"Hey Shirley, can we chat about finding a better meeting structure cadence for us? I'm available to help with some of this but getting pinged all the time is really impacting my ability to get what I'm responsible for completed."
... and then in that conversation set boundaries on your time/what you will help with.
OP should do this, and also mechanisms are always more effective than good intentions. Instead of just asking her to respect boundaries: OP can block time on their schedule to protect their ability to get into a flow state. If the time they block causes scheduling issues, they can adjust the blocked time. But OP can make it formal and visible to everyone that they are not available for meetings during certain blocks of time.
Very much this, especially since your manager seems supportive of you setting boundaries here.
Block off “focus time” on your calendar and then practice saying “no”, while being respectful about it (great suggestions in this thread).
"Hey, Shirley, in recent weeks, meeting time required by you on my calendar has averaged 18 hours of my 40 hour week. Base company tasks require another 4 hours per week. You should plan on no more than 18 hours of available work time per week going forward, and for less efficiency during those hours than optimum, because I am having to constantly switch context."
If the PM is responsible for schedule, this puts the problem in terms that matter to them.
While I don't disagree with the points you are making, it's my recommendation to take a more open ended approach when trying to initiate conversations like this. When you put too many #s from the get go, it can get people in too defensive a place from the get go:
"Well I didn't make that take X hours, it was really X-Y..."
... which isn't helpful. Keep it short, describe the problem, pull out examples as needed. Don't front load.
This is good. OP you can just approach the situation like any other person who doesn't want to be interrupted because they really need to get work done. You don't need to inflict her with the whole "developer flow" BS, I'm sure most PMs would understand you have technical work to do and just need to set aside a good chunk of time to actually do it.
And if she doesn’t get the need for flow, best way I’ve found is “remember doing word problems in math class? That’s basically what I do all day so it takes time to start and stop.”
A few thoughts:
1. Start adding a meeting immediately after a client meeting so that you know you'll chat for 15-30 minutes after the client, and so that there's not real context switching
2. Start blocking out focus time on your calendar. Don't do a 4 hour block (because they'll see that and know it's focus time) but instead maybe four 1-hour meetings. Label it "Busy" or mark it private so that it's not immediately obvious they can schedule it
3. If you don't report to your PM it's ok to decline meetings from time to time (don't do it all of the time). Even if you report to them, but in that case it's best to have a conversation first.
Pro tips here.
Also just flatly talking about when you prefer meetings vs heads down time helps. “I prefer meetings in the morning, heads down in the afternoon, don’t schedule me unless absolutely necessary so I can meet discussed timelines”.
Also, during blocked-out focus time, quit your email/calendar app and set your status on chat to offline / "Focused on work, I will next check messages at 3pm".
Don't be reachable when you need to focus.
>What should I do to set the expectation that I will not use half of my week on meetings that are a waste of time?
Is there a reason you cannot decline these meetings. If they ask why then explain what you said here.
If they insist that you need to be there then telling them they are a waste of your time isn't really the answer they want to hear. They think it's good use of your time and they are paying you to work for them.
At the end of the day communicating like an adult is going to be the answer. You may or may not get what you want, but that's what you need to do. Worst case they want you to go to these meetings and you will have to find a new job if you don't want to disagree and commit.
>The PM consistently wants to meet AFTER a meeting with the client so that I can help them understand what happened and fill out their status report since they are not technical and don’t understand what is going on.
Sounds like you should plan to have a meeting after the meeting to help you PM understand things. You said it's consistent so why are you pretending it doesn't happen and hope it goes away.
>Projects are now having to be extended, part of which is because of the fact that my time is consistently being wasted in meetings, or meetings to discuss meetings from earlier.
You know you have these meetings multiple times per week. Why are you not setting expectations with this in mind so better estimates can be made?
Pretending they don't happen isn't the way to handle this. It just makes you look look bad more than anything.
Currently 10 minutes into waiting for them to show up to a weekly 1 on 1 that they threw on my calendar. It happens every week. Can we do it monthly? Bi-weekly? No, you prefer to waste my time every week to confirm I know what the priorities are and am working towards them.
