Why put a dollar figure on a meeting

A meeting's cost in salary-hours is real money that just doesn't appear on any invoice, which makes it easy to schedule a recurring hour-long sync for eight people without ever seeing what it actually costs over a year. Making the number visible doesn't mean every meeting is wasteful - it means the decision to hold one (or keep holding it) is an informed one instead of a default.

Getting the hourly cost right

"Average hourly cost" should be fully loaded - salary plus benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead, not just a base salary divided by working hours. Using take-home salary alone routinely understates the real number by 25-40%, which understates every result this tool produces along with it.

Using the number well

The most useful move isn't cutting meetings to zero - it's asking, for any meeting whose annualized cost surprises you, whether every regular attendee needs to be there every time, or whether a shorter, more focused version (or an async update) gets the same outcome for less. For the estimation portion of sprint planning specifically, a private-vote, single-reveal format tends to use the room's time better than open discussion regardless of headcount.