TL;DR: If you spend more than 15 hours/week in meetings, you’re not collaborating — you’re funding a culture that steals your deep work (and $25K–$40K/year of your career value). To boost your efficiency and avoid meeting productivity pitfalls, here’s the math, the scripts, and a 30-day fix.

Marcus’s Wake-Up Call

“Still here. Hour two. We’re planning the agenda for next week’s pre-meeting. I want to scream.”

Marcus, Senior Software Architect

Marcus isn’t lazy. He’s a senior software architect at a Fortune 500 company — the kind of engineer who can debug a distributed system in his sleep. But instead of solving problems, he spends nearly half his week in meetings that feel more like corporate theater than collaboration.

The meeting that finally broke him? A “sprint retrospective planning session” where they spent 90 minutes discussing why retrospectives weren’t working. Meanwhile, his pull request sat for three days waiting for an architect who was “thinking about the implications.”

He isn’t alone. We’re living through a meeting epidemic — and it’s quietly killing careers.

The Old World vs. Today

• Then: In the 1960s, executives averaged ~10 hours/week in meetings. They were rare, decisive, and run by people with authority.
• Now: We hold meetings to plan other meetings:
  • “Alignment syncs”
  • “Retro on the retro”
  • “Scoping sessions to prep the scoping session”

It’s professional Groundhog Day — and most of us are Bill Murray. Executives now average ~23 hours/week in meetings, with roughly half producing zero outcomes. That adds up to an estimated $37B in wasted time annually in the U.S. alone. The hidden cost isn’t just productivity. It’s potential.

The Corporate Theater Starter Pack

• Sprint planning meetings to plan the sprint planning
• Architecture reviews where no architects decide
• “Discovery sessions” to scope the scoping session
• Daily standups that run 45 minutes
• Dependency mapping workshops that create more dependencies
• Post-mortems about why the post-mortem isn’t working

Each one appears productive while actually hindering progress.

Mirror moment: How many hours last week did you spend in these — and how many actually moved work forward?

When Tech Titans Said “Enough”

• Jeff Bezos: No PowerPoints. Every meeting begins with 30 minutes of silent memo-reading.
• Steve Jobs: Removed attendees who couldn’t justify their presence.
• Elon Musk: “No large meetings. If you’re not adding value, leave.”
• Mark Cuban: “Nobody likes meetings except the people who bring the donuts.”

These weren’t quirks. They were defenses against the scarcest resource they had: time for deep work.

Watching Genius Get Buried Alive

Jennifer, a brilliant ML engineer, proposed a fraud detection algorithm projected to save $2M annually. Seven meetings later, the idea was buried in a “working group.” Six months later, a fintech launched the same solution and sold it for $50M. Jennifer left two weeks later — now charging $300/hr to implement the same algorithm. No committees required.

Innovation doesn’t die in code. It dies in conference rooms.

My $42,000 Awakening

• 18 hours in meetings
• 12 hours of real engineering
• The rest: context switching & recovery

The breaking point? A 90-minute “deployment pipeline improvement session.” Everyone knew the problems and the solutions — yet we scheduled three follow-ups instead of implementing anything. I was being paid $90/hour to catalog known problems while solutions gathered dust.

Annual cost: $42,000 wasted. 20-year cost: ~$1.4M in lost wealth. That’s a rental property down payment, an emergency fund — financial freedom — stolen by meetings.

What I’ve Learned Coaching 200+ Engineers

• Average load: Senior ICs spend 16–22 hours/week in meetings.
• Efficiency scores: 89% score below 2.0 on the first assessment.
• Top time wasters: Sprint ceremonies (31%), architecture reviews (24%), status updates (19%).
• Quick wins: Async standups save 3–4 hours/week immediately.
• Most resistance: Managers fear “reduced collaboration” — yet throughput improves when meetings shrink.

Calculate Your Meeting Tax (Prepare to Be Angry)

Step 1 — % of year in meetings: Hours/week × 52 ÷ 2,080

Step 2 — Annual waste: Hourly rate × annual meeting hours × 0.5

Example: At $75/hr and 18 hrs/week → $35,100/year wasted (~$1.4M in 20 years at 7%).

