The not attend meetings trick boils down to: if other people don’t like me, they won’t bother me.
Not the best strategy in my opinion. There are far better ways to slip out, but they require more careful maneuvering.
My typical strategy is asking the right questions to the right people. I try appear helpful, while indirectly pushing to make the meeting more relevant or my presence less necessary.
I’ve often made the offer to be available when they need my input. Helps smooth things so people see me as busy, rather than deliberately avoiding them.
It really depends on who is in the room. In my experience founders and people who are busy (C level folks, IC's) tend to prefer my style of commutation, it's middle managers who end up not liking me. Career wise that tradeoff appears to have been a pretty good one to make, but caveat emptor of course.
Sometimes you can be surprised with this question and they will explain a actual strategy with multiple moving parts and everyone is better off by having it explained. Often you can catch a technical gap or two during this explanation and improve on the approach.
It's really only the incompetent that get offended.
Not the best strategy in my opinion. There are far better ways to slip out, but they require more careful maneuvering.
My typical strategy is asking the right questions to the right people. I try appear helpful, while indirectly pushing to make the meeting more relevant or my presence less necessary.
I’ve often made the offer to be available when they need my input. Helps smooth things so people see me as busy, rather than deliberately avoiding them.