In every company, there are those non-tech people who try to come up with creative ways to make us not do any work: useless meetings, stupid company activities, "initiatives" cause,
"Gohd! you have to take ann iniitiative".

Okay, I get it. You have a lot of free time on your hand and wanna seem busy. I, on the other hand, want to finish my tasks, get paid, and get on with my life.

As an independent contractor, I turn down all jobs where the client wants regular scheduled meetings. Doesn't matter if it's weekly or even monthly. I get that you want to know what's going on. That's what email and Slack are for. I've never had a single job go well for a client like that. They're never happy and always making last minute changes.

Not even just non-tech people - I find it's anyone who likes to pretend they're busier than they are, or anyone who likes the excuse of going to meetings to explain why they've done no actual work.

"I really think we should organise a mandatory hour in the week where we all jump on Slack and talk about ourselves, have a bit of chit chat etc., no work talk allowed!"

...no.

@ezpz Thanks for saying that. I'm a dev, but my work only started dipping into contracts the last two years. I didn't know it wasn't me.

The team put me on a client that had no ask, and I scoped a whole product out of it in two years.

Guess what? Because I'm not an independent contractor, I just kept going through the pain of scheduled shit and my team failing me, for no reason. The client wants me now, and I don't care about the job, and my boss doesn't care about the fact our client is happy lol. I now get why I made everyone seethe with jealousy when they thought they wanna fire me after a layoff period, and realized I'm the only dev who doesn't add overhead, and managed to keep their workload, and this new co-development client they forgot about, in the company.

I took on an R&D project that our asshole CEO told me was a pilot, and made it successful, and they didn't even want me to be. They just wanted that client for the relationship.