Step 3 — Efficiency Score (rate last 10 meetings):

• 3 = Clear decision made
• 2 = Useful info shared
• 1 = Minor value, could’ve been async
• 0 = Total waste

Reality check: How many of your last 10 scored above 2.0?

The New Rules for Career Protection

• Audit Fridays: Decline meetings without agenda, decision, or clear role.
• Sprint ceremony audit: Can this standup be a Slack thread?
• Architecture reviews: Design docs 48 hrs early. No doc = no meeting.
• Pull request meetings: If it needs a meeting, the PR is too large.
• Pre-work or pass: No prep = no meeting.
• Async first: Loom (2 min) > Zoom (30 min). Docs > calls.
• Fortress focus: Block 2–3 hr deep work windows. Guard like Sev-1 incidents.
• Data as shield: Cutting meetings by ~40% has been shown to materially boost productivity — start with time-boxed experiments.
• Two-pizza cap: If two pizzas can’t feed the room, it’s performance art.
• Implementation test: Ask “If we decide X, who does what by when?” If unclear → async.

Your Calendar = Your Career Trajectory

• Accept vague invites → You signal your time has no value
• Sit quietly → You enable the system’s potential-crushing habits
• Decline politely + suggest async → You model professional boundaries

Treat your calendar like a portfolio: every block should yield learning, relationships, or results.

Tools That Actually Work

• Tracking: RescueTime, Toggl (meeting categories), Google/Outlook analytics
• Async: Loom, Notion/Confluence, Slack Huddles
• Boundaries: Calendly buffers, decline templates, pre-read requirements

Copy-paste script: “Thanks for including me. Based on the agenda, this looks like product strategy, not technical architecture. Could you share outcomes and tag me if constraints emerge?”

Your Move (Career Audit)

If your Meeting Tax > $25K annually, that’s not a productivity problem — that’s a career emergency. Reply with your meeting tax % and role (IC/Manager). If it’s over $30K, I’ll send my 30-Day Calendar Reboot Playbook — templates, pre-reads, and team experiments. No charge.

Your calendar is your career trajectory. Every invite is a vote. This week: will you keep funding busywork — or start investing in your freedom?

✍️ The Workplace Genie

#DeepWork #TechCareers #EngineeringManagement #Productivity #AsyncWork #MeetingCulture

Sarah made $165K at Meta. Stock options. Corner office. Everyone envied her success, which stemmed from her expertise in consulting corporate jobs within the consulting sector.

She also cried in her car every morning before work.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked during our first coaching call. “I have everything people want, but I feel completely trapped.”

Here’s what I discovered: Sarah wasn’t broken. She was being systematically extracted.

Every brilliant idea she had became Meta’s intellectual property. Every relationship she built served the business development. Every skill she developed made her more competitive, but also more dependent.

Sarah was generating $230K in annual value but only receiving $165K. The difference? $65K in corporate extraction.

And she’s not alone.

Most high earners try to solve this feeling by asking for raises, seeking promotions, or improving work-life balance. But these are band-aids on a deeper wound.

The real problem isn’t your performance. It’s that you’re trapped in an extraction economy designed to harvest your value.

The Workplace Genie

Think about it:

• Your brilliance becomes their competitive edge.
• Your network becomes their leverage.
• Your reputation builds their brand.
• Your expertise builds their market position.

Meanwhile, you feel increasingly hollow despite external success.

The average professional in my assessment discovers they’re losing $45K-$67K annually to extraction patterns. That’s why raises never feel like enough — you’re creating far more value than you’re capturing.

Here’s what I do differently:

Instead of optimizing within broken systems, I help people build systematic escape routes. Not by quitting tomorrow, but by creating options so you stay by choice rather than necessity.

Sarah now runs a $180K consulting practice, working 25 hours per week from anywhere she wants—same skills, zero extraction, complete freedom.

