From the article:

"Often I’ll do a meeting where I have lots of people in case we need to get their input. But for most of the meeting I don’t need all of them to be paying attention (and I’m happy if they’re getting other work done)."

So they're not paying attention because he enjoys having excess people on calls and wasting their time.

Sounds like torture. The CEO wants you on the call, probably won't need you, and you're supposed to feel comfortable disengaging when he's berating coworkers about a missing third argument in a function's documentation.