Offsite talk · 10 minutes · 6 slides
Speed is a choice.
A short talk on why the team got slower this year, what the checkout rewrite taught us, and the one thing everyone can do by Friday.
01 / 06
We got slower this year, and nobody decided to.
Same people, more headcount, longer projects. That's not a talent problem. It's a calendar problem.
image · generated
02 / 06
41%
of engineering time is spent in meetings, per our own survey.
Two days a week, gone before a line of code is written.
03 / 06
The checkout rewrite: planned 6 weeks, took 14.
Weeks 1 to 4Waiting on decisions that needed a meeting to exist
Weeks 5 to 10Two teams built the same thing twice, because alignment lived in people's heads
Weeks 11 to 14The actual work
04 / 06
Stop.
Status meetingsReplaced by a written update, read when you like
The weekly deckNobody reads it. We measured.
Pre-readsSame. If it matters, it goes in the update.
05 / 06
Start.
Written updatesLike this one. Decisions and owners, in writing, linkable.
Two no-meeting daysTuesday and Thursday. Calendars blocked by default.
Alignment is a docNot a meeting. If two teams disagree, they write it down and someone decides.
06 / 06
The ask: kill one meeting by Friday.
Pick the one you'd least miss. Replace it with a written update. We'll compare calendars at the next offsite.