Meeting Cost Calculator

How to play

Enter how many people are in the room and their rough average salary, then start the clock when the meeting does. The number climbs in real time. Most people find the first minute funny and the fifteenth genuinely uncomfortable, which is the point.

Playing it well

The figure lands hardest when it's conservative. Use a salary number nobody could argue is inflated, and don't add overheads — a defensible small number is far more persuasive than a big one someone can dismiss. If you're going to show it to anyone, screenshot it at the end rather than narrating the total as you go.

Ways to play it

The recurring-meeting version is the one that changes behavior: multiply a single sitting by the number of times it appears on the calendar this year. A weekly 30-minute sync with eight people is not a 30-minute meeting, it is a 26-hour project nobody scoped. The opportunity-cost version replaces salary with what the same hours would produce — two engineers for a fortnight, or one designer for a month. And the attendance version holds the clock steady while removing people one at a time, which is usually the most persuasive number in the room.

What people get wrong

Loading the salary figure with overheads feels rigorous and destroys the argument, because it hands anyone who wants to dismiss the number a reason to. Use base salary and let the figure be conservative. The second mistake is running it live and narrating — the counter is a screenshot, not a performance. The third is aiming it at a specific meeting rather than a recurring one; a one-off expensive meeting may well have been worth it, and picking on it makes you look like you are keeping score rather than making a point.

Meeting etiquette

This is the toy most likely to actually change something, and also the one most likely to read as an attack on whoever called the meeting. Framing matters: "this recurring sync costs about £40k a year" is a budget observation, while "do you know what you just cost us" is a resignation letter. Aim it at recurring meetings, not at people.

Where it comes from

Meeting-cost clocks have been reinvented endlessly, and there's a reason they keep coming back: time is the one resource organizations spend without a ledger. Money in a meeting is invisible until something converts it, and conversion is uncomfortable enough to be memorable.

Questions people ask

What salary number should I use?

A defensible average for the people actually in the room, before overheads. If someone could plausibly argue your number is inflated, you have already lost the conversation.

Does it account for people who are only half paying attention?

No, and it shouldn't. Their time is being paid for either way — that they are also doing email is an argument for the meeting being unnecessary, not for it being cheaper.

Is it safe to show my manager?

Aimed at a recurring meeting, framed as a budget observation, usually yes. Aimed at the meeting they just called, no.