Real-Time Meeting Cost Calculator
The true cost of every meeting in salary dollars — while it's happening.
A 1-hour meeting with 6 people at $90k salary
= $259 in salary cost. If that meeting happens weekly: $13,468/year. For most organizations, a conservative estimate of total meeting cost is 15–25% of payroll — meeting overhead for a 50-person company can easily exceed $500,000/year.
The Jeff Bezos 2-pizza rule
If you can't feed everyone at a meeting with two pizzas, it's too large. Optimal decision-making groups are 5–8 people. Beyond that, attendees are observers, not contributors — their presence is cost without benefit.
Microsoft analyzed 31,000 workers and found unnecessary meetings cost organizations 26 hours of productivity per employee per month. Reducing standing meetings by 50% increases deep work time by an average of 2.1 hours/day per employee.