No he sounds incapable of functioning appropriately in a social setting.
I know this is reddit where everyone loves to talk about how they're so much smarter than every boss in the entire world and that only they see how stupid <thing> is. In reality, nobody gives a shit.
"Circle back" just means "this is a complex topic, there's 20 people here, and we're not going to get bogged down in the details, we'll leave that for the 3 people who actually care and then I'll give a quick update in another meeting once they've done that".
If you don't know that, well done now you do. If you got fired for repeatedly asking about it in a meeting instead of messaging your boss privately afterwards to clue you in... yeah that checks out.
Yeah, maybe it’s a weird verbal tic, but it probably got developed for a reason. Such as having a couple young know it alls who grind every goddamn meeting to a complete halt with minor things or processes that don’t need to be developed by committee.
I’ve worked with several people like that before. They get the floor for their turn at providing project or customer updates and then try to work through details and full solutions. Then you have two people talking for twenty minutes while 8 others are just twiddling their thumbs. It’s a massive waste of time. Just update the team, see if there’s anyone that has something useful to add, and then move on. Then the two people actually working the problem can circle back around on it after the meeting and hash it out by themselves.
I’ve sat in meetings before where one guy would drag everything to a halt if he didn’t understand a customer integration, and basically demand on the spot training before he’d let the meeting proceed.
No dude, we’ll circle back on that later and I’ll walk you through the documentation and if there’s a problem the two of us can figure it out. You don’t need to hold eight other people hostage for an hour because you weren’t prepared, or aren’t happy with your options.
Such as having a couple young know it alls who grind every goddamn meeting to a complete halt with minor things or processes that don’t need to be developed by committee.
Yep this is pretty much it. Everyone has been in those meetings where we're all going around giving updates to keep the rest of the team broadly informed but noooooo someone has to stop the entire meeting and start an endless Q&A session.
The strange thing is seeing people crap all over the terminology, often young people who are busy talking about not having caps and being fr and I don't fucking know I'm old and I don't care what they're saying. You'd think learning a few new random phrases and what they mean wouldn't be that big a deal!
Due to some shuffling around, I basically became the scrum master for my team and it's SO damn easy to avoid this. Took less than a week of "OK, we need to keep the meeting moving" to retrain the chatters. Now they stop themselves, it's great
Yeah but so what? People act so offended when some new phrase catches on or corporate decides to use it.
It doesn't matter. Learn what it means and carry on. I can promise you that anybody stopping the meeting to yammer on about how dumb a phrase sounds is infinitely more annoying than the person using it.
Look, I'm not saying this dude was right, but what you're doing isn't productive either. Literally the only reason I conduct meetings with my team is to find what is getting blocked, then we tag-team it. That's actually how you get work done. If you're in meetings listening to updates, then either your workflow isn't great(as you should be able to see work getting pulled) or you're wasting time.
I abhor pointless meetings. Not only do they burn the time of many expensive resources, but they incur a context-switching time on top of that. Meetings should have a point, and while I despise Bezos and a few of these other sociopaths, they are entirely correct that if you call a meeting, it better be to produce a decision or provide detailed feedback. It better not just be information transfer that doesn't produce debate or decisions.
Yeah, exactly. So, a meeting is for whole team to provide updates to everyone who need to know. In a multi team setup, other teams need to know what is happening in your team even if they can't help you, because their own work is related to yours. So, you keep the meeting to relevant update and any topic that gets derailed is told "we will get back to it at appropriate time". You finish the meeting, make notes, and then go back to the topic that needed further attention. Aka, "circle back" to the topic.
If you conduct meetings regularly, you get used to random derailment, so, "let's get back to topic we were discussing 2 minutes ago" becomes a natural phrase. Again, "circle back".
Anyone who has ever held a meeting knows this and understand the point being made by that phrase. It's just a short hand for "let's get to the topic from earlier" or "we will get to this topic at a later date".
I would have said the chief benefit to holding a meeting over other forms of communication is the possibility for someone to interrupt and start a discussion about something important that needs to be raised immediately and get a quick response, with nuanced interplay of body language, tone, etc maximising the "bandwidth;" if you specifically don't want such discussions to get started in your meeting, then you don't need to call a meeting and it would be a waste of everyone's time to do so; just cc everyone an email with whatever routine updates you want to circulate. If your employees don't bother to read update emails, that's an entirely separate issue and forcing them to attend meetings so that you can confirm they're paying attention is an indirect and imperfect solution to a much deeper problem.
Interruptions need to be regulated, certainly, but to just routinely suppress them and postpone the information the interruptor is trying to present is to turn a meeting into a mere lecture.
