How the cost is worked out
Each group of attendees contributes their headcount multiplied by an hourly rate, and that rate is the annual salary divided by 2,080 hours — 52 weeks of a 40-hour week, the standard full-time-equivalent figure. Adding the groups together gives the cost of one hour with everyone in the room, and the meeting length scales it. Splitting attendees into groups matters more than it looks: a room with six engineers and two directors costs meaningfully more than eight people at the average of the two, because the calculation is a sum rather than a mean applied to a headcount.
Why the overhead multiplier is there
Salary is not what an hour of someone's time costs their employer. Payroll taxes, healthcare, retirement contributions, equipment, software licences and office space all sit on top, and the usual planning rule of thumb is that the loaded cost of an employee runs somewhere between 1.25 and 1.4 times salary. The default here is 1.25, which is conservative. Set it to 1.0 if you specifically want the salary-only figure — for an internal argument about opportunity cost, for instance, rather than about budget.
The number that actually changes behaviour
A single meeting costing a few hundred is easy to shrug at. The same meeting held weekly for a year is a different conversation, which is why the annual projection is on the page next to the one-off figure. A standing hour with eight people on reasonable salaries comfortably clears the cost of a junior hire — and unlike a hire, nobody ever formally approved it. The person-hours figure is often the more persuasive of the two, because it converts money back into the thing people actually feel: the working weeks that disappeared into a recurring calendar block.
What this number is and is not
This is the salary cost of the time, and nothing more. It is not the value of the meeting, and a meeting is not wasteful merely because it is expensive — a decision made properly in an expensive hour can be worth far more than the hour cost. Treat the figure as one input into a judgement rather than the judgement itself. The honest use is comparative: run the same calculation over the recurring meetings in your calendar and the ones that are hard to justify tend to identify themselves.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere
Salary figures are sensitive, and this page treats them that way. Everything is calculated in your browser, nothing is transmitted to this site, and there is no account or database. Your inputs are kept in your own browser so the page is still set up next time, and clearing your browser data for this site removes them. The share link deliberately carries only the shape of the meeting — headcounts, salaries you chose to include, length and currency — in the URL you copy yourself, so nothing leaves your machine unless you send it.