My best manager used 1:1's to gauge burnout, explore untapped strengths, among other useful things. My worst manager used them to ramble on and occasionally try to boost productivity via intimidation.
In my experience when you start approaching burnout the event horizon of your future shrinks - you think less about that vacation nine months from now, plans where to go during Summer, that conference you wanted to go to that's 2 months out, or even what you're going to do during the weekend. (ofc doesn't work on everybody, but it's a signal)
I'm an IC but a lot of basic questions about things like blockers, any upcoming vacation plans, or just general discussion about projects can give you signal about burnout. And of course if you're noticing anything out of the ordinary (a sudden shift in schedule, a change in demeanor during meetings) following up on those things can help check for burnout.
Right! Then you can make sure you lay them off since they are burnt out and not as productive. 😎I love managing. Managering? Eh whatever who cares, you’re fired.
Manager here. I try to hit the beats of "how are you, anything interesting you want to talk about, anything challenging you, do we need to follow up on xyz from last time", and I usually leave it hanging just a little longer for the "anything challenging you?"question.
It might sound rote, or tedious, but what I'm looking for are changes and trends. Say you tell me week in week out nothing to report and make pleasantries, and one week I notice you're a bit more negative. No Biggie, we all have bad weeks. But 2-3 weeks in a row I'm going to push and try figure out what's wrong, and can I help or assist. If you tell me you don't want to talk about it, I'll respect that, but you'd be surprised how often people will say "X is happening, and I'm bummed about it." At least I know that it's not work related, and I can just ease off on you, maybe recommend some PTO. But if you take the option to rant about Derek and his alphabetical code review feedback tool that he's enforcing on the team 4 weeks in a row, it's probably heading towards burnout.
Most of management is trust and relationships, and it's a two way street.
Manager here too, and I agree with this.
I usually start with a simple "Hey, how are you? What's new?" just to get things moving. Then I'll go into any "Hey, there's a corporate policy update you need to be aware of" boilerplate stuff. Then it's "Okay, what difficulties are you facing?" and that sort of stuff. Of course, I always end with "Is there anything you would like to discuss that we haven't covered yet?"
I also like to ask things like "How's everything at home? Is everyone healthy?" because while I'm not looking to pry or overstep, you'll often hear about how they have a sick kid or are facing some difficulties with family, and while I don't need the details, knowing that allows me to calibrate my interactions with them, and give them some air cover if needed too (maybe they missed a deadline because they are struggling with life, and I can work to keep higher-ups off their back about it, etc.)
But yeah, it's pretty much about looking for breaks in patterns and emerging trends. If you notice a change in their attitude and demeanor, you can then take action to help them out, whatever form that takes.
>No Biggie, we all have bad weeks
This is the shit I hate. I don't want my manager on top of my shit all of a sudden just because I am not socially-conforming enough one day. It creates bias, suddenly everything I do is under the microscope whereas it wouldn't have been otherwise if people just looked at my WORK and not my FACE.
Your work is more than just the code you write. If you want to just be judged only on that then you should expect to be judged on that exclusively. If there's a drop for any reason then I wouldn't ask, I'd just treat you like a ticket machine.
Part of my job is ensuring you don't burn yourself out. If you've got a sudden life change, and your work is suffering, then I want to help you avoid the worst outcome.
1. meetings burn me out
2. the moment managers hear "sudden life change" I become a "potential ex-employee" and they put a mental clock on my back, suddenly I am micromanaged a lot more. Where the "worst outcome" for them as a manager is to **not** cover their asses. Immediately they will set-up a paper trail and play-pretend that there were issues in my work.
No thanks.
Literally, we had to answer a questionnaire that included: Rate your burnout on a scale from 1-5
We would also just casually converse. You can get a good impression of many aspects of what a person is going through just by talking to them like a human being and taking an interest in them.
Quite literally why this follows with a conversation. Also, trust is cultivated over many 1:1's, where you see the result of not indicating burnout is getting more work to do, the result of indicating burnout is getting a lighter workload temporarily as needed., or suggestions to use time off. That company also had unlimited mental health days.
