Back in the day, when I was a junior faculty member, I was on two or three monthly committees that made decisions. You could argue about how important I was (not very), but they were real decisions, and it was interesting to watch even when my vote had no effect.
Because decisions worked up from the bottom, in most cases the decision was pre-ordained: it already had a majority of the junior committee in order to get presented to the senior committee, and the majority of the junior committee formed the majority of the senior committee. But the process was treated with respect: each item came up, it was clear what the subject was, and I had a /very short/ chance to add input which was considered on it’s merits.
Because of the expectation that all actions had been previously considered, and would be passed, the meetings ran very quickly. They weren’t ‘sitting around while somebody talks’ meetings.
The ‘whole of faculty’ meetings were longer, and I was just grit in the wheel, but so was everybody else: we all attended because real decisions were finalized there, affecting jobs and dollars and that front-line academic measure: real-estate. Office/lab/classroom space.
Twenty years ago I had a partner in business who loved staff meetings. He had a big whiteboard, markers, etc and wrote up notes for each meeting. They were monthly and IMO a total waste.
I bought out his interest in the business and haven’t had a staff meeting since.
My company has a 9am M-W-F meeting with the VP and all directors. Very useful because we have an everchanging schedule of work and this is a chance for the directors/managers to all be in the same room to be sure everyone knows what they’re doing, what their problems are for the next few days, and how each activity may impact their piece of the operation. Pre-Covid, it was a dozen people around the table, they start at one end, go around to the other, the VP makes any announcements and you get back to work. Trim and tidy meeting.
I worked for the Dept of the Navy for several decades, but I honestly don’t recall regularly scheduled meetings - not to say I didn’t attend any. I just don’t remember. I know there were many meetings that were a total waste of my time, especially when certain individuals felt we needed to hear what they were compelled to share… 
In my last post-retirement job, the boss would hold occasional group meetings to go over anticipated workload changes, and he always ended the meetings with something out there - like emu farming (we were an engineering group!) Those meetings never ran long because we all wanted to get back to work. His little diversionary presentations were a hoot and a nice break.
My husband, on the other hand, not only deals with meetings, but pre-meeting planning meetings and post-meeting wrap-up meetings. Much as he hates them, he’s an independent contractor, so they pay him a lot of money to twiddle his thumbs while they go over stuff that doesn’t apply to him. During the more recent remote meetings, he would mute his mic and play games while people nattered on. 
We have a weekly hour long meeting convened by the Divisional head with his six direct reports.
They are now always virtual, notwithstanding the fact that usually all of us are usually physically in the office on the same floor. Four of us actually sit at adjoining desks and hence you can hear the monologue in quadraphonic sound.
The first 45 minutes are taken up by “he who must be obeyed” reading through his Outlook calendar of proposed agendas and actions for the various scheduled meetings internal/external for the week. His Outlook calendar is in a shared mailbox for all to preview if required. We never get a report of how the previous weeks meetings went. He always concludes with: “Obviously it’s a very busy week with plenty happening”. The minions then go around the table for our weeks planned activities taking no more than 10 minutes in total, then HWMBO summarises the remarks. Over 500 hours of my life I’ll never get back, but they are civilised affairs and relaxing provided you don’t fall asleep.
Best weekly meeting arrangement I experiences was in a small office where the weekly meeting was convened at 9am Tuesday. Started on time regardless of who was in attendence. Was conducted standing up. Usually finished by 9:15am and everybody knew who they needed to catch up with.
My boss has three types of “staff meetings”
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daily check in with her direct reports and a couple of other key staffers at the end of each day, scheduled for 30 minutes at 5pm, usually done in 20 minutes or less.
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weekly staff meeting of her direct reports. 60 minutes with more in-depth discussion of projects and financial performance and forecasts.
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monthly “all hands” meeting for all 18-20 employees in the department. 90 minutes long. Every employee speaks for 1-2 minutes about their area, and then there are more formal updates and guest speakers.
I find all three meetings useful. I am aware that some of my peers disagree. This is the COVID schedule. We had fewer meeting when 90% of us were in one physical space all day.
Our team of 5 has two half-hour meetings a week to keep everyone informed of what we’re working on. Those are useful.
I often skip the hour(s)-long town hall meetings where thousands of people are invited; I assume someone will summarize the important points for me.
The biggest waste of time are the “social event” video calls. Hey, had a stressful day of conference calls? Why don’t you relax with a conference call!
I was on a committee that would meet every week and never got anything done. Then someone suggested that before we adjourned we’d go around the table and give feedback on how the meeting went. (No bosses there to offend.) We discovered that we all thought things weren’t going well, and the meetings immediately improved and we wound up getting a lot done.
I’ve used that later for meetings that didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
Our organization has department meetings once a week. Our department’s meeting is every Tuesday a.m. conducted from the office in my city. The other two cities video conference in and those working from home video as well.
They’re worthwhile and keep us informed on the goings on. Quite frankly, the only emails I ever pay attention to are those that deal with my work only and I’d miss a lot without these weekly meetings. They last about one hour, but can be longer at times.
Sweet Jesus! My entire day is (or was) typically filled with meetings. Often multiple overlapping meetings. I don’t even know what half these meetings were about.
A daily “standup” with my team so we can coordinate the day’s activities.
