Like, what is wrong with my reasoning here? Meetings are maximally efficient when the exact set of people who all need to talk to each other are present, and no more. In a team of 7, only 1 or 2 other people might be affected by what I’m working on. The other people are just wasting time pretending to care about what I’m saying.
My experience working at tech companies in SF has suggested to me that most meetings, not just standups, suffer from this problem. The time cost of a meeting grows as O(N^2), and yet we routinely have all-hands, weekly syncs, etc. Yes, some level of communication is needed but when the time cost of these things is so tremendous, it seems irresponsible not to at least ask if what we’re getting out of it is worth the cost.
Meetings are apparently the one thing that no one tries to optimize, in our industry ostensibly hyperconcerned with optimizing things.
Disclaimer: I hate most meetings.