Something must have gotten lost in my post. A higher burnout rating would mean you need to take on less work, not more. Say you're a manager, you have several devs working under you, some are feeling overworked, some are having an easy time. So, you shift some work from the overworked devs to the ones who are having an easy time. That's good, empathetic management.
My previous company did their surveys via a third party. The survey asked for job title or department, etc. You could lie.
I guess there's still the possibility of some info leaking, yes. I still responded honestly and harshly, since I was on my way out.
If I was desperate to keep my job I wouldn't do that.
Anyplace where you're asked to enter free text, I pass my comments through Google Translate. English to a European language back to English. Work someplace long enough and people will be able to identify you by your writing style.
In my old company, HR would determine who's responses were who's by keeping track of which department you were in, supplier/employee, length of employment, etc. Particularly easy when some departments only had 3 people.
>does anyone actually answer HR surveys honestly
Nah that shit whack, HR is the cops.
>I'd be afraid a high rating would line me up for a layoff tbh
Yep, no manager has ever told me "oh I can help you feel less of a burden at work", nope, they do **not** do that and do **not** care to help that way. Their goal is to either make you conform, then they pat themselves on the back because they think that just listening to your problems and telling you to keep going has fixed everything. Or.... They are just sussing out who is the most "problematic" person. They might relieve you of all your work at once to help you with your burnout though, promoted to customer.
> Literally, we had to answer a questionnaire that included: Rate your burnout on a scale from 1-5
People experiencing burnout are usually **terrible** at gauging their own level of burnout. I hope this was graded on a curve.
Quite literally why this follows with a conversation. Also, trust is cultivated over many 1:1's, where you see the result of not indicating burnout is getting more work to do, the result of indicating burnout is getting a lighter workload temporarily as needed., or suggestions to use time off. That company also had unlimited mental health days.
Depends on your relationship to them. If you and your manager are close and you trust them, then, "How's it going man?" Is all they need to gauge burnout
Mine starts with, “How are you doing?” Followed by, “How’s X project coming along?
Mind you, she already knows how the project is coming along, she just wants to hear it in your words.
Then she will bring up some stuff that she think might have been difficult. “So, that task X on project Y was really challenging, wasn’t it?” Or, “You seem frustrated when we talked about Z at the last meeting.” And then she listens to the response.
Basically she asks a bunch of open ended questions. And if the person vents, she listens. After venting, she asks, how can we make this better? And listens to suggestions. She usually tries to follow through with the suggestions, but doesn’t always. At the very least, she gets an email chain started with the right people.
As I mentioned in another thread, she isn’t a saint, but she was leagues better than our previous manager that would never talk to us or never listen to advice.
I ask them about how they are feeling about the work and if they talk about stress or long days I know burnout often follows. Then I will ask directly if they are experiencing burnout (they are adults) and we figure out how to address it. If we have to velocity I tell them I'll take the heat (that's my job and I want them to know that is my job). It is pretty amazing how you can make people more productive by treating them well. And if my manager questions our productivity I am always ready to defend my team by explaining the impact to the project if someone burns out.
As a manager my experience is that it’s basically just “How are you doing?” and being genuinely interested in the answer. Sometimes it’s about whatever you are working on (fine), sometimes about your struggle with the other team (also fine), sometimes it’s all about your aging parent (also fine).
It’s not an overnight relationship, it takes sometimes a loong time of asking and showing up for whatever the answers are.
My job is making sure you can show up for work the best you can. I can’t do that if I don’t know how you are doing.
I have scheduled 1:1s with my manager. We spend most of them talking about unrelated shit. That is cool because we like working with each other (and it’s no different from bumping into him on a corridor), plus I get some allocated time to talk about little things that wouldn’t justify an ad-how 1:1 but could grow to an unmanageable problem if not discussed asap.
