What sort of damage is that ? I'm of just the opposite opinion. There's people who like to talk about programs, and there's people who like to program. Those who like to talk about it ... well this somehow seems to be appreciated by everyone but they never accomplish anything.
The thing is, I've seen people who love programming learn how to get the talking part down. I've never seen one who seem to enjoy the talking more fix the inability of meetings to achieve anything. Everybody is always convinced meetings fix things, but they never do.
The people who love meetings really seem to hate people who just want to actually do things though. I even think I know why. Actually doing something real, like creating a working program, kills what the organization, the team is doing, for the very simple reason that it's now done. And clients respond to that: either take what is actually there and working or talk about it some more ... well they'll take the working thing every time, after all, that's why they're clients. So for the meeting maniacs this sucks : no more talking about it. No more talking about the need for more people to achieve things. No more getting promoted or getting more reports. No more having meetings about the need for more meetings. No more publishing internal memos about the need for a new standard for publishing meeting standards within the organization (no joke: there is an actual file shared with everyone in my company that's exactly that).
The thing is, it's the life cycle of organizations. When an organization comes into being, there are few meetings, and only when truly necessary. People just go off and do things and little regard is placed into communication ... because doing anything other than actually programming/working would kill the business. Then they get bigger, and bigger and bigger. Not because, but despite the meetings, and at this point there come ever more and more and yet again more meetings. And then meeting paralysis finally kills the business. Nobody is able to achieve anything, why ? Because the meeting folks have convinced management to block people doing things without agreement from, by this point, thousands of other employees. Everything the business does becomes a disappointment, first just internally, then it becomes visible to clients, then someone successfully actually does what this company needs to do, and clients leave in droves. And what does the meeting-infested company do ?
They have endless meetings on what could possibly be wrong. Ironically, this is used as an argument to prevent engineers from doing anything because they'll just make it worse !
I once heard a joke that being a lawyer is a sweet gig: the more lawyers there are, and the more they work, the more lawyers are needed to deal with the problems created. Meetings truly are like that.