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No meetings at NVIDIA, Shopify, Zoom, Amazon and more companies
Arjun Rajkumar
November 30, 2024
Having no (or lesser) meetings can make your workdays more purposeful and productive. Here is a list of companies that have axed all meetings (or) only do meetings if absolutely necessary.
1. NVIDIA: NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang doesn’t schedule one-on-one meetings with the people who report to him. This is because he believes that any information shared with only one person, is not efficient, as it should be shared with everyone.
2. Shopify: Shopify saved 322,000 hours by cutting all meetings that required three or more employees.
3. Zoom: Zoom founder Eric Yuan thinks most meetings are such a drain on time that he’s developing a “digital twin” that can sit in on them while workers do things they’re more passionate about.
4. Amazon: Jeff Bezos mandates a strict protocol to ensure meetings are actually useful, complete with a six-page memo instead of a PowerPoint.
5. Gumroad: Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, has instituted a no-meetings culture at Gumroad. Instead of having meetings, people "talk" to each other via GitHub, Notion, and (occasionally) Slack, expecting responses within 24 hours.
6. Facebook, Canva, Citi, HSBC, Pinterest: All these five companies have introduced meeting-ree workdays into their workplaces. This helps their employees maintain focus for long stretches and be productive in tasks requiring deep work.
Instead of meetings in person these companies rely on a strong culture of getting this written down, and asynchronous meetings to help them be more productive.
1. NVIDIA: NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang doesn’t schedule one-on-one meetings with the people who report to him. This is because he believes that any information shared with only one person, is not efficient, as it should be shared with everyone.
2. Shopify: Shopify saved 322,000 hours by cutting all meetings that required three or more employees.
3. Zoom: Zoom founder Eric Yuan thinks most meetings are such a drain on time that he’s developing a “digital twin” that can sit in on them while workers do things they’re more passionate about.
4. Amazon: Jeff Bezos mandates a strict protocol to ensure meetings are actually useful, complete with a six-page memo instead of a PowerPoint.
5. Gumroad: Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, has instituted a no-meetings culture at Gumroad. Instead of having meetings, people "talk" to each other via GitHub, Notion, and (occasionally) Slack, expecting responses within 24 hours.
6. Facebook, Canva, Citi, HSBC, Pinterest: All these five companies have introduced meeting-ree workdays into their workplaces. This helps their employees maintain focus for long stretches and be productive in tasks requiring deep work.
Instead of meetings in person these companies rely on a strong culture of getting this written down, and asynchronous meetings to help them be more productive.
Automate status reports
2-3 days a week, or maybe once a week, depending on the schedule you choose, everyone on your team shares their status updates and any problems without wasting unnecessary time in a meeting.
Your team members will appreciate starting their week seeing everyone else’s accomplishments and goals, and ending it with sharing their own - and everyone in your team starts to see the bigger picture of what's happening.