I'll provide slightly less cynical thought, may or may not help:)
I was purely technical for first 20 years of my career. I never understood meetings like this. I never cared for meetings like this. I assumed there's no value or meaning for meetings like this. They didn't impact me and people can BS each other as much as they want.
I was right? From a personal perspective. I did my technical work, and the org changes and sales strategy and client relationships and wording on contracts did not seem to daily impact my work. You can spend an entire, happy, sane career in that way.
Few years ago I ended up what can best be described as middle management. It is now my JOB to understand what the heck is going on at a certain level, and it is in some way easier. My goal becomes less "Build Server to these specifications" and more about "Help client achieve this outcome". Just like there's a set of language that has developed around "how to build a server" and "how to create a webpage", there's a language around "how to achieve a business outcome". And they'll sound equally gobblety-gook to each other.
A business development manager may believe all techies are interchangeable and building servers is the easy part, hard part is sales and keeping client happy. A pure techie may believe that all managers are bullshitters and hard part is infra/code. I'm sufficiently recent to both sides that I can see both aspects if I squint, kind of like that optical delusion that's like two faces or one vase depending on how you look.
If you genuinely WANT to understand these meetings... you can't go in them cold. You won't understand language and background by starting from the middle. Talk to your management and ask them: what are your goals? What are your priorities? How do we make this team, business unit, company succeed, at strategic level? This will hopefully give you a framework to then start fitting little nuggets you hear into.
I was purely technical for first 20 years of my career. I never understood meetings like this. I never cared for meetings like this. I assumed there's no value or meaning for meetings like this. They didn't impact me and people can BS each other as much as they want.
I was right? From a personal perspective. I did my technical work, and the org changes and sales strategy and client relationships and wording on contracts did not seem to daily impact my work. You can spend an entire, happy, sane career in that way.
Few years ago I ended up what can best be described as middle management. It is now my JOB to understand what the heck is going on at a certain level, and it is in some way easier. My goal becomes less "Build Server to these specifications" and more about "Help client achieve this outcome". Just like there's a set of language that has developed around "how to build a server" and "how to create a webpage", there's a language around "how to achieve a business outcome". And they'll sound equally gobblety-gook to each other.
A business development manager may believe all techies are interchangeable and building servers is the easy part, hard part is sales and keeping client happy. A pure techie may believe that all managers are bullshitters and hard part is infra/code. I'm sufficiently recent to both sides that I can see both aspects if I squint, kind of like that optical delusion that's like two faces or one vase depending on how you look.
If you genuinely WANT to understand these meetings... you can't go in them cold. You won't understand language and background by starting from the middle. Talk to your management and ask them: what are your goals? What are your priorities? How do we make this team, business unit, company succeed, at strategic level? This will hopefully give you a framework to then start fitting little nuggets you hear into.