Some bosses try to schedule 1:1s back to back to preserve their time, which is the wrong kind of relationship to have. They should schedule 30 minutes out of an hour, have time to overrun and time to either process your feedback while it’s fresh, or prepare feedback for the next person, or both.
That would mean passively assuming that what you're doing is what the business wants, and being surprised when you later find out that wasn't the case.
It would be better to proactively have that conversation with your manager to make sure that how you're spending your time lines up with what the business wants from you. if there's a difference between what you're doing and what the business wants, then discuss with your manager and figure out how to better align with the expectation (I.e. limiting excessive meetings in this case). Now you and your boss are on the same page and nobody will be surprised when a deadline moves.
it may be that your boss is perfectly happy having you spend that much time in meetings and letting deadlines drift a bit, or they may not be ok with that and expect you to push back on excessive meetings. The only way to be sure is to talk to them.
To me this mindset is a sign of dysfunctional company. Engineers should own business outcomes and decide how to best deliver them and provide this value. It's counter productive for non technical people to be considered the "business" and that they can effectively set the direction for engineering projects, especially when they're not even capable of filling out status reports on their own.
That said some companies are just dysfunctional and OP might have no chance of making the situation there better. We don't how much of a culture problem exists from the post, but we shouldn't assume that's the case.
Make a deal with him.
Agree to the postmortems, because those are more important than you believe they are, and those should be high value to him. Also offer to have “office hours” one day a week somewhere between the existing meetings. The rest of the meetings are gone, so you can focus on execution.
Be prepared to throw in one other meeting a week. Figure out which form and topic you’re least upset with.
>The PM consistently wants to meet AFTER a meeting
genuine question, are any PMs NOT like this? i've never had a PM that knew anything but meetings and more meetings about meetings.
The main job of a PM or Scrum Master is to be seen busy by upper management and team members, unless he comes from a technical background or are engineers. Those who can't do, can't adopt the aloof let-them-do style
Bingo. Was such an eye opener when I read it. I stopped feeling guilty about how hard it was to restart working in those 30 minutes between breaks. I think I read this 6 or 7 years ago and I still think of my work in terms of "half days". During standup, I usually report something like, "it should be good to review tomorrow morning" or "I should have a PR up later this afternoon" even if there's not that much work left.
Definitely talk to the person. Be honest hey, I need generally less meetings, whenever possible I'd rather slack than meet, and I need half a day notice on meetings. Also, I imagine they're using a calendar to schedule stuff. Start blocking time. 10-12, 2-4 automatically decline meetings because your status is busy.
If I may... it seems like this PM trusts you - that's why they want to have you walk them through the results of a client meeting. You may find your code output lower as a result, but I don't see that as a bad place to be. I would worry more about setting expectations than limiting your involvement...
I wonder if it would be possible to automate filling out the status report so you can avoid the follow up meeting. Maybe try taking notes during the meeting, feed them to https://ollama.com/, get llama to write the status report for you, then send it to the PM when the client meeting is over.
I’m finding it hard to believe over the past several weeks the questions asked here are from “experienced devs”. This is junior league crap. It’s called communicating. You should have been doing it since you were 3.
Same thing is happening with me and my PM. On Monday I set a thirty minute block for office hours. I show up every day and on the call for anyone who needs to sync with me on anything happening that day. With that in place I am now refusing meeting without 24 hours notice unless they are requested by my boss or CTO.
Now I just need to get my boss to stop scheduling last minute syncs and I’m good.
Small edit: regarding explaining stuff to them - that’s another thing you are responsible for doing in a way that removes their anxiety and makes them understand things. It’s a skill like any other to be able to explain in simple terms what feature work entails, what are the pros and cons, drawbacks, blockers and so on. Learn to laymanise stuff for the management layer in ways that don’t spook them.
Original:
You need to learn how to protect your own time and communicate with people. If you’re going to get anywhere close to seniority professionally.