A weekly “status meeting” with the client.
A weekly “prep meeting” with the team and senior leadership to prep for the client status meeting.
Regular “agile ceremonies” every two weeks - backlog grooming, sprint planning, sprint retrospectives, client demos, etc.
A “steering committee” meeting once a month with the client’s senior leadership.
Weekly group meetings with the entire professional services team to listen to our leader.
A weekly “all hands” company meeting.
Plus team members want to do weekly “one on ones”.
Yeah, we’re on the Agile treadmill, have been for many years. Daily ‘standup’ meetings that should last for 15 minutes but often go for 40. Bi-weekly ‘sprint end’ meetings + a next sprint planning meeting, 2-3 hours for both. It’s so boring I play video poker on my ipad as something to do while I listen so I don’t start writing code and miss my turn or someone’s question.
We had a multi day “management meeting”, which features hours of meetings back to back where various big wigs presented stuff off varying interest. It’s hard to pay attention to zoom for hours on end.
My boss said he found it helpful to fold laundry, to keep his hands busy, so his mind didn’t wander too much.
The meetings I do find useful are the ones I have with my boss, the ones I have with her boss and the ones I have with my employees. Sometimes I get lucky and have a useful meeting with other people, but those scenarios are few & far between. Sadly, I average around 5-6 hours of meetings daily. We once had a meeting about having too many meetings. It was also useless.
We had a meeting about work-life balance, which was supposed to start at 4pm, but was pushed to 6pm because the Big Boss had some other commitments. So we were sitting in a meeting about work-life balance after scrambling to make arrangements to pick up kids from daycare, canceling dinner plans, etc.
Then we had to make slides that same evening because the big boss was presenting our plans to improve work-life balance to the Even Bigger Bosses the next morning. So we were working until past midnight.
The irony of this was lost on Big Boss and Even Bigger Bosses.
Mostly worthwhile, but it depends on the organizer and audience. My instinct about meetings is the same as my instinct about a lot of things: they’ll be useful for a group of well adjusted, competent, sensible team members and a waste of time for everyone else. The former will instinctively understand the efficiencies of allowing all stakeholders to immediately raise questions or alarm bells about what they’re hearing; the latter will be disrespectful of everyone’s time or incompetently arrange the meeting so it’s mostly irrelevant to the audience. The former will carefully tailor the audience for the best ROI; the latter will not.
An adjacent team to mine likes to schedule long multi-hour bug/task triage sessions with 20 people on the call; 95% of what is discussed is internal to a team and a waste of anyone else’s time. I stopped showing up and no-one cared. On the other hand I’m shepherding a project that touches multiple teams; it’s useful to have a representative from each that has the authority to make decisions and the knowledge to talk about anything going on internal to that team; we quickly can identify, document, and hold teams accountable if anyone is blocked on something they’re supposed to deliver. And I find our stand-ups for our sort-of-agile process work well but I’m strict about keeping them shorter than 10-15 minutes (with maybe a person or two sticking around afterwards for a follow up detailed dive into something).
In my view meetings aren’t the problem. They’re an efficient and useful tool for disseminating certain types of information and status; identifying and ironing out tricky problems; and holding individuals accountable in a public forum. They’ll be used efficiently by competent people. They’ll be a waste of time if organized by others. Honestly I’m skeptical if the latter will be making efficient use of their time outside of meetings, so no great loss 
That sounds awful. So awful that I might have made a snarky comment to my boss about my work-life balance and need for enough sleep.
We have weekly or bi-weekly Zoom meetings. They’re typically 15 minutes of talk about relevant work policies and changes and things, followed by 45 minutes of three or four people talking at length about their home remodeling, recipes, dogs and cats.
lol. Our Monday meeting usually starts with 15 minutes of people talking about their weekends, and maybe their home remodeling, dogs, recipes, etc. Then we shift to work for the rest of that meeting.
Daily chat meeting. To make sure everyone’s healthy. Supposed to be 10 minutes, usually 15 minutes, often 20, and sometimes almost 30. And usually goes off track. Supposed to be a substitute for social chat.
Every week one hour with coworkers in different office with a 6 hour time difference.
Every second week, meeting with local coworkers and contractor.
Every second month, meeting with other contractors.
Which means that every other month I have a week which is solid meetings, which means I get nothing done. And spend the following weeks trying to catch up from the week of meetings.
This does not include the focused workshops, etc.
Do not like.
We have once a week business development calls with a small team, we all catch upnon where the various proposals and opportunities are. It’s good to help catch things that are drifting or need to be killed.
Once a week operations call where we run through job prep ,on going status , highlight any issue that need offline attention and check with engineering on any issues ( we have fairly new products that are just out from engineering). We used to have wat too many people on the call so I culled the list and got rid of those who were just there to be informed. They can read the minutes and ask questions later.
The corporate overlords have a mind numbing product development process designed to kill any innovation or rapid development and we have 3 meetings a month for different ‘key stakeholders’ where all the product lines have to present the same stuff in different ways. So I spend a good few hours per month prepping and then listening tonithers and about 15 minutes talking.
Progress reports- read them on your own time motherfuckers.
Not having to be so worried about monthly cash flow is nice in big companies but I need to get back to startups toot sweet.