Why is the meeting-to-output ratio so high at big companies

n² coordination doesn't work — most people don't actually talk to most other people. The real mechanism is more subtle: Each meeting has 4-6 attendees. Each attendee invites 1-2 follow-up meetings to discuss their unresolved questions. Even at a 20% follow-up rate, the meeting graph grows quasi-exponentially as headcount linearly increases. There's no decision protocol that lets a meeting end with "we have decided X" instead of "we'll regroup with stakeholders." So meetings spawn meetings. The actual rate-limiting step in a 1000-person company isn't producing output — it's scheduling the room.