Not sure if this is only happening here, but it seems that post-covid, the cultural norms seem to have shifted. People now seemingly find it acceptable to sit in meetings with their laptops open, clearly not taking notes or paying any attention to the speaker, typing away.
I get that not every talk is relevant to you, but I find it extremely disrespectful to the speaker to do that sort of thing. A bit like being on your phone during a date (people actually do that). People spend a lot of time and nerves preparing their presentation, so even if it’s not that interesting to me, I listen and engage.
I’m seeing juniors and seniors alike doing this and it just makes my blood boil, not just that people are doing this, but that this seemingly has been normalized?
What happened? I’m not old, but it makes me feel old. In my day we used to wear an onion on our belt, and also paid fucking attention (or pretended to) when someone presented their work.
Comments
It’s very strange
Can’t speak to your specific situation, but workload increased dramatically and hasn’t let up. Fewer people to do more work means people are pressed for time. While multitasking is shown to be inefficient, it gives the individual a greater sense of control.
Yes, I’ve seen this happen at conferences too. I understand why it happens but I also think it should be avoided at all costs. Creates such a rubbish academic culture.
Eh, my PI was working on a grant during my qualifying exam in 2013. (I passed with zero revisions)
I view it as a pose and a protest. I am so important and busy. You don’t even understand these conjectures I tackle. Don’t burden me with your pithy meetings.
Preach!!
Not sure what field you’re in, but being part of a big collab I can easily fill 40 hrs of my week just sitting in meetings. There’s ongoing work of 4000 ppl. Then there’s group meetings, student meetings, somebody needs something at random, there’s a seminar at the institute at least 3 days a week. I wouldn’t get anything done if each of these took my full attention.
I would need to be extremely selective about what talks I attend, the talks would have to be much better scoped, limited, and well rehearsed.
An average talk I listen to, half of it I know, the other half I don’t care for one reason or another, if I get lucky 10% is new information I find useful or interesting. The thing is, it’s hard to know ahead of time.
Not everyone engages in meetings the same way. Writing things down can still be active listening. I’ve always done it; I’m actively taking notes. When I haven’t my laptop, I’m writing constantly in a notebook. I find these assumptions strange.
I see it a lot, I’m pretty busy but I’ve never once felt the need to just carry on working say during a faculty meeting, even when I’m not paying attention to whatever they’re talking about
Probably half the people summoned to the meeting shouldn’t be there.
and then they are sometimes so fucking loud
If it makes you feel better/worse I remember TAing this class 20 years ago and dude would sit at the back with a Newspaper. Like the old-timey, full-size, cringey-page-turning newspaper. But yeah, people can be idiots and rude. Maybe take a picture with your phone from the front and broadcast them on the screen while they misbehave. You might lose an allay, but I bet you people will stop doing it in your talks.
A key collaborator travelled several hours to attend an in-person meeting with us, and then sat on her laptop attending a meeting on Zoom DURING our meeting. She only looked up to say things to her colleague – this was while someone else was presenting at the front. Honestly, no idea what this person’s deal was and also worst co-authorship experience of my career so far.
I don’t feel bad about using my laptop or smartphone during a faculty meeting because my chair is wasting everybody’s time. Our faculty meetings are often 90 minutes, and they could be as short as 15 minutes if the conversation were focused and faculty were sent relevant information before the meeting.
As for what I am doing … usually the same thing I am doing while working in my office. But, sometimes, I’m watching Champions League matches.
I’ve been seeing this a lot, well before COVID, at the professor level
I was a grad student…but if I attended a meeting and my laptop was open, I was usually taking notes on my laptop, highlighting the power point slides if they were available, and taking g note of any follow up questions I may have. Sometimes id do a quick Google to look up a co kept they mentioned that I was not familiar with for clarity.
I don’t mind when it happens during meetings, but I have taught classes where students weren’t paying attention, and that really annoyed me. It was a small class with about a dozen students, and it was over a very specific topic that really required their daily attention.
People want to be productive, not sit in useless meetings and listen to presentations about nothing.
If you spent a lot of time and nerves preparing presentation that nobody wants to listen to, you are the fucking problem.
i used to be against this
then something snapped
too much work. not enough goddamn REAL info in meetings/presentations
i have now become that which i hate.
^i ^don’t ^clack ^my ^keys ^tho.
