Thanks for saying this. I’m strongly considering leaving a job primarily due to the meeting culture. It’s just incredibly wasteful. We can spend weeks talking about things I would have knocked out in days in a previous role.
Robustly challenge what you think are unwarranted meetings. Preface your input in meetings that are silly but still exist with "Hi, I'll keep this concise because I know everyone has a lot of work to do ...", make a habit of reconfirming the value and purpose of the remaining meetings. Make it normal for meetings to whither quickly when not vital.
I go further and simply don't attend meetings that lack an agenda or at the very least point out when there isn't one when the meeting starts.
I was complaining about this to my manager, he said attending meetings doesn't affect my perf and I just shouldn't go if I think it's pointless. So I stopped going to a couple. No one has made a peep. I need to start voicing for the smaller meetings tho. I've starting asking the groups "any agenda for today?" A couple hours before but I feel like the meeting organizer should really be on top of this.
