Dear Omar

How to Calculate All the Money You’re Wasting on Meetings

And what to do about it

Welcome to Dear Omar, a weekly Debugger column from tech expert Omar L. Gallaga. If you have questions for Omar, send them to debugger@medium.com with the subject line “Dear Omar.”

A little over 10 years ago, when I worked as an entertainment editor at a newspaper, I learned firsthand the feeling of futility that meetings can create. I was in a conference room with a yellow legal pad and pen with a few other staffers, ready for a meeting to begin to discuss our coverage of South by Southwest.

The meeting began, and after some initial small talk about our weekends and some fumbling with email printouts… nothing happened. The conversation dried up. Someone may have coughed.

We realized, with a mixture of horror and “You gotta be shitting me!” bemusement, that the person who called the meeting weeks before no longer worked with us. And on top of that, we had no real agenda or tangible ground to cover; it was still too early to do any significant planning for this festival and we all had other work that was far more pressing.

The meeting was adjourned early, we had a laugh, but I wish I could say this was the only meeting in my long office career that didn’t need to…