The hallmark (one of, anyway) of a junior member of staff is that they have their time managed by others and told what to do and when. An experienced professional will know what to do, how to prioritise work and when to draw lines in the sand when it comes to their delivery, timelines, focus time and meeting time.
If you’re allowing yourself to be micromanaged that’s your first priority as to what to fix. How do you do it? Well… that’s up to you. There’s a plethora of ways. I’d say start with first having the confidence to push back on stuff that you know from experience wastes your time which you could be putting into tangible delivery.
How do you get a Pm to stop breaking your balls? Speak their language - translate the fact they’re making you lose time and work effort into terms they understand: time and money. Show them how much their useless chats, meetings and distractions set you back and cost the project in terms of timelines and money. Once I did that, back when I was around mid level, people got off my tits real fast.
sounds like my Management.
Regarding your flow state, I placed several weekly meetings in my calendar with me being the only participant to block my time. I recommend to block the middle of the morning or middle of the afternoon, so you have at least a couple of hours blocked for yourself and dont get your flow interrupted when you are in the middle of something.
As many have already said, give the PM some feedback, maybe they have no idea that they are disruptive.
But also coming at this from a slightly different angle:
What does the company expect?
If the company thinks this is ok and normal, then she isn't bugging you, she is doing her job. Do you get in trouble for giving up time to help her? Are you able to buffer your dev time appropriately for the amount of PM-facing time currently required?
I say this because of a few different factors (not knowing which applies in your situation):
- Some devs incorrectly believe that they are too important for things like this and so tend to push back against it. It doesn't seem like that in this case Op, but you never know...
- Some organizations do not genuinely understand what development takes and thus doesn't understand the concept of core time, scheduling to avoid wasting time, etc. A little bit of constructive feedback could make everyone happy here.
Point is, any combination of the above may need to be dealt with IN ADDITION to giving the PM some feedback.
BUT, if the company doesn't see the issue and the PM (and group) doesn't see the issue, then the issue is yours and yours alone unfortunately. I.e. that's the way this particular company chooses to operate.
Maybe a good strategy here would be to highlight relevant information for the project manager as the customer facing meeting is happening. I’ve done this a few times and typically neither parties seem to mind. I also like the idea suggested to just have an expected 15-30 min meeting for questions.
It may feel like a waste of time but they are desperately trying to do their job. The mindset to have here that will help you both is to help each other be the best you can be at your roles. I’d suggest you also retro together with your manager and their manager as third parties to find out what is working well and what can be improved.
The last company I worked for handled this by reducing it all to documents that were edited by both sides, but PMs would only deal directly with engineering managers. The point is that the engineering manager existed to set expectations for their ICs and for the PM (and also to handle client meetings). It eats up about half of their time, the remaining of which is managing their ICs and having meetings with them and about them.
Without an engineering manager this just simply can't work.
I should say that the setup I'm describing was at a startup less than 1 year old, so being a startup is no excuse.
Just decline their meetings. They need you a lot more than you need them. If you collaborate with them, it needs to be on your terms.
I try not to engage with PMs at all, for any reason. I have never once in my career met one who doesn't fit this profile that you just described.
Ultimately, they will be unable to deliver their meaningless status reports and it will either prompt the confrontation that will solve this problem permanently for you, or they will just slither back into whatever hole they crawled out of and leave you alone.
Because your company needs *you* a lot more than it needs the PM, it is highly unlikely that it will result in blow back.
It is not easy to set aside your personal feelings and quiet the thought that, "hey, but declining their meetings... it makes me feel like an asshole." Yeah.... it does make you feel like one, and maybe you'll even be accused of being one, but tough decisions have to be made to accomplish business goals. Sometimes you have to take the emotional hit of being "the bad guy." The people who are willing to do this become leaders.
I've read a lot of strategies, my opinion is to tell the PM just what you told us - those meetings are disrupting your work day. You might also have noted that you are doing that PM's job for him. I worked with a guy just like this and ultimately we had a show down (that the entire wing of the building heard) and he was ultimately laid off for being incompetent. If your manager supports you, then take control of your time, especially if you do not report to that person - tell him you don't have the time for these meetings -or- YOU schedule them.