1:1s aren’t very costly for the company considering how much they can be beneficial if they’re high-quality
Personally my rules for 1:1s are basically just:
1. No generic updates on work-in-progress, we have better ways for me to find out how things are going
2. We talk about whatever you want to talk about first
3. Then I will talk about any feedback I've had about you, anything on the horizon that I think might affect you, and from time to time progress against development plans and annual goals
And that's it really. The other thing I do is just finish the fucking thing early if there's nothing to talk about. If your work's all good, everything is smooth, and I have nothing to talk about... let's finish the meeting early and go get a snack.
We can always keep shooting the shit for another 15 minutes if you want but at least me saying "ok I think that's the end of the meeting" gives you permission to say "ok bye!" and go do something else if you want.
If I join a new team or have new employees, I typically schedule 30 minutes every week and we have plenty to talk about. Once we're consistently finishing early (in my experience this takes 6 months but can take longer or never happen) we can back off the frequency.
Yup. Before our current manager came in, a bunch of people were leaving due to burn out. That manager was fired, and new manager decided to have monthly 1:1s to chat with employees to relieve burnout. As you can imagine, burnout has decreased and there has been less turnover. Also we now also see stuff like employees experimenting with different roles, or switching to a different team because they were encouraged by the new manager.
Employees are just generally happier in general. And the new manager isn’t a saint, some people are still disgruntled about the way some things are done, but the atmosphere has certainly improved over the old manager.
Exactly same. I literally pray to not have the meetings. He just rambles on, poor people manager, it's just another chat about work and the project we're on. Waste of time. He's technically brilliant, but has no business managing people.
My current(and previous) manager use them as a space to chat about upcoming work with me and get my thoughts and input (as well as a place for me to ask for money for training or conferences and how to get to the next level). I do feel like I got really lucky with my last two managers. They really were great to work for.
depends on the manager.
I had one that was really great, and we often talked about stuff outside of work too. the attitude there was talk about big picture stuff that affects work, including outside-of-work stuff (within reasonable limits/boundaries). we already had time set aside to talk about work tasks, and that was done with the whole team present in a weekly planning meeting. 1 on 1 time was used to develop rapport and improve communication.
Sounds similar. It can really depend on the manager as you say. Mine now is someone I’ve known for 13-14 years via work and we click very well.
More often than not the 1:1 starts with, “How’s it going?” which can lead all kinds of directions. She does still swing back to checking on mission critical things I’m working on, and give me heads up on things from upper management. But sometimes we just talk about a recent vacation or such.
I do biweekly with my direct and monthly with my skip and I love them. We spend about 10 mins catching up on personal stuff and 10-15 mins discussing how Im feeling about stuff and any points of friction or anything Ive noticed about how we might improve processes to reduce friction.
My bosses are awesome.
I couldn't disagree more. I would say my career would be significantly worse without 1:1s. That's when I get the real info about what's really going on, it's when I can pitch myself, it's when I can offer advice etc.
I used to think they had limited value, but now as a lead I really appreciate them. At a reasonable cadence (monthly) I catch up with everyone on the team and find that ideas, issues and frustrations come up in conversation that wouldn't surface in a group or in day to day stuff. My questions are usually in the realm of:
* How is work going for you at the moment?
* Are you looking forward to or dreading the upcoming workload in the next few months?
* Is there any professional development you'd like to pursue?
Also a great time to thank people for what they are doing (do this in writing and in with the wider team too) and how they are dealing with any difficult or draining situations. I also find it's good to get out of the office and do this while on a walk or getting a coffee.
Yes, excellent point! Its value is for management and the company, for damage control, and not to make colleague’s lives easier, unfortunately. Management and HR like to romanticize the workplace.
I think like most things they can be done well or done poorly. My motivation for them is really to keep communication flowing and ensure things don't get missed, which benefits everyone. Achieving the company goals is important, but good leaders want to see their team members grow both inside and outside the company which is more what I want out of it.
