Like Jamie Dimon, Databricks CEO hates days with too many meetings. He says it means he gets nothing done and he’s just got ‘monkeys on his back’

With a valuation of $190 billion, Databricks is now one of Silicon Valley’s biggest—and fastest-growing—software companies. But according to CEO Ali Ghodsi, one key to scaling the company hasn’t been getting his top talent into more meetings—it’s making sure they aren’t stuck in conference rooms all day.

“I try to compress the calendar,” Ghodsi said on a recent episode of the Long Strange Trip podcast.  “What I mean by that is I try to put nothing on the calendar. It ends up being packed anyway, but there are many blocks that are free where I can go back to this main thing.”

At 8 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Ghodsi said he and his team meet to identify that “main thing”—essentially, the biggest bottleneck facing the company and how they can work together to solve it.

“I want to unblock that big thing that I think is the thing that’s going to get us 10x,” he said.

Other than that, Ghodsi said he wants to avoid other meetings being put on his calendar. A day with back-to-back meetings........

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