[throwbadubadu]

It's strange (and also independent if real or virtual), but for me the worst ideas actually came out of those meetings where people "needed to brainstorm to come up with solution" - and usually also endless technical debt. The best when skilled people have enough time (!!) to think stuff through, mostly alone or small 2-3 ppl team, draft something up, and again others can have time to think this through and thoroughly review. Not that the other thing also sometimes happens, but majority not. Different problem domain, skills? (But anyway, totally independent if virtual or not..)

[j45]

Design by committee (where few are competent in the issue at hand) is different than the right people being in any kind of meeting.

Lots of people waste time and hide in online meetings too.

[fatnoah]

> The best when skilled people have enough time (!!) to think stuff through, mostly alone or small 2-3 ppl team

I like to say that small meetings of 2-4 people are great for figuring out what to do, and larger meetings are great to have a discussion about the plan made by the smaller meeting. It constrains the discussion and helps to limit rat-holing.