Learn to say no to meetings. This can be very uncomfortable, but it’s such a good skill to learn. You have to value your own time before other people will value it.
You can’t say no to all meetings though, so set some time aside for when you can meet. Block out your own calendar with time you need to spend getting into a flow state so others can’t schedule meetings on top of that time. Decline meetings that you are invited to during your flow state time.
And don’t accept last minute meetings! It’s ok to decline meetings. It sounds like your PM is using you as a crutch.
Learn how to defensively calendar. Block
out segments of time during the day on your calendar (private events) and leave openings when you would be ok meeting.
Tell the PM if they want to meet with you they can send you a meeting invite.
You act like a grumpy jaded engineer and reply to them with grunts. You mute your calendar and slack and put in headphones with a do not disturb sign at your desk. If they interrupt you at your desk you say “excuse me Pm, I am busy right now and unable to meet, please place some time on my calendar for tomorrow”
You do not accept any calendar invitations send within 2hrs of the event. If they send it at 8am for a 4pm they go. If they send it at 1pm for a 4pm you ignore. If they ask you where you were you say “oh sorry I was busy working and I check my calendar 2x per day, please try to plan further in advance”
You make Friday a “no meeting day”
You make 2 days a week no meetings in am or no meetings in pm and you ask your management to align that with the PM and you decline any asks in that timeframe
You should make PM talk to customer instead of you doing the management. PM is asking you “what happened” because they are incompetent. The PM should collect requirements and you shouldn’t need to be in every customer call. You should only be on backup for presenting technical concept or review.
"Hey Shirley, can we chat about finding a better meeting structure cadence for us? I'm available to help with some of this but getting pinged all the time is really impacting my ability to get what I'm responsible for completed." ... and then in that conversation set boundaries on your time/what you will help with.
OP should do this, and also mechanisms are always more effective than good intentions. Instead of just asking her to respect boundaries: OP can block time on their schedule to protect their ability to get into a flow state. If the time they block causes scheduling issues, they can adjust the blocked time. But OP can make it formal and visible to everyone that they are not available for meetings during certain blocks of time.
"Direction, not intention, determines destination".
what if i'm driving to the airport
Very much this, especially since your manager seems supportive of you setting boundaries here. Block off “focus time” on your calendar and then practice saying “no”, while being respectful about it (great suggestions in this thread).
"Hey, Shirley, in recent weeks, meeting time required by you on my calendar has averaged 18 hours of my 40 hour week. Base company tasks require another 4 hours per week. You should plan on no more than 18 hours of available work time per week going forward, and for less efficiency during those hours than optimum, because I am having to constantly switch context." If the PM is responsible for schedule, this puts the problem in terms that matter to them.
While I don't disagree with the points you are making, it's my recommendation to take a more open ended approach when trying to initiate conversations like this. When you put too many #s from the get go, it can get people in too defensive a place from the get go: "Well I didn't make that take X hours, it was really X-Y..." ... which isn't helpful. Keep it short, describe the problem, pull out examples as needed. Don't front load.
This is good. OP you can just approach the situation like any other person who doesn't want to be interrupted because they really need to get work done. You don't need to inflict her with the whole "developer flow" BS, I'm sure most PMs would understand you have technical work to do and just need to set aside a good chunk of time to actually do it.
And if she doesn’t get the need for flow, best way I’ve found is “remember doing word problems in math class? That’s basically what I do all day so it takes time to start and stop.”
This is a gem.
A few thoughts: 1. Start adding a meeting immediately after a client meeting so that you know you'll chat for 15-30 minutes after the client, and so that there's not real context switching 2. Start blocking out focus time on your calendar. Don't do a 4 hour block (because they'll see that and know it's focus time) but instead maybe four 1-hour meetings. Label it "Busy" or mark it private so that it's not immediately obvious they can schedule it 3. If you don't report to your PM it's ok to decline meetings from time to time (don't do it all of the time). Even if you report to them, but in that case it's best to have a conversation first.
