How much does that meeting actually cost?
8 attendees × 1 hour × $75 average loaded rate = $600 per meeting. Plus 23 minutes of context-switch recovery per attendee. Most companies have no idea what their meeting overhead actually is.
How the math works
cost = duration × Σ(attendee hourly rate) × (1 + benefits multiplier)
Hourly rate = base salary ÷ 2,080 hours. Benefits multiplier of 1.3× accounts for payroll taxes, healthcare, retirement match, and equipment overhead. Plus 23 minutes of context-switch recovery per attendee (peer-reviewed estimate from Mark et al. 2008), which we add as a separate "true cost including disruption" line.
For a recurring meeting: annual cost = per-meeting cost × frequency. A weekly 1-hour all-hands with 12 mid-senior people typically costs $50,000-$70,000/year in loaded salary plus disruption.
The right output isn't "ban meetings"; it's the meeting-ROI ratio. A $520 strategy session that prevents a $190K mistake has a return of 36,000%. A $1,200 weekly status update that could be a Slack message has near-zero return.
Math runs locally. Inputs never leave your browser. Source on github.
Real-world scenarios
- 12-person 90-minute all-hands = $1,217 + $63K/year for the recurring weekly — full math by role, plus the meeting-ROI framework that distinguishes worth-it from waste.