There’s a real danger that if we filtered out everyone who doesn’t see the value in meetings, we’d have nobody left to write any code. ;) I suspect all programmers are prone to this in varying degrees, and in decades of experience in companies of many sizes I’ve never seen a counter-example. I have absolutely wrestled with preferring less talking and more coding and felt at many times like I was wasting time in meetings, even though my mindset has shifted over time to see the value in communication that brings team alignment even if it uses up some of my time and attention.

In my first job in CG films, there were 1-hour dailies twice a day that I was expected to show partial progress. And it might take 30 minutes to render & prepare for it every time too. It could use up half my day sometimes, and I fought with the producer about it. I was writing code to control crowds that wouldn’t be ready for weeks, so what was the point of showing every day, or of being present only to watch other people’s updates? There’s a balance for sure, but years later I feel like I was in the wrong, and I see the value in showing partial work often. It’s because people often don’t agree even when they say they do, language is way too ambiguous. So a planning meeting once is never finished, you have to keep agreeing on the goals over and over with tangible results until it’s finished before you actually know if everyone’s in sync.