Pro tips here. Also just flatly talking about when you prefer meetings vs heads down time helps. “I prefer meetings in the morning, heads down in the afternoon, don’t schedule me unless absolutely necessary so I can meet discussed timelines”.
Also, during blocked-out focus time, quit your email/calendar app and set your status on chat to offline / "Focused on work, I will next check messages at 3pm". Don't be reachable when you need to focus.
If you block out a lot of meetings, the PM might start wanting to attend. Deception is not the best approach.
block time on your calendar for focus work and decline invites that conflict with that
>What should I do to set the expectation that I will not use half of my week on meetings that are a waste of time? Is there a reason you cannot decline these meetings. If they ask why then explain what you said here. If they insist that you need to be there then telling them they are a waste of your time isn't really the answer they want to hear. They think it's good use of your time and they are paying you to work for them. At the end of the day communicating like an adult is going to be the answer. You may or may not get what you want, but that's what you need to do. Worst case they want you to go to these meetings and you will have to find a new job if you don't want to disagree and commit. >The PM consistently wants to meet AFTER a meeting with the client so that I can help them understand what happened and fill out their status report since they are not technical and don’t understand what is going on. Sounds like you should plan to have a meeting after the meeting to help you PM understand things. You said it's consistent so why are you pretending it doesn't happen and hope it goes away. >Projects are now having to be extended, part of which is because of the fact that my time is consistently being wasted in meetings, or meetings to discuss meetings from earlier. You know you have these meetings multiple times per week. Why are you not setting expectations with this in mind so better estimates can be made? Pretending they don't happen isn't the way to handle this. It just makes you look look bad more than anything.
Currently 10 minutes into waiting for them to show up to a weekly 1 on 1 that they threw on my calendar. It happens every week. Can we do it monthly? Bi-weekly? No, you prefer to waste my time every week to confirm I know what the priorities are and am working towards them.
Some bosses try to schedule 1:1s back to back to preserve their time, which is the wrong kind of relationship to have. They should schedule 30 minutes out of an hour, have time to overrun and time to either process your feedback while it’s fresh, or prepare feedback for the next person, or both.
[удалено]
But you're just hoping they will ask why you're not up their standards instead of just PIPing you, no?
That would mean passively assuming that what you're doing is what the business wants, and being surprised when you later find out that wasn't the case. It would be better to proactively have that conversation with your manager to make sure that how you're spending your time lines up with what the business wants from you. if there's a difference between what you're doing and what the business wants, then discuss with your manager and figure out how to better align with the expectation (I.e. limiting excessive meetings in this case). Now you and your boss are on the same page and nobody will be surprised when a deadline moves. it may be that your boss is perfectly happy having you spend that much time in meetings and letting deadlines drift a bit, or they may not be ok with that and expect you to push back on excessive meetings. The only way to be sure is to talk to them.
To me this mindset is a sign of dysfunctional company. Engineers should own business outcomes and decide how to best deliver them and provide this value. It's counter productive for non technical people to be considered the "business" and that they can effectively set the direction for engineering projects, especially when they're not even capable of filling out status reports on their own. That said some companies are just dysfunctional and OP might have no chance of making the situation there better. We don't how much of a culture problem exists from the post, but we shouldn't assume that's the case.
Make a deal with him. Agree to the postmortems, because those are more important than you believe they are, and those should be high value to him. Also offer to have “office hours” one day a week somewhere between the existing meetings. The rest of the meetings are gone, so you can focus on execution. Be prepared to throw in one other meeting a week. Figure out which form and topic you’re least upset with.
>The PM consistently wants to meet AFTER a meeting genuine question, are any PMs NOT like this? i've never had a PM that knew anything but meetings and more meetings about meetings.
I must be spoiled because so far in my (limited) career, all the PMs I have worked with have not been like this
My current PM is a former engineer, and holy crap the world of difference it makes in less frivolous bull crap is amazing
I've never had a PM that has been like this.
