Well people say they hate attending boring meetings, but when you observe what people do it's normally the coders who actively find ways to skip / who aren't setting up new meetings / are requesting fewer meetings. Other job roles, at least in my experience, tend to jump to a meeting as the first reaction. Developers will say: let's discuss it over email. Others say: let's hop on a call / grab a room.

Now you're right it's obviously not that black and white, I'm generalizing. But I think devs often under-estimate how many people in a typical company perceive meeting other internal employees as amongst their primary outputs.

Something else worth remarking on - a lot of people in sales or marketing roles never seem to use word processors. They communicate ideas by sending PowerPoint decks around, often with a density of words in the slides too high to actually project. Where I last worked there were people whose working hours boiled down to meetings and PowerPoints. They could spend a whole week making a deck, which would only be consumed by their colleagues. I found it odd but maybe the slide templates help them structure their thoughts.

> you observe what people do it's normally the coders who actively find ways to skip / who aren't setting up new meetings / are requesting fewer meetings

Interesting - I actually chalk up that to two things: first, people in SWE roles having historically been given a tremendous amount of latitude for behavior that does not conform to "professional" norms. The freedom to dress however they want, work from home, and skip out on meetings they don't want to attend are all of a piece. And second, I think software engineering work is often (generalizing as well) less cross functional than other roles. Gathering requirements and understanding how it fits into a larger company plan is usually tasked out to PMs or tech leads, which is not something I've seen for Finance, HR, Legal, or other functional roles. So the need to schedule their own meetings is also lessened.

I treasure the meetings where my users surface requests, problems, and observations to me. Also the meetings where I jam with fellow engineers on how to solve specific problems. But the vast majority of the meetings on my calendar are what I would consider phatic [0]: they're about performing or convincing ourselves and each other of the idea "we are a team and we're collaborating" rather than any actual content, decision, or outcome we're collaborating on. The content is on Slack, or in the hallway.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

I was in yet another meeting the other day, and we had more "observers" than actual contributors / workers. Totally absurd. At the end of the meeting, some of the "observers" simply don't understand the meeting, and want a follow up meeting to discuss the meeting, so they discuss it in yet another meeting (presumably to appear intelligent so even more meetings can be scheduled.)

I've also noticed the PowerPoint issue: densely packed slides look ridiculous and don't project well. I think a lot of people wind up simply reading off the slides.