I can’t believe how many virtual meetings in the last three years that people are still sharing their screens.
People seem to share their screens in 3 situations:
- Showing or explaining a document. Whether it be a slideshow or written document, people seem obsessed with idea that no one else knows how to read or that they write just as incompetently as they present.
- Explaining procedure. I get it, things can be complicated. Learn to screen record.
- Collaboration. Most conferencing apps have a whiteboard or other document creation apps have real time collaboration. You just don’t want to use these things because you want to be in 100% control of what’s being written down. You don’t want a meeting, go do your own things, if you feel obligated to turn it into a meeting you just want attention.
We all have a limited time on this earth. We’re not going to remember or care about the meetings in a year or two. Go find something meaningful to do with your life. Stop sharing your screen, and even better yet, don’t have the meeting at all. We’re not going to look back at the end of our lives and wish we’d had more meetings.
yup this is a dumb opinion
Also an unpopular one.
Counterpoint please.
Everyone would love to have no meetings. But my job requires meetings. And I require a job to live in society.
Screensharing is useful to present information to an audience. There are alternative collaboration tools but I don’t see screensharing as a bad way to do this- use the right tool for the job.
Drawing up a system architecture? Use a whiteboard (digital or otherwise)
Presenting a powerpoint or whatever, like in a business update? Why wouldn’t you screenshare? The presenter wants to guide the audience through the information, to explain it. In the same way in person you don’t give everyone a powerpoint pack printed out to flick through, you display it and talk through it
Removed by mod
People use meetings because some of us think we can articulate concepts through speech better than through written media.
FTFY.
Turning what should have been an email into a meeting should be a fireable offense.
You want play people to put in extra work to make a video and then play that video instead of presenting? Because you wouldn’t present something to a group of people during an in-person meeting?
You didn’t even make a cogent argument.
That’s the fastest way you can prove you’re an asshole in the office.
I worked at a place where a manager refused to meet with his subordinates and instead would make and then send them videos of what he expected them to do. That did not go over well. They were all super insulated by that move.
Screen sharing is the whole point of a meeting. You get real-time feedback and clarification. If you aren’t sharing a screen then the meeting should have been an email.
Yeah I’m not gonna show you all my 3D CAD model as I’m not an incompetent fuck. Imma just tell you how it looks and you will imagine it.
Fair enough, this is unpopularopinion, but have you ever heard of engineering?
I don’t use teams, but hard disagree. My team screenshares all the time for pair programming, and even for regular meetings, screen sharing a slide deck or basic agenda is helpful for focusing conversation. I have presented before without sharing a screen and things go off the rails really quick. Focusing attention on the topics being discussed helps keep things as brief and efficient as possible. Presenting an agenda and topics also shows professionalism and that you are trying to respect people’s time by keeping things focused.
If it’s an actually useless meeting… Just don’t go? It’s not that hard.
Well, this is certainly one of the takes of all time…
Did you mean one of the worst takes?
“one of the X of all time” is a meme that’s meant to evoke “damning with faint praise” by omitting a vital word (such as greatest of all time, etc.), yes.
This reads like
- Chatgpt
- ChatGPT
- CHATGPT
I think whatever meetings you’re attending are probably meetings you should start skipping unless they directly impact your role. I’m getting a general sentiment that you feel like they’re a waste of time, or some kind of organisational baggage.
Either way, your point on screen sharing is very most certainly unpopular. I personally think it’s extremely useful, particularly for cross functional work where either team is completely unfamiliar with the other’s chosen collaboration software
Do you just not wanna be in the meeting? Sharing your screen is pretty useful
I know my context here is different, but sharing my screen is an easy and quick way to show how to do something. I use discord constantly to show what setting to change, or what order mods should be in for friends, or how to set up that V rising server with the save file from last time, or how to fix that weird bug that my buddy describes and I immediately recall and know how to fix.
There are times a proper video or document are better, but I’d argue only when you’re showing or teaching a process to a large number of people, over a spread out period of time, like a doc on how to set up your company email for new hires or something like that.
If its a short demo in a meeting for a simple process or temporary issue, its just a huge time saver to be able to just show people how to do it right then and there. Plus a screen share can be flexible enough to answer unexpected questions or issues that a static doc might not, like if tim has his start menu on the side, or mary doesn’t have the right directx version installed and you gotta swerve to fix the edge cases. Hard with a static doc or premade vid, easy with a screen share.
If it can be explained in a premade video or a slideshow it probably doesn’t need to be a meeting anyways. Just send it out and deal with issues as they arise.
Of course I come at the concept more from a basic IT perspective so ymmv, but for me its a very useful and flexible tool that can save me time and make explaining things much simpler.