I typically try to practice being present at meetings, but I also recognize that there have been times that I was told I was needed in a meeting when the content of the meeting really was not the most important part of my day, week and possibly even year. I practice the belief that bureaucracy was originally created to install order, and once order was installed, bureaucracy remained intact to reinforce. Bureaucracy. Meetings fall well within that…. People often hold meetings to feel important and to communicate what could have been communicated over email or possibly didn’t need to be communicated at all, not because it was necessary, but because it made them feel important. When that’s the case, yes, I get my laptop out and do work that I actually have to do and that my clients need from me.
If I don’t have a laptop open, I will glaze over 90% of the time even if the speaker is excellent. If I have something else to pick at while they are talking, they will probably have my attention 50% of the time and I will tune in whenever they say something particularly important. I have told my senior colleagues that they can either have 10% of my attention or 50%.
I don’t use a laptop when it is a small group and the speaker is unconfident and/or inexperienced.
I have never been able to learn by being spoken at. As an undergraduate I either skipped lectures or sat there with notes to read from a different module.
Meetings are usually unnecessary so I don’t mind people using laptops in those. Research talks are less acceptable but, as a speaker, I don’t mind it all that much.
Maybe people have gotten used to multi tasking during zoom calls back during the pandemic and now it’s translated to irl meetings?
I have 6 to 10 hours of meetings per week, if I want to not work too much at night, I have to do some work during these meetings, whether it’s answering emails, communicating with students, or writing whatever report admin wants me to submit for a previous meeting/training I attended.
We are doing this because the meeting is pointless and a waste of our time, so we are actually doing the thing we are evaluated, promoted, and retained by: Research and Writing.
I have shit to do while listening to you. Blame leadership for increased workload. We fear for our jobs if we’re not productive enough. So unfortunately, people only get 1 ear during their presentations, or I’ll just skip it entirely.
More reasons. Some of these meetings are often irrelevant and people have shorter attention spans.
This isn’t new. I had to ask the guy next to me in a board of examiners to type more quietly as he was drowning out the chair. That was about 2014. It was completely normal then.
What I love is lab heads (lab in the French sense, so they are representing 10-100 people) are at meetings with university governance and don’t listen… then say “but you never said this”. Yes, we did, you weren’t listening.
So many meetings…so much grading to do too…50% for each!
Part of this may be behavior from Covid. We all got used to answering emails and stuff during zoom meetings – has carried over to in person meetings
You do not deserve the respect you demand, your topic is not close enough for them to pay full attention, and more importantly, the stuff they type is likely directly relevant to what they are paid for, and listening to you is not.
But more importantly, how you take it is subjective. Another person would be grateful they spared their presence. I find it always a bit weird to give such talks, since laptops or not, half of audience is just not interested, and yet those who listen want to hear everything in detail. Focus on them. Also consider spicing talks up, public speaking incorporates capturing attention, it is your responsibility, not theirs.
…Sometimes people take notes on their laptops because it’s faster for them than writing?
Because these parts of our jobs require too much of our attention. The meetings aren’t worthwhile, but attendance is expected. For example, for some reason, our department decided to devote 30 minutes of each monthly faculty meeting to listening to our self-appointed AI guru bang on about AI. It’s the middle 30 minutes, and I can’t really leave. So I take care of email.
There are positive and effective ways to build community in academia. I’ve seen it happen with things like weekly department seminars. No one types away during those. And then there are the negative and ineffective ways, like endless information-dump meetings.
Capitalism sucks and academia is a shitshow anymore
What am I gaining here though by paying attention? Am I getting paid more? Am I getting a points or a grade for it in a school setting? No? Then fuck off, I got better shit to do 😂 if it’s work, it could’ve been an email, if it’s school, I’m studying and taking notes otherwise and the content likely isn’t direct content of the course it’s just obligatory skills demonstration
During a 3-person team meeting on zoom, my dept head forgot they were screen sharing and started looking at their social media while the other team member was talking.
Good Lord have you been to most department meetings? Answering email is the best use of the time.
How do you know they’re NOT taking notes?
For me, it’s either me doing that or falling asleep lmao
My unit recently remodeled the room we use for faculty meetings and removed the tables. Now with just a bunch of seats there, just about nobody is on their laptops due to the poor ergonomics.
At my previous institution, we just banned the use of laptops in faculty meetings and colloquia.