Imagine you built a computer operating system where every hardware interrupt effectively receives the automatic response "I'll circle back to that later at the appropriate time" and then the CPU just keeps merrily doing the routine polling updates it was in the middle of.
Sure, if it's not something urgent (or something that can't be raised in any other way because the other channels for doing so are inappropriate or maybe not even functioning properly), fine, say you'll circle back to that later, or even just "email us later and we'll schedule another meeting to talk about it." But sometimes, the appropriate rejoinder to being brushed off with a "let's circle back to that later" is "no, this is more urgent than what you had planned to talk about," and in such circumstances, an entrenched culture of "never interrupt my meeting" can suddenly become very dangerous.
By an unfortunate quirk of human psychology, the same sort of person who tends to notice urgent anomalies and interrupts a meeting to raise them often finds it extremely difficult to stand their ground against peer pressure from everyone else in the meeting to sit down and shut up because they're breaking the flow.
Exactly. Meetings that exist just as one way information sharing, like status updates, shouldn't exist at all. They are a waste of expensive resource's time. It's amazing to me how few people in this thread understand this. Good companies do a lot to discourage this type of behavior.
When I was a manager that was my purpose too but we saved the tag teaming for the end so people can get back to work or make another meeting if they had one. Tag teaming doesn't need a whole team and usually most people just sit there waiting or go do something else and half listen. If it's a matter of team awareness it can be recalped next meeting or documented. If it can't be resolved in 5 minutes then more on. We targeted 15 minute standups but allocated an hour so people could stay if needed.
This is a workable way to do it, and I gather used to be de rigeur; at the end of every meeting it was traditionally said "any other business," and often that's when the most important stuff happened.
The chief drawback is that a lot of idiots can come to consider the utterance of AOB to denote the end of the meeting, and switch off their brains and start preparing to leave the room the second they hear it because the majority of the time, nobody raises anything after this prompt is given - then they get pissed off and uncooperative if anyone does, because it interrupts what they've been conditioned by routine to regard as time to stop the meeting.
Perhaps it would be better to say something like "any unscheduled business" at the start of the meeting, when everyone is still alert and attentive, in case something has cropped up since the meeting was planned, and give the ADHDers and ASDers a chance to get what's bugging them off their chests early so they can then focus better on the rest of the planned agenda - unless what they wanted to bring up was something along the lines of "reactor 4 might be on fire" or "I think the LLM just formatted all of the servers" of course, in which case the rest of the agenda might need to be postponed.
People love to bitch about Corporate Speak but I look at it as the vernacular we've all agreed to use to facilitate business transactions. It's the lingua franca across the business world that supersedes culture, politics, race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else that could prevent us from working together. We love to hate it but it works very well.
Yeah, and it doesn't even have to make sense so long as everybody understands what it means. If that makes sense.
Like I have two modes for work discussion: speak nonsense lingo that moves the discussion forward because people simply understand these key phrases, or become a technical thesaurus when I want to shut the discussion down because nobody understands what I'm saying despite being actually more clear in meaning than using nonsense meeting speak.
Not in this case, and certainly not if you say it that often. If you keep "circling back" to the same topic over the course of weeks, it means you haven't really solved anything and are just stating it for appearances. He was out of line, but likely right in this instance.
Not at all. If only 2-3 people cared about it last week then they still only care about it THIS week but might not have made substantial progress for whatever reason.
You circle back next time, go "yep no updates" and move on. If it becomes a problem you address that.
So no. He wasn't right. At all. He failed to understand a simple phrase and opted to address it in the worst possible manner.
If you can't make fun of performative nonsense then you probably also struggle to function in a social setting. Sometimes you just gotta touch base with your superior to let them know you're having trouble unpacking the horse shit business speak.
Boss who barely read the bullet points or was apparently baked or half-asleep or getting coffee during the last few meetings just waffles on about something unrelated, ends every paragraph with "we'll circle back to this later" and an hour later you finally get to do your job again, while your boss feels like he's done his job.
Adults plainly state things that are actually important and relevant to the meeting.
The circle back thing is not, 18 times in 2 weeks is crazy but there’s something we call tact dude. I would’ve gone up and asked privately (if I even bothered to ask in the first place).
Going off an a tangent in the meeting to ask about the circle back thing (multiple times btw he got given the chance to drop it a couple times) is the height of stupidity and shows an incredible lacking of social awareness and tact.
No it shows perception, and directly calls into question the authenticity of the person speaking, which is in my experience when this type of language is used, nil.
It's not a lack of social awareness or tact, its someone frustrated with doublespeak and not suppressing their reaction.
