[rekenaut]

Trust me, the 80% meeting workday became prevalent loooooong before the 2020s.

[georgemcbay]

Can double confirm.

I'm 51, have been working in software my whole professional career, this isn't something that started with COVID.

The massive increase in tech hiring might have made more of these people exist in absolute terms, but they have always existed.

[Hamuko]

Isn't this just called "being a Product Owner"? I've never seen those people do anything but sit in meetings.

[0xEF]

I don't know about anyone else, but contrary to my general disdain for meetings* I have found product owners/process managers to be useful in the regard of having one central person to funnel things through on a particular project. The bottleneck also creates a nice buffer of accountability in both directions and they typically offer either new or refined SOPs after solving the same problems over and over again. Plus, they can sit in on the meeting while I go do something useful.

I may just have been lucky with the few I've had to work with though, so your mileage may vary.

*or as the song says, a little less conversation, a little more action please

[lynx97]

I trust you thats the case for your environment. Where I work, useless meetings started to explode March 2020, and never went away.

[jannyfer]

Were you born in 1997? If so, it’s possible you just weren’t senior enough to see the 80% meeting workday prior to COVID.