Your next move:

Take the Corporate Liberation Assessment this week. It reveals exactly where your value is being captured and shows you the systematic path to freedom.

​Discover your extraction amount here →​

Almost everyone who takes it says, “I had no idea it was this bad”. But shocking awareness is the first step to systematic change.

If your assessment shows high extraction (like 73% of test-takers), it’s time to take some action. Book a free discovery session with me here​

​

Stay free,​
Your Workplace Genie

P.S. The GitHub CEO walked away from billions. Your golden handcuffs might be smaller, but they’re just as real. Find out exactly what they’re costing you.

When Thomas Dohmke announced he was stepping down as CEO of GitHub to become a founder again, the tech world barely blinked. Just another executive transition in a sea of corporate reshuffling, right?

Wrong.

Dohmke’s departure is part of a seismic shift that’s reshaping how we think about career success, corporate loyalty, and professional freedom. CEO turnover, often termed an executive exodus, hit record highs in 2025, with voluntary departures up 34% from the previous year. But here’s what makes this trend fascinating: these aren’t failures or firings. These are strategic exits by people who could coast at the top forever.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

• Average CEO tenure has dropped to 3.2 years — the lowest since 2008
• 67% of departing CEOs started their own ventures within six months
• Exit packages averaging $12+ million, yet they’re still walking away
• Most cited reason? “Misalignment with corporate direction” — not pay

When people with generational wealth choose uncertainty over security, that’s not a career decision. That’s a cultural signal highlighted by the current trend of executive exodus.

Beyond the C-Suite: The Extraction Economy

This isn’t just about executives. What I call the “extraction economy”—where organizations systematically harvest employee value beyond traditional labor—has reached a breaking point.

In my coaching practice, I hear it every week:

• FAANG engineers earning $180K+ but feeling unfulfilled
• Marketing leads drained by never-ending meetings
• Consultants delivering results while quietly burning out

The Three Types of Corporate Extraction

After working with 200+ professionals seeking career liberation, I’ve identified three core patterns:

1. Intellectual Extraction

Your best ideas become company IP. Your strategic thinking strengthens their market position—while your personal vision atrophies.

“I became the world’s best expert at solving problems I didn’t care about.” — Sarah, former Netflix engineer

2. Social Extraction

Your network becomes their business pipeline. Your reputation props up their brand, until you forget where your name ends and theirs begins.

“When I left, I didn’t know who I was without the logo.” — Former Apple director

3. Temporal Extraction

Your bandwidth gets chewed up in off-hour Slack messages, urgent weekend projects, and training that only grows company-specific skills, contributing to an executive exodus.

The Competence Trap

Paradoxically, the better you get, the more trapped you become. Excellence creates dependency. Dependency leads to burnout.

“I wasn’t just good at my job—I was trapped by being too good at it.” — Mark, former Amazon engineer

The Bureaucracy Tax

Every meeting you attend teaches you to seek permission. Every alignment call delays action. The bureaucracy tax isn’t inefficiency—it’s creativity theft.

“I realized I was getting promoted away from the work I actually loved.” — Former Google director

The Freedom Alternative

• Recognition: Spot how and where you’re being extracted.
• Skill Diversification: Build portable expertise.
• Parallel Value Creation: Develop income streams outside your job.
• Strategic Transition: Leave from strength, not survival, minimizing your risk of falling into an executive exodus trap.

The New Career Architecture

The ladder is broken. The new model is about autonomy architecture — portable skills, multiple income streams, reputation-first work. This paradigm shift underscores the executive exodus trend.

What This Means for You

This CEO exodus is part of the broader executive exodus and serves as a preview of the workforce of the future. It’s not a fluke—it’s a flag. If you’re feeling stuck, you’re not broken. You’re just in the wrong system.

Ready to begin your strategic exit? Take the Corporate Liberation Assessment to identify your extraction patterns and start building your Freedom Framework.