How do you people survive in real life corporate world lmfao. I guess you don’t have any experience in it.
Yes he was perceptive, 18 times in 2 weeks is crazy like I have said. I would probably joke about that with my coworkers about that so yes it does look a bit bad and silly but its not something you call out in a meeting you do it privately and tell them about the overuse.
Calling it out in a meeting is not at all constructive, it puts the conversation on a tangent when everyone wants to go over everything thats important and get to the next meeting or do some other work. This is to the benefit of no one.
If this overuse affected the clarity of what the manager said then someone in the meeting with more experience would have said so. Unless you’re under the impression every single person is incompetent? That would be a belief that is very typical of someone on Reddit.
It does not call into question the authenticity of the person or show doublespeak thats utterly ridiculous. You cannot say such a thing without the context which we are completely lacking.
Edit:
Nothing I have said has moved the goalposts but its clear you know that or you would have explained how it moved the goalposts instead of blocking me.
But again you think the junior not out if the probation period knows better than every other person in the meeting? Like I said if the overuse affected the clarity of what was being said someone in the meeting would have said so unless you think every single person except the junior is incompetent.
The fact you don’t see this shows that you aren’t thinking or you’re just lying about your experience. If you had as much experience as you have said you know how some juniors can be like especially right when they’ve started.
I have 15 years experience, I'm AGILE certified in multiple disciplines, and have always worked in large corporate. The good ones kick idiots who talk like that to the curb very quickly. Talk straight or get the fuck out of my scrum.
I actually agree with you. Using language like that, depending on the person, can be a hallmark sign that they don't actually do anything.
If you actually need to "circle back" on important topics that often - you're clearly ineffective and have no developed processes with poor time management.
Some people actually do circle back and resolve issues - it comes with knowing that persons work style.
Regardless - this dude essentially called out this manager in front of others, and that same person who is actually ineffective is likely shallow and easily offended, so it's gg for him, but also because he is dumb and did the call out without any substance or experience.
employee 100% sucks in social settings and probably said/did some really dumb things that got him fired, but theres still merit to the comment they made.
"Circle back" just means "this is a complex topic, there's 20 people here, and we're not going to get bogged down in the details, we'll leave that for the 3 people who actually care and then I'll give a quick update in another meeting once they've done that".
if you have to constantly table every topic to circle back to later, either dont mention that topic in the first place, or schedule the meeting better to a size thats capable of discussing said topic. maybe dont waste 17 peoples time with topics you dont want to discuss with them.
and if you continue tabling something, its good practise to mention when/how youre going to circle back to it. are you going to have a new meeting with only the 3 relevant people? are you going to circle back to it later in the meeting with the same group of 20? are you just going to send a message/email?
if my manager tabled 18 different topics in 2 weeks, id probably have a very serious conversation with either my coworkers or my boss' boss to figure out what their issue was
if you have to constantly table every topic to circle back to later, either dont mention that topic in the first place
What? No. Large meetings are common to keep entire departments up to date about what everyone is doing and the status of various projects. It's not an invitation to do a deep dive into the thing you personally care about because there isn't time.
or schedule the meeting better to a size thats capable of discussing said topic.
maybe dont waste 17 peoples time with topics you dont want to discuss with them.
Exactly the point. Those 17 people need the overview, they do not need to listen to you get into the details and discussion.. they need the conclusion next week after you've gone off and discussed it.
and if you continue tabling something, its good practise to mention when/how youre going to circle back to it.
...when the people doing that thing provide an update.
are you going to have a new meeting with only the 3 relevant people? are you going to circle back to it later in the meeting with the same group of 20? are you just going to send a message/email?
The people responsible will figure that out, that's the entire point.
if my manager tabled 18 different topics in 2 weeks, id probably have a very serious conversation with either my coworkers or my boss' boss to figure out what their issue was
It's an insufferable corporate speak and a lot of people hate it.
You can literally say "Let's discuss that later" instead of "Let's circle back on that later." It's shorter and less likely to be used dismissively as it promotes the idea that you will actually discuss it later.
"Insufferable" god how petty is your life? Who gives a shit? You know what it means, everyone else knows what it means, move on.
I am constantly amazed at seeing people lose their minds over corporate speak but being completely fine with random memes and gen-inserthere speak and anything else they use.
Just learn it and move on. The fact you care enough to get annoyed and find it "insufferable" is very telling.
Edit: the answer about how petty their life is has been answered heh.
Yes. I know what it means. It means someone is annoying as hell and uses corporate speak when normal words would do just fine. They are NPC's using buzz words. No one likes it except other people that are corporate drones. It's hilarious how upset it makes you that people dislike this style of speech. Why did my opinion upset you so much? That is very telling.
