> Ok, suppose programmers are 100% exempt from the internal meetings. Engineering managers and product owners then go ahead and just make every single decision there is. How’s that? The meetings are often used for people to sync on the progress and issues. Moreover, technical people can give their input and help non-technical ones to better understand the limitations, issues, etc.
That sounds horrendous. Those people shouldn't be making every decision. I don't know what that has to do with meetings. I'm not saying engineers should skip meetings. I'm saying abolish all internal meetings at your company. If you don't run the company then I can see how this is useless advice.
I find ad hoc "meetings" which are really just phone calls (we use Remotion at my company, it works great) to be far more useful. They aren't scheduled, so they don't take up mental space where you're dreading the meeting coming up. They aren't scheduled, so it's super easy to just say "hey I'm busy, can't talk". They aren't scheduled, so there's literally no pressure to take the call, and instead say something like "hey, can you just slack me what's happening and I can take a look in a bit?".
I also think overreliance on meetings leads to a lack of quality internal documentation, writing, and requirements gathering. If everyone is just shooting around ideas out loud, in a room, there's nothing making it on paper. I find that sitting down and actually writing out everything before I present the idea to anyone or discuss it, is far more useful than scrambling before a meeting I forgot that I had today.
