Meeting Cost Calculator

A meeting's loaded cost is the sum of attendee hourly rates (salary plus benefits and overhead, typically 1.3–1.5x base) multiplied by duration, plus opportunity cost of deferred work. Engineering teams running a 30-minute standup with 8 senior engineers easily burn $400–600 in direct compensation alone.

The calculator takes attendee count, average loaded rate, and duration and returns the per-meeting and annualized cost if held weekly.

Loaded labor cost in corporate finance refers to the fully burdened hourly rate of an employee — base salary plus mandatory employer-side payroll taxes (7.65% Social Security and Medicare in the US), benefits (health insurance, retirement match, life insurance), paid time off, and overhead allocation (rent, IT, equipment, management). The multiplier varies by industry and benefits package: 1.3x base is lean (small startup with minimal benefits), 1.4x is typical (most US tech), 1.6x or higher in heavily-regulated industries with rich benefits packages. Available working hours per year is conventionally 2,080 (40 hours × 52 weeks) but realistic billable capacity after vacation and sick time is closer to 1,800.

A worked example: a recurring 1-hour weekly status meeting with 12 attendees averaging $130k base salary. Loaded cost per person: $130,000 × 1.4 = $182,000 / 1,800 hours ≈ $101/hour. Twelve attendees × 1 hour × $101 = $1,212 per meeting. Annualized over 50 weeks: $60,600. If half the attendees are passive (presenters not contributors), that's $30,000 of annual cost on people who could be reading the meeting notes async. Cutting the meeting to 30 minutes and trimming to 8 active attendees: $404 per meeting, $20,200 annually — a $40,400 savings, comparable to half a junior engineer's salary.

Limitations: direct compensation is the floor, not the ceiling. Opportunity cost of deferred work is real but hard to quantify — a senior engineer's hour in a meeting is an hour not spent on whatever they were going to ship. Context-switching tax means a 1-hour meeting often costs 90+ minutes of focused work due to ramp-down and ramp-up. Some meetings are genuinely valuable; the calculator doesn't judge that, only the cost. The framing works best for recurring meetings where the annualized number lands hard — "this 1-hour weekly meeting costs $60k/year" prompts more questions than "$1,200 per meeting."