Thatās really cool, Poloko. What an excellent concept.
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I kinda had to let some stuff sit for a minute.
Full disclosure: My 40th birthday is long behind me. I have in the past worked longer hours out of some sense of duty, to the same result noted here in this thread.
There is a body of research out there that shows that there is a high degree of attention attenuation in most people after an hour. I dont recall neurodiversity being a studied factor. IMO I think it is common across most neurotypes. Peoples thoughts drift. They get email. Lunch is near. things happen.
This is why I keep things like QA team meetings, retrospectives, etc to a pretty tight time box and agenda. Use the time. Use it well. Be done with it. If there are more topics of interest or more discussions desired, we can do more. Or have more informal collaborative gatherings. Or people can volunteer to present stuff they are enthused about. In my last gig we tried creating a ātesting universityā meeting series - attendance optional - where new tactics and such could be presented. In one of these gatherings, a very junior QA engineer (whom I interviewed and hired - point of pride) presented Cypress in a 45 minute overview. Me, the old dog, had never seen it before. I ended up spending personal and slack time standing it up and evaluating it for the product I was working on. But what was more successful was when we started doing video presentations of less critical but informative knowledge sharing. Then people could consume the information when and where they wanted to. I loved it as I tend to be fidgety and need to do things with my hands when Im consuming such information. Yes there were evenings when I was spending precious personal time watching or reading some of these things. But it was ok because it wasnt an obligation. I was satisfying a curiosity!
My point is that I maintain there is a diminishing return to longer or more crowded meetings (Crowded agenda, as well as population) There is also the issue of too many meetings. And so everyone must be sensitive to those facts and seek ways to work around and with them.
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Oh, my, @conrad.braam! Not, their last week giving an updateā¦ Thatās tragic.
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Thanks for mentioning this, @shamrai. I was discussing this very fact with my Team Leader not two hours ago. I absolutely believe in having an agenda in place, and trying to follow it as close as possible in order for the meeting to be an effective one, and to respect the time of those who are attendingā¦ and, to give attendees a look into what weād like to cover and accomplish.
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Your reply here is full of helpful advice, @msh ; thank you for having shared! Iām definitely going to post a follow-up here after several meetings have occurred, to let everyone know how things are going.
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This is all good information to know, @steve.green; thank you! I too believe in working smarter at every given opportunity. There definitely will be some recording and indexing of our meetings for the sake of posterity.
Yikes, @steve.green , those were some serious hours!!!
Yours was an insightful yet gentle response, @katepaulk; thank you. (Iām so happy to be a part of this testing community!) 
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Excellent points, @conrad.connected; we can never forget or discount our similarities (and humanity) as testers.
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Ministry of Testing is truly awesome. This is the kindest online community Iāve ever seen.
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I totally concur, @katepaulk !
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These are great topics for discussion, @polokom; especially the āinteresting bugs and defects identified in the previousā¦ weeksā. Iāll be sure to introduce some variation of this to ours; thank you! (And, welcome to the MoT Community! 
)
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Here-here, @msh. I am a big proponent of respecting our limited time. Time-boxed agendas have served me well in this regard.
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I donāt have any helpful ideas to provide but I do want to say that your idea of having any type of periodic meetings for QA outside of status meetings is a fabulous one. I wish we did that where I work. The developers where I work have a daily meeting each morning where they discuss their problems and share ideas. This has greatly improved each of their skill sets and the quality of the code they produce.
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Get one started! 
Iām sorry to hear that, Audrey. Hopefully theyāll be an opportunity for them soon to appreciate the potential value soon.
Glad to hear youāve found this thread helpful.
That sucks. and is pretty unenlightened from where I sit. For a long time my meetings with the other QA engineers werent sanctioned. I decided it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. I did have one Development lead treat it as a āmutinous gathering in the belowdecksā and forbade the QA engineers that reported to him from attending. He even went so far as to schedule his meetings requiring QA attendance at the same time as mine knowing he would make āhisā QA engineers skip my gathering. We found ways to work around him. he was a toxicā¦personā¦and he was out the door within a year.
The point being, if you find value in it, work to find ways to organize yourselves and communicate. A slack channel. A standing Teams meeting called an āopen roomā where QA folks can gather organically and help each other. Wiki articles and presentations. Hell Im usually on very friendly terms with infrastructure people and I wouldnt be above asking them to create a shadow channel in AZ DevOps or slack for us to congregate in. 
But in the end you know the landscape where you are and you have to navigate it, not me. I hope for more mature perceptions from your management for you
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Iām just getting back into an active state after settling down in a new country.
@yelbmik1 Firstly, thank you for initiating this insightful discussion. The responses from our group have been fantastic and will undoubtedly benefit everyoneās learning journey.
Sharing the approach I followed in my previous company, especially during the pandemic period when remote collaboration was crucial. I led a team of 20 members, comprising SDETs, Senior SDETs, Leads, and Managers, who contributed to automation, performance testing, release verifications, and post-release validation.
- Weekly Meetings: Held once a week for 25 to 30 minutes, involving all team members.
- Celebrated the achievements of the previous week, with special shoutouts to individuals.
- Discussed current week priorities and provided release updates.
- Shared organizational updates, extended birthday/work anniversary wishes, and discussed leave plans.
- Addressed setbacks from the previous week, analyzed failures, and extracted key learnings to handle similar situations better in the future.
- Monthly 1x1s: Conducted for about 20 to 30 minutes, resembling a virtual coffee talk.
- Facilitated open discussions, allowing team members to share their achievements and express their concerns.
- Listened attentively to individual progress towards goals and identified areas where support was needed to achieve defined objectives.
- Sharing their achievements, and motivating to continue their best.
- Collaboratively identified action items and discussed areas for improvement.
- Monthly Leadership Learning Sessions: Held once a month for 45 minutes, specifically tailored for Leads and Managers.
- Focused on coaching future leaders by presenting real-time setback scenarios for discussion.
- Provided opportunities for participants to share their perspectives, approaches, and execution methods.
- Emphasized learning from each otherās experiences and applying best practices in future incidents.
Hope this helps!!!
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I, like most of the otherās Iāve read, am shocked at your revelation. However, before making this reply Iāve glanced through your posts here in MoT and it is clear you are a true expert in the field of accessibility.
I am also above 40 and I still have troubles with focus. Working 80-100 hours a week is unimaginable to me. If I put it into math, on the low end, if you work 80 hours across 7 days, you work 11 hours a day and if you happen to manage 100 hours in 6 days (a rest day?!), youād have worked almost 17 hours a day which is beyond healthy and it means you have no personal life whatsoever. Basically, your work is your life.
Iād be very much interested in you doing Ask-me-anything talk cause we all would have much to learn from you. Not really about pulling 80+ weeks but how to work with good focus for a prolonged periods of time.
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I donāt have a family and never wanted one. My life consists entirely of working, drinking with friends, live music and the minimum necessary sleep. Thatās how I like it.
I wouldnāt advocate working those long hours if youāre just doing the same thing all the time. I did it because it enabled me to gain deep experience in a broad range of skills. Some of that time was paid and some I put down to personal development.
My staff have never been allowed to work unpaid overtime. My view is that if your employer doesnāt value your time enough to pay for it, then you shouldnāt work for free unless there is a very good reason to, such as advancing your knowledge. When we had an office, I literally used to turn peopleās PCs off and make them go home after working 7.5 hours.
Iād be happy to do an Ask-me-anything session. A lot of my views run contrary to common practice, and I have shocked the management in some companies that invited me in to talk to their teams.
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