> if you think a meeting is pointless and that you have nothing to gain from it or contribute to it, just don't go.
Or, even better, normalize showing up to a meeting, and if you feel like it is useless/irrelevant to you after 10 minutes, just stand up and leave. You never know ahead of time if the meeting would be useless for you or not (ok, in a lot of cases you do, but more often than not it isn't super-decisive). But after 10 minutes, it becomes a bit more obvious whether you would benefit from staying or not.
Saw a senior engineer from our sister team do it once, then he explained his logic to me later regarding this. At first i was afraid, thinking "ok, he is a senior engineer, he can do whatever without negative consequences, and I don't think I can afford to do it as an entry level engineer [at the time]".
One day I tried it, and never looked back. No one had any issues with it, and it had made me so much more productive. Then a new manager for my team came along, saw me do it once, and asked me about it, like "why did you do this". I explained to him the exact same reasoning as for why I was doing it. He ended up having zero issues with it after my explanation either, and had even mentioned this approach to other people on the team who were struggling with meeting overload as a recommended approach.
Or, even better, normalize showing up to a meeting, and if you feel like it is useless/irrelevant to you after 10 minutes, just stand up and leave. You never know ahead of time if the meeting would be useless for you or not (ok, in a lot of cases you do, but more often than not it isn't super-decisive). But after 10 minutes, it becomes a bit more obvious whether you would benefit from staying or not.
Saw a senior engineer from our sister team do it once, then he explained his logic to me later regarding this. At first i was afraid, thinking "ok, he is a senior engineer, he can do whatever without negative consequences, and I don't think I can afford to do it as an entry level engineer [at the time]".
One day I tried it, and never looked back. No one had any issues with it, and it had made me so much more productive. Then a new manager for my team came along, saw me do it once, and asked me about it, like "why did you do this". I explained to him the exact same reasoning as for why I was doing it. He ended up having zero issues with it after my explanation either, and had even mentioned this approach to other people on the team who were struggling with meeting overload as a recommended approach.