Understanding your audience is one of the most important parts of effective communication. If you are not spending time on finding out what various stakeholders

Understanding your audience is one of the most important parts of effective communication. If you are not spending time on finding out what various stakeholders in your organization want (in general... and out of you) and care about, you will not be able to effectively communicate with them. Expressing what you want and care about, being open and vulnerable is also another part. They should feel like they know you and when you say something, they shouldn't have to guess where you are coming from. This is easy to figure out if you spend time communicating with them. By ignoring meetings, you have missed out on those opportunities. Meetings are not completely unnecessary; wherever you got that impression from, you got it wrong. You have to figure out which meetings are important to you and which ones are not, obviously. But to know that, you have to be in enough of them. Some meetings present opportunities to know what is required of you and also communicate what you've been doing. You should never miss those. I highly suggest you read the book High Output Management by a former CEO of Intel to learn more about what meetings are... and a whole lot of other things. Who was communicating to you this whole time? How did you figure out what was required? What were you going by? Whoever was doing that part is much more valuable than you. From the organization's point of view, they will not even notice that you are gone. I suggest you learn these things and move on. Next time, if you want to work for a company, look for a company which is actually looking for someone like you and willing to compensate you fairly for your contributions.