[mturmon]

I get where you're coming from, but as you probably know, one must be careful not to take it too far. Metaphorically, one of these days, the server room you're shut up in might be outsourced to the cloud, and you weren't at the meeting.

More concretely, by saying "no" to these meetings, a person is advertising that there are some standard capabilities that they don't have (e.g., "not skilled at working with non-technical people" appearing on an evaluation at some point). This will limit the kind of roles that person will be able to fill. What seems like a strength from one angle ("deeply technical") can look like a liability from above.

(Not a down voter, BTW, just have some personal experience with the problem.)

[eru]

Decline most meetings, not all.