I see this a lot and the real problem is that when engineers are complaining that they're in meetings all day what they mean is that it feels like they're in me

I see this a lot and the real problem is that when engineers are complaining that they're in meetings all day what they mean is that it feels like they're in meetings all day, and the managers (who are actually in meetings all day) don't appreciate how one hour-long distraction can destroy a day's worth of productivity for an engineer. the worst meetings aren't the ones where you don't need to be there since you could just skip or join mute and keep working, the worst meetings are where detailed status updates are requested from you and you have to report on what you've completed and why it took longer than expected (as usual per hofstadter's law) which will have required you to page all that context back in displacing your current focus and due to the nature of the meeting frustrates you enough that recovering focus afterwards is difficult. status meetings were called out as an engineering management antipattern 40 years ago yet they remain utterly rampant.