There's an interesting hatred of meetings by software engineers, and I think it's to far on the hatred spectrum. There's definitely a lot to hate about meetings and they are very poorly run in general. But the argument of "when do you do actual work!" is not a good one. If you run an organization of 200 people, it's a lot more effective for 25 people to spend all of their time making the efficiency of the team, and impact of the team on the business as high as possible, than it is to increase the team size to 225. If those 25 people can, through messy meetings, debates, and emotional outbursts, somehow make 200 ppl twice as effective, that's great!
I think a better framing for meetings is not by looking at the battle, but the war. Individually, yeah it can suck. But the goal is to ensure a large amount of individuals march in the same direction, toward the same goal, and are progressing the business forward. Some amount of work is needed for that.
Let's optimize for maximizing that impact, not how "good" the process feels.
Coding takes an enormous amount of concentration and headspace. Meetings are context switches that make retaining focus much harder. That’s why coders hate them.
This is incorrect and a giant red herring. Pharma is not "raising prices" in the implied sense, and pharma is not the cause of drug prices being high in the US.
Pharma is increasing the "gross price" of a drug in order to increase the rebate going to the PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Manager) so that they maintain their position on the formulary (to be "covered by insurance"). The "net price" of drugs (what pharma makes) is overall growing at the pace of inflation, not above. There's obviously exception cases, and plenty of small biotech firms launch questionable products with high prices that then get covered. But this is a result of this rebate system that prioritizes covering drugs with large rebates (since PBMs monetize rebates), not the most cost effective drug.