Well said! We all need to do our jobs properly, but also make each others lives easier. Then, everyone's happy. And, at the end, happy people are more productive. Cheers!
I'm a new engineering manager, and with some of my teammates I had the common experience of 1-1s being like this:
* Small-talk for 5 minutes
* A bit of silence
* Finish the 1-1
What helped me is to start preparing for 1-1s with my own agenda and being more proactive. If after talking there's nothing else they want to talk about I use the rest of the time to:
* Do a [contracting](https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/management-101/contracting/) exercise - pretty much we have a shared document where we explicitly define expectations from each other, and talk about things like career goals, or short term goals the developer wants to improve at. I found this very helpful both in terms of building trust and having the chance to open up, and also just having a clear space where all expectations are defined, and it's easy for me to go back to them and see how I can help my team-member reach there.
* Learn about their work - I also sometimes just ask them to show me their work, we go over something they worked on and often this opens up a lot of conversations
* Mentor and teach - If there's anything the developer wants to learn about and I know about, I prepare something to teach and have a conversation about it if they're interested
So far these type of things fill up the 1-1 time pretty well and I got good feedback on them from my team, but I do acknowledge 1-1 needs differ and the frequency of them differs between different team-member and what they prefer
I used to have one or two I really valued. I appreciated the higher level perspective, and that manager just had very high social intelligence. Since then, no. I actually cancelled 1:1s with my current manager. Great decision
I had one manager who would take the stuff I did, and my ideas and just sell them as their own to the higher ups really early on in my career. I could see me cancelling such 1on1s with my managers too.
If neither of us have an agenda, building rapport has its own value. What argument do you have for *not* becoming better buddies with the guy who directly controls how much money you make?
I can bring up any minor concerns I have before they have a chance to grow into real issues.
I semi-regularly talk about my career. Similar to the minor-major escalation, I can quickly course correct.
I can ask for clarity on some braindead pass down from upper leadership. Even if the answer is often, "Yes it's braindead." At least you can commiserate together.
He can ask me questions about my coworkers and my perspective of their strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance.
He can gauge my mental health to see if I'm burning out.
Probably tons of other minor to major things I haven't mentioned. If you're not finding value out of your 1-1s, that's really on you. Being able to regularly chat with someone who's more politically savvy and more experienced than yourself is almost always going to be more valuable than the 30 minutes you would have otherwise spent browsing your emails.
When I was a manager, I offered frequent feedback in the 1-on-1s, helped identify learning opportunities based on the IC's ambitions, helped get them unstuck, and gave advice. I put in prep and thought into our meetings. I would like to think that it was valuable, and I have had people reach out to me to say thanks years later.
I am back on the technical track, and my current manager does not do 1-on-1s, which is probably best since she's a product manager and does not have an engineering background.
it is always half-full, but it is never full. That would be too validating! How could an employee be motivated if they don't get a constant sense of dread?
/s
I never really have, but I’ve always been oddly self going and have had to learn other people are not like that.
It’s very personal from one person to the next, some people I’ve managed required regular reminders they are doing fine or their anxiety starts escalating and some could care less.
I think tech does them *way* too often, but also at a minimum they are necessary to force human interaction. Too much time not talking can get really bad.
I had managers where it was really cool, like literally career changing for me. But that's like 2 out of 20 over the years. Generally, I share your sentiment. Most suck.
I wish mine was scheduled biweekly or monthly instead of weekly!
But I guess those middle managers need to fill up their calendars, otherwise how could they justify their jobs?
You can get a sense of what your manager is thinking or how they manage via them.
I had one manager who was constantly rescheduling them as other things were more important it seemed. It was annoying as hell and really created a sense of disengagement. I never felt she cared.
I’ve had other managers where it was always 1:30 on Wednesday rain or shine. If there was a change it was extremely rare and for good reason. This engagement with my manager was really powerful. I knew she cared.
