[alexpotato]

In defense of middle managers:

When I was a middle manager at a past job, my team kept getting bombarded with meeting requests (it was a "fire drill all the time" kind of place).

I ended up making a 4 hour "team meeting" every Friday morning to give them focus time.

I mentioned to them that they could have done the same on their own if they wanted. My team lead pointed out that since our calendars were visible in the department, having me as the organized gave the meeting more "weight" and so line employees were less likely to push for time in that slot.

[TeMPOraL]

That's a good point, thanks for saying it. Speaking as one of such developers who had trouble with it for a long time, plenty of us might end up feeling shy or insecure about making proactive interventions to secure time for ourselves or our teams - all while our managers might be assuming we'll make such moves when needed. Sometimes all it takes is an explicit permission from a person in position of power - them saying to subordinates, "it's fine if you block off focus time for the team in the company calendar". And, per your example, it's even better when followed by assurances of support, such as being an organizer or confirmed invitee. For better or worse, a lot of inter-team dynamics ends up being about looks.

[portaouflop]

Half my day is blocked with “no meetings please unless urgent” and it works great - but I guess it’s part of the org culture that we respect each others time and don’t do a lot of unnecessary meetings in general anyway so idk if it would work that well somewhere else