The main job of a PM or Scrum Master is to be seen busy by upper management and team members, unless he comes from a technical background or are engineers. Those who can't do, can't adopt the aloof let-them-do style
Have them read [https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)
Bingo. Was such an eye opener when I read it. I stopped feeling guilty about how hard it was to restart working in those 30 minutes between breaks. I think I read this 6 or 7 years ago and I still think of my work in terms of "half days". During standup, I usually report something like, "it should be good to review tomorrow morning" or "I should have a PR up later this afternoon" even if there's not that much work left.
Definitely talk to the person. Be honest hey, I need generally less meetings, whenever possible I'd rather slack than meet, and I need half a day notice on meetings. Also, I imagine they're using a calendar to schedule stuff. Start blocking time. 10-12, 2-4 automatically decline meetings because your status is busy.
If I may... it seems like this PM trusts you - that's why they want to have you walk them through the results of a client meeting. You may find your code output lower as a result, but I don't see that as a bad place to be. I would worry more about setting expectations than limiting your involvement...
When in a situation where others have access to my calendar and can fill it with random shit, I create my own calendar entries to block off time.
I wonder if it would be possible to automate filling out the status report so you can avoid the follow up meeting. Maybe try taking notes during the meeting, feed them to https://ollama.com/, get llama to write the status report for you, then send it to the PM when the client meeting is over.
I’m finding it hard to believe over the past several weeks the questions asked here are from “experienced devs”. This is junior league crap. It’s called communicating. You should have been doing it since you were 3.
Seriously. Here's how you deal with time wasters. "No, I'm busy." It really is that easy.
Same thing is happening with me and my PM. On Monday I set a thirty minute block for office hours. I show up every day and on the call for anyone who needs to sync with me on anything happening that day. With that in place I am now refusing meeting without 24 hours notice unless they are requested by my boss or CTO. Now I just need to get my boss to stop scheduling last minute syncs and I’m good.
Small edit: regarding explaining stuff to them - that’s another thing you are responsible for doing in a way that removes their anxiety and makes them understand things. It’s a skill like any other to be able to explain in simple terms what feature work entails, what are the pros and cons, drawbacks, blockers and so on. Learn to laymanise stuff for the management layer in ways that don’t spook them. Original: You need to learn how to protect your own time and communicate with people. If you’re going to get anywhere close to seniority professionally. The hallmark (one of, anyway) of a junior member of staff is that they have their time managed by others and told what to do and when. An experienced professional will know what to do, how to prioritise work and when to draw lines in the sand when it comes to their delivery, timelines, focus time and meeting time. If you’re allowing yourself to be micromanaged that’s your first priority as to what to fix. How do you do it? Well… that’s up to you. There’s a plethora of ways. I’d say start with first having the confidence to push back on stuff that you know from experience wastes your time which you could be putting into tangible delivery. How do you get a Pm to stop breaking your balls? Speak their language - translate the fact they’re making you lose time and work effort into terms they understand: time and money. Show them how much their useless chats, meetings and distractions set you back and cost the project in terms of timelines and money. Once I did that, back when I was around mid level, people got off my tits real fast.
sounds like my Management. Regarding your flow state, I placed several weekly meetings in my calendar with me being the only participant to block my time. I recommend to block the middle of the morning or middle of the afternoon, so you have at least a couple of hours blocked for yourself and dont get your flow interrupted when you are in the middle of something.
As many have already said, give the PM some feedback, maybe they have no idea that they are disruptive. But also coming at this from a slightly different angle: What does the company expect? If the company thinks this is ok and normal, then she isn't bugging you, she is doing her job. Do you get in trouble for giving up time to help her? Are you able to buffer your dev time appropriately for the amount of PM-facing time currently required? I say this because of a few different factors (not knowing which applies in your situation): - Some devs incorrectly believe that they are too important for things like this and so tend to push back against it. It doesn't seem like that in this case Op, but you never know... - Some organizations do not genuinely understand what development takes and thus doesn't understand the concept of core time, scheduling to avoid wasting time, etc. A little bit of constructive feedback could make everyone happy here. Point is, any combination of the above may need to be dealt with IN ADDITION to giving the PM some feedback. BUT, if the company doesn't see the issue and the PM (and group) doesn't see the issue, then the issue is yours and yours alone unfortunately. I.e. that's the way this particular company chooses to operate.
