> Am I the only one who experiences this? No, everyone experiences this. This isn't a non-technical vs. technical thing either: I've certainly talked to non-te

> Am I the only one who experiences this? No, everyone experiences this. This isn't a non-technical vs. technical thing either: I've certainly talked to non-tech people who left meetings unsure what the point of it was or what was even being discussed. There are several reasons why this happens. The first reason might sound cynical. There are people out there that do things that don't really need to happen, or need to happen but you shouldn't really need to worry about. Sometimes this stuff matters, but it matters to the business but not to the tech team, or the way it affects those of us in more technical roles is maybe not apparent unless you've seen that sort of thing before. To take the example you provided: to "allow customers to collect and return online orders from our regional stores" probably requires changes to several different systems, some of which your team might be responsible for, but some of which might be a different technical team, or might require putting manual processes in place. Return handling by itself opens all sorts of process questions, and some of those processes will be automated in code. Sometimes this stuff matters, but it's explained poorly. [Robert Smith] should be able to articulate the "So what?" in his [quarterly review]. If not, hopefully he gets appropriate feedback to make it more clear next time. In this case, it's not you, it's the person communicating who failed to communicate, but often everyone is too afraid to look like a dummy to ask the obvious question to explain what's going on. Some specific tactics you can use: 1. Ask why should I (or if you'd rather, my team) care about [transformation strategy] or omnichannel strategy or whatever other thing gets raised. No one person can know everything, and your boss should be able to tell you what part you care about and why. 2. Rather than worry about [transformation strategy], worry about the metric that project is trying to drive. Tech and non-tech people alike use "SMART" (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, time-bound) goals for projects. If the organizational stuff disinterests you, look instead at the metrics. 3. Hopefully you have permission from your boss to not attend meetings that aren't pertinent to you. If you did (1) from above, and your boss's response is, "oh, don't worry about that," then you should feel like you can ask your boss "Next time we have a meeting on that topic, can I decline and focus on my own project instead?"