

Essentially, the working day of most of my colleagues there is basically : 5-hour-meeting-then-3-hours-work, plus 1 - 2 hours of overtime cos' they can't finish the work due to meetings.
I understand CEOs and upper management types tend to have lots of meetings, but we're not on that level.

My question is: should I try, whenever possible, not to get involved in this whole meeting chaos? Like during meetings, maybe I just ask a question or so, or throw in a comment to wayang a bit, because if get involved too much, I'll get pulled into more of these as time passes.

I personally feel it's very unproductive, IMO.

Also, for example, if my working hours (on the contract) says 9.30 AM to 6.30 PM, and I leave around 6.35 - 6.45 PM, is that ok? Of course work can never be cleared totally, but generally speaking, as long as I can more or less reach deadlines, it's ok? Sometimes I feel awkward leaving the office on time when my colleagues are staying back 1 - 1.5 hours late, but I believe in having a life outside work daily, not just weekends.

Pls advise. Tks!

Originally Posted by Nik

Hi all,

So I just started work at a company recently, and I notice that the culture seems to be very meeting-intensive. To summarize, they basically have a inter-department meeting totalling 4 hours a day, give or take, and that's not including the smaller / individual meetings and discussions within each team itself. This happens to everyone except for 1 - 2 people because of their job scope.

Because I'm new, I haven't been involved too much in all these meetings yet.

Essentially, the working day of most of my colleagues there is basically : 5-hour-meeting-then-3-hours-work, plus 1 - 2 hours of overtime cos' they can't finish the work due to meetings.
I understand CEOs and upper management types tend to have lots of meetings, but we're not on that level.

My question is: should I try, whenever possible, not to get involved in this whole meeting chaos? Like during meetings, maybe I just ask a question or so, or throw in a comment to wayang a bit, because if get involved too much, I'll get pulled into more of these as time passes.

I personally feel it's very unproductive, IMO.

Also, for example, if my working hours (on the contract) says 9.30 AM to 6.30 PM, and I leave around 6.35 - 6.45 PM, is that ok? Of course work can never be cleared totally, but generally speaking, as long as I can more or less reach deadlines, it's ok? Sometimes I feel awkward leaving the office on time when my colleagues are staying back 1 - 1.5 hours late, but I believe in having a life outside work daily, not just weekends.

Pls advise. Tks!

Welcome to the working world!

If your intention is to siam meetings, then I suggest you get a frontline operations role instead, Most corporate job consist of endless meetings, as a newbie if your mentality is you want to be "productive" by not wayang and contributing to meetings or come up with excuses to escape, then you are in for a rough ride.

As for contract hours it all depends at the end of the day how desperate you are for the job. In Singapore it is not advisable to leave on time as the work culture frowns on people who leave on the dot. If you are the happy go lucky kind who dun care about career or getting a perm job, then by all means just leave when you are done. Otherwise better observe what everyone is doing and start playing the game.

At the end of the day know this, it is not that you are the only smart one who somehow figure out all these wayang is stupid, all your colleagues actually know it better than you, just that they have chosen to play the game that's all.