Indirect ways of finding out what a company's meeting culture is like?

[Latecomer131]

I hate meetings, and one of the reasons that I am looking for a new role, is the volume of meetings that I have to attend in my current job.

I work in a technical role. However, at my workplace, everyone involved in a project is expected to attend both a weekly internal meeting for each project, as well as a meeting with the client.

I often have little (or nothing) to say at these meetings, as they are very PM focused. I am still required to attend though, as here's a culture of having everyone from the project at every meeting "just in case".

About half of my working week is taken up with these (largely pointless) meetings, and I feel that I am engaged in a constant battle to keep sufficient time free in my calendar to do my actual work. (A lot of my work is quite technically complex, and involves coding, etc. so it's not the kind of thing that you can pick up in a spare half hour between meetings, as it requires decent chunks of time to get anything done).

I have interviews coming up, and I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for questions that I could ask the interview panel, which would help tease out what the organisation's meeting culture is like. I obviously don't want to say "I hate meetings, how many would I be expected to attend in this role"?

(Disclaimer for the SPAG pedants. I have dyslexia and dyspraxia - another reason the multiple meetings situation creates issues for me. Please don't focus on typos that may appear here. I am typing on my phone, so I can't run this through grammarly before posting).

As each project team is likely to have its own "meetings culture" I doubt you'll get a reliable answer in an interview situation. Asking the question could give a negative impression that you aren't a team player.

However, at my workplace, everyone involved in a project is expected to attend both a weekly internal meeting for each project, as well as a meeting with the client.

How long is each meeting? Even if you are working on say 2 projects, that would be about 4 hours in total (if 1 hr internal, 1 hr client each for 1 hr duration). You said it takes up half your week, is that actually the case?

Could you ask to attend part time, on the basis that, if you attending all the meetings each week means you don't have the time to actually deliver?

Have you looked at Glassdoor? If a company is on there then you might find people have added information about company culture on there. I found a lot of useful stuff from people reviewing my last company.

I feel your pain though - I can’t stand having meetings for their own sake either.

I obviously don't want to say "I hate meetings, how many would I be expected to attend in this role"?

You could phrase it more neutrally though.

E.g. 'is there much interaction with others in this role?'

Would something around "what percentage of the working week would be dedicated to coding rather than meetings or similar?"

"How are interactions managed between PM, Client and technical staff?"

You could ask how the time is split up on an average week, e.g. is it 25% team meetings, 70% individual work, 5% client meetings. Ask lots of questions about what the role involves, a typical day etc

I think, similar to a PP said, you need to ask how much time you could expect to work on your actual job. From that, can gauge how much time you'll be in meetings. You then don't have to ask outright and get the bonus of sounding keen about the role.

I quite often ask 'what does a typical day look like?' or something innocuous like that

Thanks. There are some really good suggestions here. In particular, "what does a typical day/week in this role look like" seems like a neutral way to get at the issue.

To add clarity to my comment about the meetings taking up close to half the week: 1) I am usually working on 3-4 projects at a time. 2) In addition to the project and client meetings (to which I usually contribute very little) I have ad hoc one-on-one meetings with colleagues who I am working with on technical outputs. (These smaller meetings are very useful and necessary).

In my previous job, meetings were mainly these types of one-on-ones, and all project team meetings were much rarer. This set up left far much more time to do my actual job, and I didn't have the stress of constantly trying to ring-fence meeting free time in my calendar. Going back to my old workplace is not a viable option though, as my old line manager and overall boss were awful.

I completely sympathise on this, have had similar too and understand the frustration. Luckily on some of mine I’ve been able to turn off my camera, lower the volume and carry on working. Can be awkward when asked for input and you’ve not caught the context!

I’d ask about their process (agile, etc) as an entry point for discussion, and then ask around how that works with them re: meetings etc and take it from there, hopefully you’ll be able to glean some useful info.

You could ask on specifics- eg does the role involve regular client meetings? how much autonomy does the role have? how often do technical people interact with PMs etc? How is communication managed?
Some firms have more of an email communication style- meetings only required- other firms do everything via meetings- but also may require everyone to contribute , face to face etc, It may not be a firm culture but localised to departments or even individual managers
I think your existing company seems very rigid in its approach as well.

You should take into account that different projects will be run differently so one might have less meetings, some more.

Also if you do not add value to a meeting, you should be raising this with the PM and discussing a suitable outcome.

Agree with PPs who suggest just framing differently. "What does client management / project management look like here and what is my expected role in this?" And also even as skills you've developed over the last couple of years or when when asked about overcoming difficulties - "I've really worked with my current team about understanding where the "value add" is for each of us being involved at different touch points with clients, and concentrated my time on the technical aspects and let project managers handle client relationships and it's been a great improvement - better use of time and more productive / less delays to projects" etc etc and then you can have a bit of a discussion with them about it.