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In a comment you say you're a tech lead. It really depends on what the meetings are, and let's put them into 3 buckets, from least latitude to most: Are they regular meetings where you're the representative for your team or function? In other words, the types of meetings that all other tech leads also attend -- whether they're the only tech lead present (weekly team meeting), or lots of other tech leads (department tech lead meeting), or your weekly 1-1 with your manager, or your monthly 1-1 with each other team member? Because these are just part of your job, full stop. Or are they specific one-off problem-solving meetings with 2-6 people total that actually need your input? Because these are generally part of your job as well, especially as a tech lead. If you find yourself regularly contributing nothing though, you can push back or suggest a non-lead team member instead. But really you should bring this up with your manager because you're surely not the only one having this problem, and saying no to these meetings could negatively impact you if your input really is required and you merely find them inefficient. The last category is one-off special meetings to explore new ideas, build relationships, get feedback, talk about company culture, learn things, etc. These are where the company wants to have a wide range of people present but your specific absence may not be noted. On the one hand, you can try just not going and it might be totally fine, and if anyone asks just say you were fixing a time-sensitive bug (important: don't respond to these calendar invites, so they don't say "Yes" but they also don't say "No".). On the other hand, if your manager/peers are usually there and they start noticing you never are, you might develop a reputation of not caring about the company, not being a good company citizen, etc. You'll have to decide if it's worth the reputational hit and whether that could affect promotions. |