three months ago i started keeping track. between 2024 and early 2026 i did 31 coffee chats with men in adjacent companies and teams who slid into my linkedin or my email saying things like "hey would love to pick your brain on [topic]" or "20 minutes for a quick chat about how you got into [my field]."
that is a lot of 30-minute slots.
i did the math on what i had gotten out of the 31. i kept it generous. i counted: did this person introduce me to someone useful afterward? did they reciprocate by sharing their own knowledge? did they ever come back later and offer something? did this lead to anything that went anywhere?
3 of 31. 9.6%.
a separate sample: i counted the women who had asked me for similar coffee chats in the same window. about 18. of those, 14 had reciprocated something to me afterward. introductions, follow-ups, useful info, just emotional support in a hard quarter. 77%.
the man-coffee-chat is a different category of interaction entirely. i was being mined. the woman-coffee-chat is more like a small economy.
so i stopped doing the man-coffee-chats. i have a templated response now. it is friendly, it says no, it offers a link to a public talk i did instead, it does not invite a back-and-forth.
i have done zero in three months. nobody has pushed back. the world has not ended. my fridays are mine again.
posting because i suspect a lot of women here are doing 30-minute man-coffee-chats every week and have not done the math.