Since May, every Wednesday, I wrote an article about meetings. I've spent these months breaking down all the ways meetings go wrong. No agendas. Starting late. Too many people. Unprepared participants. The same conversations over and over. I've lived through most of these.
To me, this wasn't just about being annoyed by these bullshit meetings.
Every BS meeting has real consequences.
When you start late, people with accessibility needs get hit hardest. They might need extra time to transition between calls or have schedules that can't shift around because someone couldn't be bothered to start on time. When the loudest voices dominate, the people who actually know what they're talking about get drowned out by managers who love theory but have never actually used a screen reader. When there's no clear decision maker, important accessibility fixes sit in a backlog while teams waste time talking in circles.
Every pointless meeting is time stolen from actual work. Time that you could spend fixing accessibility issues. Time that you could spend building something that actually helps people.
When meetings end with "let's schedule another meeting," that's not productivity. That's procrastination. That's bullshit. When people zone out because the meeting is clearly a waste of time, you've lost their expertise. You've lost their input. You've lost the chance to make real progress.
I don't think the fix is that complicated. It's just basic respect for everyone's time.
Have an agenda. Start on time. Invite only the people who need to be there. Come prepared. Make decisions. Create action items with real deadlines and real ownership.
Good meetings do happen. But they don't happen by themselves.
They happen when someone gives a shit about making them work. Bad meetings happen when someone just assumes people will figure it out.
I've written about 18 different ways meetings go wrong. They all come down to the same root cause. Nobody took responsibility for making the meeting worth everyone's time.
Your team's time matters. Your time matters. The people who depend on accessible products matter.
Stop having BS meetings.
At the end of the day, if your meeting could have been an email, it should have been an email. And if it couldn't have been an email, it better damn well be worth the time you're asking people to spend.