An n-person meeting requires n updates, each with n people listening, resulting in n^2 minutes of time spent in the meeting.
This seems incorrect. Each of the n people having 1:1 meetings requires (n^2)x minutes spent in the meeting, but an n-person meeting only requires nx minutes since the speakers only speak once to all people. Of course, this is excluding back and forth, which will scale with the number of people, but not quadratically, since many people will have the same questions/comments.
40 people attending a one hour meeting spends 40 hours of total employee time. 20 people attending a one hour meeting spends 20 hours of total employee time. Total employee time is the main metric that matters
To tie the two comments together explicitly: an n-person meeting, with each person giving an update, requires nx clock-minutes, and each clock minute spends n person-minutes, leading to (n^2)x person-minutes in an n-person meeting.
This seems incorrect. Each of the n people having 1:1 meetings requires (n^2)x minutes spent in the meeting, but an n-person meeting only requires nx minutes since the speakers only speak once to all people. Of course, this is excluding back and forth, which will scale with the number of people, but not quadratically, since many people will have the same questions/comments.
40 people attending a one hour meeting spends 40 hours of total employee time. 20 people attending a one hour meeting spends 20 hours of total employee time. Total employee time is the main metric that matters
To tie the two comments together explicitly: an n-person meeting, with each person giving an update, requires nx clock-minutes, and each clock minute spends n person-minutes, leading to (n^2)x person-minutes in an n-person meeting.