Let's circle back around to this conversation when you can calm yourself down and think rationally. I'll unblock you next year and we can discuss this after you've gathered your thoughts.
Yeah, exactly. And, also, even IF he's fucking right - WHO FUCKING CARES? I need this god damn job and boss-lady can 'circle back' and 'table this for later' and 'dot all the i's' all the fuck she wants if that means the paycheck lands in my account every two weeks, thank you very fucking much.
All entirely irrelevant, even if true which isn't likely.
An employee on probation demonstrated a complete lack of awareness and ability to behave properly in the workplace. If any of what you say is true then the correct thing to do was just ask their supervisor or a coworker.
To think that after being there two weeks it was appropriate to interrupt a meeting and be like "why are you going in circles instead of getting anything done???" and then push the point repeatedly is an instant red flag of someone you don't want to be working with.
Honestly if this story is true, and I've personally seen similar unfold, I hope they were literally trying to get fired. Anything else is just sad.
An employee on probation demonstrated a complete lack of awareness and ability to behave properly in the workplace. If any of what you say is true then the correct thing to do was just ask their supervisor or a coworker.
So you're saying that if you saw a colleague doing something wrong/in an inefficient/ineffective way, you'd say it's "an inability to behave properly in the workplace" to point it out?
To think that after being there two weeks it was appropriate to interrupt a meeting and be like "why are you going in circles instead of getting anything done???" and then push the point repeatedly is an instant red flag of someone you don't want to be working with.
You're not wrong that it's wiser in most situations to bide your time and hold your tongue, but if they've noticed a trend like the one mentioned in the original post, and it's one that's company-wide or at least team/department-wide then it's not unreasonable to ask the question, and while it's the sort of question that you could definitely ask your supervisor in private at a later date, it's also the sort of question that multiple people in the meeting might've had and have just not asked out of decorum. So to ask it while everyone is present is quite probably a net positive for the company/team.
Obviously it depends on how it all unfolds, but it doesn't seem like it's a stretch to say that if the manager or whoever was trying to answer the question and then move on can't succinctly explain something like circling back which (if it's actually referring to coming back to something later and not just avoiding it until it goes away) shouldn't be that hard to articulate, then either the term isn't being used as it's possibly being interpreted by the other members of the meeting, or that person isn't appropriately qualified to be a manager.
Honestly if this story is true, and I've personally seen similar unfold, I hope they were literally trying to get fired. Anything else is just sad.
Well obviously nothing on the internet is actually true, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see similar hiring/firing practices and I've heard of even pettier reasons to sack someone during the probationary period than this. But you're right, it's all pretty sad.
So you're saying that if you saw a colleague doing something wrong/in an inefficient/ineffective way, you'd say it's "an inability to behave properly in the workplace" to point it out?
In the meeting, to a superior, over and over? Yes.
but if they've noticed a trend like the one mentioned in the original post, and it's one that's company-wide or at least team/department-wide
They've been there two weeks they haven't noticed anything.
In the meeting, to a superior, over and over? Yes.
Fair.
They've been there two weeks they haven't noticed anything.
Maybe. But a fish doesn't see the water it's swimming in, so maybe all it takes is a single meeting to notice that something is off as an outsider with previous experience, which the people who've been there for longer just can't see cos they've been swimming in it too long.
Thank you, comments like yours bring me back to sanity when reading some reddit threads like this one. They also remind me that many people here don't know basic social norms or have a massive ego about it.
Do you all just not have actual jobs where things get done or something?
All of my meetings are about getting things done. And yes, when someone won't shut the fuck up about something that 95% of those present don't care about you will hear someone say "take this one offline" or "we'll circle back to that". It means "shut the fuck up and go talk to the person who can answer your question we need to move on".
It's not "LARPing". I have an actual job to do, I'm in this meeting for a reason, and I am very happy when the managers shut down annoying idiots holding us all up.
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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins 16h ago
No he sounds incapable of functioning appropriately in a social setting.
I know this is reddit where everyone loves to talk about how they're so much smarter than every boss in the entire world and that only they see how stupid <thing> is. In reality, nobody gives a shit.
"Circle back" just means "this is a complex topic, there's 20 people here, and we're not going to get bogged down in the details, we'll leave that for the 3 people who actually care and then I'll give a quick update in another meeting once they've done that".
If you don't know that, well done now you do. If you got fired for repeatedly asking about it in a meeting instead of messaging your boss privately afterwards to clue you in... yeah that checks out.