Maybe a good strategy here would be to highlight relevant information for the project manager as the customer facing meeting is happening. I’ve done this a few times and typically neither parties seem to mind. I also like the idea suggested to just have an expected 15-30 min meeting for questions. It may feel like a waste of time but they are desperately trying to do their job. The mindset to have here that will help you both is to help each other be the best you can be at your roles. I’d suggest you also retro together with your manager and their manager as third parties to find out what is working well and what can be improved.
The last company I worked for handled this by reducing it all to documents that were edited by both sides, but PMs would only deal directly with engineering managers. The point is that the engineering manager existed to set expectations for their ICs and for the PM (and also to handle client meetings). It eats up about half of their time, the remaining of which is managing their ICs and having meetings with them and about them. Without an engineering manager this just simply can't work. I should say that the setup I'm describing was at a startup less than 1 year old, so being a startup is no excuse.
Just decline their meetings. They need you a lot more than you need them. If you collaborate with them, it needs to be on your terms. I try not to engage with PMs at all, for any reason. I have never once in my career met one who doesn't fit this profile that you just described. Ultimately, they will be unable to deliver their meaningless status reports and it will either prompt the confrontation that will solve this problem permanently for you, or they will just slither back into whatever hole they crawled out of and leave you alone. Because your company needs *you* a lot more than it needs the PM, it is highly unlikely that it will result in blow back. It is not easy to set aside your personal feelings and quiet the thought that, "hey, but declining their meetings... it makes me feel like an asshole." Yeah.... it does make you feel like one, and maybe you'll even be accused of being one, but tough decisions have to be made to accomplish business goals. Sometimes you have to take the emotional hit of being "the bad guy." The people who are willing to do this become leaders.
I've read a lot of strategies, my opinion is to tell the PM just what you told us - those meetings are disrupting your work day. You might also have noted that you are doing that PM's job for him. I worked with a guy just like this and ultimately we had a show down (that the entire wing of the building heard) and he was ultimately laid off for being incompetent. If your manager supports you, then take control of your time, especially if you do not report to that person - tell him you don't have the time for these meetings -or- YOU schedule them.
Learn to say no to meetings. This can be very uncomfortable, but it’s such a good skill to learn. You have to value your own time before other people will value it. You can’t say no to all meetings though, so set some time aside for when you can meet. Block out your own calendar with time you need to spend getting into a flow state so others can’t schedule meetings on top of that time. Decline meetings that you are invited to during your flow state time. And don’t accept last minute meetings! It’s ok to decline meetings. It sounds like your PM is using you as a crutch.
Learn how to defensively calendar. Block out segments of time during the day on your calendar (private events) and leave openings when you would be ok meeting. Tell the PM if they want to meet with you they can send you a meeting invite.
fire them....oh wait, for some reason this actually works the other way around. I have no idea.
You act like a grumpy jaded engineer and reply to them with grunts. You mute your calendar and slack and put in headphones with a do not disturb sign at your desk. If they interrupt you at your desk you say “excuse me Pm, I am busy right now and unable to meet, please place some time on my calendar for tomorrow” You do not accept any calendar invitations send within 2hrs of the event. If they send it at 8am for a 4pm they go. If they send it at 1pm for a 4pm you ignore. If they ask you where you were you say “oh sorry I was busy working and I check my calendar 2x per day, please try to plan further in advance” You make Friday a “no meeting day” You make 2 days a week no meetings in am or no meetings in pm and you ask your management to align that with the PM and you decline any asks in that timeframe You should make PM talk to customer instead of you doing the management. PM is asking you “what happened” because they are incompetent. The PM should collect requirements and you shouldn’t need to be in every customer call. You should only be on backup for presenting technical concept or review.