First screen, captured 5 days ago.

Why do we have so many meetings?

What HN thinks

A meeting was scheduled to discuss why there are so many meetings; it ran the full hour.

Meetings force action from non-responders
Many say colleagues ignore emails and PRs until a meeting is threatened, so meetings become the only way to get engagement or decisions.
Meetings as triage and priority signal
Others defend ignoring requests until someone books time, since overloaded people use persistence and meeting effort to filter what actually matters.
Meetings reflect culture and politics
Lack of agency, blame-spreading, social signaling and nonsense jobs drive meetings, and decisions often happen in smaller pre-meetings anyway.

Consensus: Most agree excessive meetings are a symptom of deeper organizational problems like overload, unclear priorities and poor written communication, though they disagree on who is to blame, especially for stalled PR reviews.

Summarised by Claude from the comment thread 3 days ago.

Points: 68
Comments: 172
Posted: 2026-10-20 by ilamont
Category: Career

workplace-meetings labor-economics nber productivity survey-research

All captures:

Looks similar

Screenshot of nber.org: Rising Young Worker Despair in the United States

Rising Young Worker Despair in the United States (nber.org)

27 points by johntfella 1 year ago | 32 comments

Screenshot of nber.org: O-Ring Automation

O-Ring Automation (nber.org)

23 points by jandrewrogers 9 months ago | 10 comments

Screenshot of nber.org: Long-Run Effects of H-1B Immigration on the U.S. Economy (July 2026)

Long-Run Effects of H-1B Immigration on the U.S. Economy (July 2026)(nber.org)

54 points by ryzvonusef 2 months ago | 14 comments

Screenshot of nber.org: Anatomy of US inequality

Anatomy of US inequality (nber.org)

62 points by hhs 10 months ago | 22 comments

Screenshot of nber.org: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks (nber.org)

327 points by littlexsparkee 5 months ago | 341 comments

NBER working paper by Kouchekinia, Neumark, and Bruckner examining whether employment slows cognitive decline using labor market shocks as evidence.

cognitive-decline employment labor-economics aging

Screenshot of bfi.uchicago.edu: Sticky wage norms and the real wage cost of unexpected inflation

Sticky wage norms and the real wage cost of unexpected inflation (bfi.uchicago.edu)

355 points by jplusequalt 2 months ago | 214 comments

A Becker Friedman Institute working paper by Hurst, Patterson, Richardson, and Wang on sticky wage norms and how unexpected inflation erodes real wages.

economics inflation wages labor-market

Looks similar

Rising Young Worker Despair in the United States (nber.org)

O-Ring Automation (nber.org)

Long-Run Effects of H-1B Immigration on the U.S. Economy (July 2026)(nber.org)

Anatomy of US inequality (nber.org)

Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks (nber.org)

Sticky wage norms and the real wage cost of unexpected inflation (bfi.uchicago.edu)

Related stories

Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds (bloomberg.com)

Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks (nber.org)

How employment is changing at Anthropic (anthropic.com)

Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from Norway, 2021–2025 (nber.org)

Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals (ft.com)

There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy (experimental-history.com)