[gwbas1c]

As a lead I used to tick a few people off by occasionally declining meetings. The result is that I developed a mystique, and when I needed to get peoples' attention, I could get it.

As an engineer it's important to feel comfortable occasionally declining BS meetings: it reflects more poorly on the person who can't get people to come to their meetings than on you. (Even though people might appear mad at you.)

It's also critical to decline project kick-off meetings unless you've been explicitly informed about the project by your manager. Sometimes people play power games or bypass roadmaps. Other times your manager forgets to tell you you're on a project. Either way, it again makes the meeting organizer look bad if you aren't there.

[gav]

In a previous role I was responsible for developing architecture that supported a bunch of different teams, so I started being pulled into a lot of meetings as the easy option for them was asking me. I ended up having 6-8 hours of meetings a day on top of my actual workload.

My solution was to not accept meetings and have a PM go grab me if they really needed me, that was enough friction to allow me time to get work done. As in your case, this created a bunch of mystique as I was now that guy that showed up in the middle of a meeting, said a bunch of smart things (hopefully!) and then left.

One of the difference about the new Zoom-centric world is that it's zero effort to add an somebody to a meeting "just in case". I push my leads to decline meetings where there is no clear agenda and/or clear idea of the value they can provide. It's ok that your default isn't to hit "accept", it's the meeting organizer's job to convince you that it's worth attending over other priorities.

[internet101010]

> Sometimes people play power games or bypass roadmaps.

The people that do this are the same people that send the same request to several different people in hopes that one of them will do it, resulting in duplicate effort.

[ryandrake]

Yes! Decline meetings that you have nothing to contribute to and nothing to learn from! Don't be bashful about it. Maybe I'm extremely lucky, but I've never worked at a place where there was this weird taboo against declining meetings. We're all grown-ups and presumably were hired partially because we know how to manage our time, so manage yours!

I'm double- or triple-booked for most hours of the day. I casually decline meetings all the time and don't sweat it even in the slightest. I don't recall the last time someone asked me, "Hey, you were supposed to show your face at Meeting X, why weren't you there???" This happens in crappy companies.

[gwill]

i'll add that there you can avoid making people mad at you by communicating why you’re cancelling. you don't need to be mean, just explain that your contribution wont be valuable and the task your working on has higher priority etc.

[gwbas1c]

> cancelling

I didn't cancel, I declined meetings. There is a very important difference.

> i'll add that there you can avoid making people mad at you by communicating why

I usually gave a reason, but when there was a large invite list, or no notice, I did not.

The one time I "got into trouble" was when I gave a reason: "I am declining this meeting because there is no agenda." My manager told me to just have him intervene instead of declining the meeting.