IBM’s CEO disagrees with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s disdain for texting in meetings: ‘Telling people they can’t use their technology would be weird’
· Fortune
As more employees return to the office, some CEOs are finding they need to reteach basic meeting etiquette—including one surprisingly divisive topic: checking your devices. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been especially blunt about it.
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At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit in fall 2025, he said he expects full attention from everyone in the room.
“If you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you’re reading your email or getting notifications, I tell you to close the damn thing,” he told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell. “It’s disrespectful.”
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, however, sees it a bit differently. He argued it would be “weird” for a tech company to tell its employees not to use their technology—especially in larger meetings where devices can be a useful tool rather than a distraction.
“I distinguish between one-to-10-person meetings and very large meetings. If it’s a very large meeting, I’m sorry. It’s not really a meeting. It’s a communication vehicle. You’re just informing people,” Krishna told CNN in October 2025.
At the same time, the 64-year-old said that smaller, more intimate meetings should be treated attentively.
“If it’s a small meeting, I would really frown upon if somebody is sitting opposite my desk and lost in their phone,” he said. “I would tell them: ‘Why don’t you come back when you have time?’”
Dimon’s long-standing frustration with meetings
Behavior in the conference room is something Dimon has long lamented. In fact, in his annual letter to shareholders released in spring 2025, he mentioned the word “meetings” six times—urging employees to only schedule them when necessary and to make them count.
“I see people in meetings all the time who are getting notifications and personal texts or who are reading emails,” Dimon wrote. “This has to stop. It’s disrespectful. It wastes time.”
While Dimon hasn’t drawn clear lines around meeting size like Krishna has, his frustration appears to extend well beyond small gatherings.
During a conversation at Stanford University in March 2025, Dimon recalled joining a Zoom meeting where attention was clearly divided.
“There were 12 people in the room and four people on the screen and all four people on the screen were on their phone,” he recalled. “And people say, and you think you’re focusing and learning?”
Dimon’s disdain for distracted meetings comes as he’s led one of the most aggressive return-to-office mandates on Wall Street. Most JPMorgan employees are now required to work in the office five days a week—at least in part, to see a return on the company’s real-estate investments.
In late 2025, JPMorgan officially opened its new $3 billion global headquarters in Manhattan, a 60-story skyscraper equipped with 19 restaurants, a company store, and gym.
Putting the devices down might catch your boss’s attention
With a growing reliance on technology in the workplace, multitasking during a meeting has become easier than ever—especially when an AI assistant can generate a post-meeting summary and allow you to zone out.
However, multitasking in person is especially disrespectful and a bad habit, according to Gary Rich, founder of executive coaching firm Rich Leadership.
“Are manners ‘old fashioned?’ Is listening to what’s happening in a meeting ‘old school?’” Rich previously told Fortune. “When people are multitasking during a meeting, the distraction creates a ripple effect—the speaker feels disrespected, other attendees lose motivation, and the meeting becomes less productive.”
Taking the high-road—and practicing good meeting etiquette—can ultimately be an effective way to earn recognition, show genuine commitment, and build credibility.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on November 4, 2025.
More on productivity
- Like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Siemens’ CEO has no recurring meetings with direct reports to save time—he also replies to emails with just ‘OK’ or ‘No’
- Forget RTO: Fully remote workers report the highest well-being—and are less likely to quit, new study of 7,700 employees finds
- Meetings are not work, says Southwest Airlines CEO—and he’s taking action by blocking his calendar every afternoon from Wednesday to Friday
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com