January 9, 2026
Time hack or time theater?
Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
Google boss says start at :05 — fans cheer, skeptics cry 'more lateness'
TLDR: Google’s manager says meetings should start five minutes late to give people a breather. Commenters split: some love the humane buffer, others say it just normalizes running late, with jokes about school bells and “start the next one late” memes highlighting the calendar chaos.
A Google engineering manager dropped a tiny time tweak: start every meeting at five minutes past the hour to give people a breather. He says the short pause calms nerves, helps folks move between calls, and even spread across his org organically. But the comments erupted. Some cheered the sanity—teeray called those five minutes a ‘critical bio-break’—while others warned it’s just giving lateness permission. exegete groaned that at their company, “meetings tend to run 5 minutes late because everyone knows the next meeting doesn’t start until 5 past.”
Then came the comedy. AndrewKemendo threw side‑eye with “#leadership is really sending me on this one,” and Jtsummers pitched a school‑bell solution: chimes at five before and five after, like corporate homeroom. The snark peaked with MeetingsBrowser’s deadpan, “We now recommend starting the next meeting late… This will surely solve the problem.” The vibe? Time hack vs. time theater. Fans say it’s humane, the workplace equivalent of a deep breath. Skeptics say it’s lipstick on a calendar that’s already a treadmill. Meme energy simmered too—“Pro-crastination as policy?”—as folks debated whether culture or clocks fix calendar chaos. Either way, the internet just turned five minutes into office drama gold. Grab popcorn, managers everywhere.
Key Points
- •An Engineering Manager at Google schedules meetings to start five minutes past the hour/half hour.
- •The shift creates a guaranteed buffer between back-to-back meetings, reducing stress and improving readiness.
- •Ending meetings five minutes early typically fails due to social pressure to use the full time; shifting the start time is more reliable.
- •Attendees tend to arrive on time for the new start, not later, improving punctuality.
- •The practice spread organically across the organization without being mandatory, with a perceived net benefit despite losing five minutes in theory.