It’s the amount of work I have and then the shear number of meetings I’m expected to be at. I’d not show up but then I would get people asking me why I’m not there. I do try my hardest to tune in for important points but ultimately if I’m at a talk for something so far beyond my field that I understand less than 10% of what is happening, I’ll be doing my own work
Because I have so much more work to do and meetings keep getting longer
I had a job where self important nobodies (typically working in “business development”) did this all the time, and I always thought it was extremely rude. why the hell are you at the meeting then? someone’s talking to you, explaining something to you personally, and instead of listening you’re loudly typing on your laptop, which clearly sends the message that you don’t give a shit about that person.
the same people loved lecturing about team spirit, leadership and respect.
I’m taking notes so I remember what everyone is supposed to do before the next meeting.
I don’t get paid enough to take work home more than I already do so I’m getting it done in meetings.
Most meetings or presentations are absurd and too long. If your workload is heavy you can’t sit still for 45 mins and then expect to work overtime.
People nowdays prefer to go home on time.
I would say is mostly boomers who don ‘t understand that
If its okay for you to do this during meetings, then is it okay for students to do this during your lectures? I don’t have an answer to this, genuinely wondering. I actually have more sympathy for people who fall asleep during my lectures than I do for people who sit there and do social media the whole time. In both cases, I know that they have a better chance of getting something out of the lecture than they would be if they weren’t there at all. But the loud typing is just so damn disrespectful of me and more importantly of the people around them who might be trying to pay attention. At least sleeping is mostly pretty quiet.
Edit: I realize the loud typers are usually banging out an essay or assignment for some other class. Social media is actually pretty quiet too. It’s irrational that it bugs me more when they are sitting in my class and doing work for another class more than it does when they are watching youtube in my class with their headphones in. But it does.
What you have here is a shift the meeting dynamics that hasn’t really change the way we work just yet. A lot of people are required to be in meetings that don’t relate to them and they’re required to listen to benign speeches that don’t matter to their jobs. Elon Musk, as much as everybody hates them, said that if the meeting doesn’t pertain you in the first 5 minutes you can get up and leave.
But you can’t do that in corporate America still to this day which makes no sense to me. I don’t like meetings. I don’t like boring meetings. And after 5 minutes I will open my laptop or my phone and start doing something else if it doesn’t pertain to me whatsoever.
The sad part is people have not really figured out how to run a meeting effectively or what they’re all about. I think in 10 years you’re not going to see this habit because meetings will change dramatically. At least I hope so.
norm for at least 20+ years
U sound like a boomer
It depends.
Assuming there is a speaker (e.g., in a talk style setting), then indeed the point could be made that it would only be considered to the speaker to have their undivided attention. But this argument only really makes sense if the speaker also makes sure that the content is 100% relevant for all of the audience and concise. And honestly, that is hardly ever the case. So here the follow-up question would be what norms there are in place to address this fact. Is it OK for members of the audience to get up and leave once they find that the relevance of the talk to their work is little enough so that they will forget after ~3 days what the talk will be about? Nothing in place? So how can the audience know not to be trapped unproductively in some talk that goes on and on? (I’ve been to talks where the host stretched the Q&A session afterwards to an hour, most of the people in the room were not interested in the questions, and the only unlocked door was right next to the podium – funnily, that department saw little attendance of talks of academic guests). It looks like starting to work on the laptop is the least intrusive alternative.
Similar for committee-style meetings. Not everone can contribute to every agenda point. That’s OK. But if the norm expects everyone else to do nothing while waiting, then there is suddenly a huuge incentive to skip these meetings. You can’t blame people to be efficient with their time. Making working on the laptop during meetings the norm appears to be the least disruptive way of addressing this problem.
It’s a form of resistance against required in person meetings.
I was required to go to a new faculty orientation with an hour + presentation on how to use canvas. I have been building courses on canvas for other institutions for years. I worked on other things during the presentation 🤷🏻♀️
My work and meeting load is so high that it necessitates multitasking if I want to have any semblance of an outside life. I love my research and teaching students, but if I’m going to do a good job with that and not get burnt out, something has to give, and that something is often mandatory meetings.
I would be salty if this happened in a lab meeting, but department faculty meetings are another story. If the business of a given faculty meeting still gets accomplished with people answering emails, writing, grading, etc. during it, then I would argue that the meeting was likely unnecessary.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but my general feeling is that meetings have completely consumed normal working hours. There are entirely too many meetings, they take up too much time, and I have real shit to do. So if a meeting is bullshit, or has nothing to do with me, I will open my laptop and do something that can be done with minimal interruption to the speaker. I used to feel bad about it, and I resisted this practice for a long time. But when my entire afternoon is one gigantic meeting, I don’t care anymore.