Related Reading

• Stuck in a Toxic Job? Here’s What to Do
• The Real Reason You’re Struggling in Job Interviews
• 7 Career Freedom Secrets I Wish I Knew Earlier
• Signs It’s Time to Leave Your 9-to-5 (and How to Do It Without Regret)

When Thomas Dohmke announced he was stepping down as CEO of GitHub, most headlines called it “surprising.”

After all, who walks away from running a $9.5 billion platform that powers 100 million developers?

But if you understand career extraction—the quiet, systematic harvesting of a professional’s creative and emotional energy—his move starts to make perfect sense.

What Is Career Extraction?

Career extraction happens when your value at work goes far beyond your job title or salary—yet most of that value is captured by someone else.

• 🧠 Your best ideas become intellectual property for the company.
• 🤝 Your network becomes a pipeline for others’ success.
• 🎙️ Your voice and presence build the brand—just not your own.

It’s not just burnout. It’s identity outsourcing. And it hits hardest the higher you climb.

GitHub’s CEO Wasn’t Just Managing—He Was Being Mined

As GitHub’s CEO under Microsoft, Dohmke’s influence extended far beyond software leadership. He became a strategic resource, a public figure, and a symbolic extension of the parent company.

• 💡 His strategic thinking shaped Microsoft’s future, not his own.
• 🌐 His global relationships fed the corporate engine.
• 📸 Every photo op, keynote, and interview enhanced Microsoft’s brand, not “Thomas the Founder.”

That’s executive-level career extraction: when your title grows, but your freedom shrinks.

The Turning Point: From Optimization to Escape

Dohmke realized what many high-performers feel but rarely name:

There comes a point where optimizing your role inside the system feels less valuable than building your escape route from it.

Leaving wasn’t failure. It was clarity. It was power. It was freedom.

And that’s what I help my coaching clients uncover every day—whether they’re mid-level managers or C-suite leaders. Escaping career extraction isn’t about burning bridges. It’s about finally crossing the one that leads back to yourself.

Your Call

If you’ve ever looked around and thought, “This success doesn’t feel like mine anymore,” you’re not alone. Subscribe to my newsletter for real talk, mindset shifts, and career clarity—straight from The Workplace Genie.

🔮 Get weekly tips and your free Genie Scripts here →

Or Email me on LinkedIn if you’re quietly plotting your own escape. I’m already holding the lantern.

🧞‍♂️ Your Genie,

If you’ve ever stared at your screen whispering, “There has to be more than this…” — you’re not broken. You’re waking up. 🌱

Far too many brilliant professionals stay trapped in roles that slowly dim their light. Not because they lack skills — but because they’ve been trained to endure the wrong kind of pressure.

Here’s what being stuck can feel like:

• Tiptoeing around a short-tempered manager
• Working overtime without recognition — or worse, being gaslit
• Doing everything “right” but still feeling invisible
• Wanting change but fearing the fallout

Sound familiar? Then this isn’t just a bad week — it’s your sign. 🚨

The Real Problem Isn’t You — It’s the Fit

You’re not here to shrink, numb out, or stay “grateful” for chaos. You’re here to grow. And sometimes, that means outgrowing a job that once felt like a good fit — just like shoes that don’t fit anymore.

Over time, misalignment wears down your clarity and confidence. But here’s the Genie’s truth: Clarity is a skill — and it can be coached. You don’t have to figure it out alone.

A Way Forward (Even If You’re Scared)

Let me offer you a few truths, straight from the Genie’s lamp:

• You don’t need to burn bridges to begin again.
• Craving calm isn’t weakness — it’s wisdom.
• You deserve a career that respects your nervous system.

That’s what I do — guide high-achieving professionals from stuck to strategic. Calmly. Intentionally. Magically. ✨

💬 Let’s Talk About Your Next Step

If this post hit home, that’s not random. This is what I help with. Book a free career clarity session. No pressure. Just presence. Let’s help you find your way back to yourself.

Until then — stay gentle. Stay curious. And remember: being stuck isn’t your story. It’s your signal to begin.

🧞‍♂️ Your Genie