The short version
A daily 15-minute standup with 10 engineers on $130,000 a year costs about $156 a meeting and $40,625 a year in salary.
A weekly 30-minute standup with the same team costs $312 a meeting and $16,250 a year.
Neither number means the meeting is a waste. But both are big enough that it's worth knowing which one you're paying for, and whether you're getting your money's worth.
How the math works
Every figure here uses the same three steps.
- Turn a salary into an hourly rate. A full-time year is 52 weeks of 40 hours, which is 2,080 hours. So $130,000 a year is $62.50 an hour.
- Multiply by the meeting's length and the number of people. A quarter of an hour, times 10 people, times $62.50, is $156.25.
- Multiply by how often it runs. Every workday is 260 times a year. Weekly is 52.
The meeting cost calculator does all three steps for you if you'd rather plug in your own team. For the same formula applied to other kinds of meeting, see how much does a meeting cost?.
The daily standup
Ten engineers, 15 minutes, every workday:
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| One standup | $156 |
| One week (5 standups) | $781 |
| One year (260 standups) | $40,625 |
That's nearly a third of one engineer's salary, spent on a meeting most people barely think about.
It also adds up in hours. Each person spends 65 hours a year in it, which is more than a working week and a half.
If you'd rather use public pay data than guess at salaries, the US government puts the median software developer at $135,980 a year. At that rate a daily standup with 8 developers costs about $131 a meeting and $34,000 a year. Our software developers page has the full breakdown.
The weekly standup
Some teams hold one longer standup a week instead. Same 10 people, 30 minutes, once a week:
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| One standup | $312 |
| One year (52 standups) | $16,250 |
That's well under half the cost of the daily version, and each person spends 26 hours a year in it instead of 65.
The catch is speed. A weekly standup can't catch a blocker on Tuesday that would otherwise sit until next Monday. For teams shipping every day that delay can cost more than the meeting saves. For teams on longer projects it usually doesn't.
Where the cost quietly grows
The numbers above assume the standup sticks to its slot. Most don't, and the cost moves in three ways.
It runs long. A "15-minute" standup that really takes 25 minutes costs about $67,700 a year at the same rates, not $40,600. Nothing about the invite changes, so nobody notices.
The invite list grows. Standups pick up a product manager, a designer, someone from support. Each extra person on $130,000 adds about $4,000 a year to a daily standup.
It breaks up the morning. Getting back into deep work after an interruption takes a while. Researcher Gloria Mark, who shadowed office workers through their days, found that interrupted work took an average of 23 minutes to get back to. A standup at 10:00 splits the morning into two shorter blocks, and short blocks are where hard problems go to wait. Putting it first thing, or right before lunch, keeps the morning in one piece.
When a standup is worth it
None of this means you should cancel yours. A good standup does real work: blockers come up the day they happen, people hear what their teammates are stuck on, and nobody goes quiet for a week heading in the wrong direction.
It's usually worth the money when the team is small enough that everyone's update matters to everyone else, when work changes day to day, and when blockers raised actually get picked up afterwards.
Signs your standup has drifted
- It regularly runs past its slot.
- The same two or three people never speak.
- Most updates could have been a two-line message.
- The same blockers come up week after week and nothing happens.
- People join from their phones because they're already doing something else.
If three or more of those sound familiar, the meeting is costing you more than it's giving back.
Cheaper ways to keep what works
Go async for the updates. Everyone posts what they did, what's next and what's blocking them in a Slack thread by 10:00. Keep a short call only for blockers that need a conversation. Many teams find the call is only needed a couple of times a week.
Cut the days. Three standups a week instead of five saves $16,250 a year for the team above. It's also an easy experiment: if nobody misses Tuesday and Thursday after a month, you have your answer.
Trim the list. Invite the people doing the work. A product manager or manager who only needs the summary can read the thread. Going from 10 people to 8 saves about $8,100 a year.
Hold the time box. Fifteen minutes, start on time, park anything that needs discussion for afterwards with only the people involved.
Check your own numbers
Put your team's size, length and salaries into the calculator, or start from typical pay for your roles on the meeting cost by role pages. If the yearly figure surprises you, try one of the changes above for a month and compare.
Hourari does this for every recurring meeting on your calendars automatically. It connects to Google Calendar or Outlook, prices each meeting from who actually attends, and shows which recurring meetings cost the most each year.