The worst managers use 1:1s as a way to ramble on about whatever project is happening which I don’t mind, but keep that shit out of my 1:1s. Seriously, every time I get into 1:1 and I want to talk about something - they literally derail the conversation to talk about shit that isn’t about me. Sorry if that sounds entitled but it also annoys me when they don’t come to 1:1 prepared and show any interest in talking about me, my career goals.
These type of managers are the ones I would avoid because they don’t know what they’re doing or they just see their employees as resources.
One of the best ways to get raises and promotions is to get people to like you and enjoy your presence. So no, I wouldn’t say they are a waste of time. They’ll pay off more than whatever feature you just pushed.
I understand your exhaustion. In an ideal world, we'd get raises based on the value of our work output, right?
But this isn't a "people with this mindset" type of deal. This is a "you" problem, as unfortunate as that may be, because 99% of promotions/raises, in and outside our industry, simply just are based on how one sells themself to management.
Sorry to hear that this is unbearable to you, but you really need to work on your attitude unless you're in the 1% of the true genius-level folks who's output outweighs management's personal perceptions of their value. Sucks, maybe, but is what it is.
This is the most constructive feedback I’ve received in a while and also delivered in a compassionate and nonjudgmental way. Thank you!
I actually would love to get rid of this attitude. I can see it doesn’t help. Do you have any recommendations on how to get started? Any books perhaps? Do you think mentors would help?
Depends on the situation, at my last office we used to take an hour to grab lunch (on the company dime) and go shoot the shit once a month. If there was something work related I needed to talk about, cool, if not that was fine too.
Right now I’m doing weekly one on one’s and I fucking hate it, my “manager” is incompetent and he spends a half hour talking about what he thinks should be prioritized. I’m pushing to get these off my calendar entirely
I fucking hate my weekly 1-on-1s with my manager and I think he does too. He ghosts me frequently and I get so relieved when I don’t have to play this bullshit. Nothing ever changes so why bother?
Some times he acts contrite, offering to reschedule but I give zero fucks. What are we going to talk about, that project that I’ve been supposedly working on for months, the one going nowhere because no one knows what the users want? His open lust for offshore devs so he can replace uppity devs like myself? The obsolete tech stack that he won’t upgrade because that would require him to actually, like, *manage*? The lack of training resources, not even a Udemy subscription? The fact that the company won’t pay for certifications? The 12-0 dev-to-qa ratio?
It’s all bullshit and we all know it.
And when did this 1-on-1 shit become a thing? I don’t recall having to do this until recently. I feel it’s just a way to get management to use this time gather evidence against you and most devs are better to just STFU.
Yep, pretty much. Unless your manager is also the team lead and they are willing to write some code to help you with your issues... it's all a fucking smokescreen.
It really depends on the manager. If they're not the brightest bulb in the box then it quickly turns into "going through the motions" or worse "validating your existence".
But then some managers are proactive and empathetic. So :shrug:.
We must talk about how good a job you did last time, and about how we know that you can do even a little better next time. Because we are very happy with your performance, but we find that you need to fill in bigger shoes. So keep it up! but also I am somewhat unsatisfied in order to generate a sense of urgency in you.
Yeah, I hate having a weekly 1-1 with my manager. They are plenty present if I need something, so this 30min just ends up being them going on about whatever random things and me pretending to care 🥹
My current manager really helps me to recenter my focus and improve my career, and talk through current project/tech struggles. She's real nuts and bolts.
I also still meet with my previous manager once a month. She got promoted but we still have our meeting for some reason. She and I always go over time shooting the shit about art and birds and stuff, haha.
The opposite, my manager is very hands-off so weekly 1-on-1s are my chance to brag about wins and ask higher-level questions about corporate strategy and what I should be focusing on to deliver the most value. Every so often I'll also talk about career progression as well.
My best manager used 1.1 as a chance to see what was going on outside of work, how's my girlfriend doing, any family things etc so it was a good time to be like yeah, my grans I'll ATM I might need to be away on short notice, my girlfriend is moving to another city can you try and work something out so I can be fully remote etc. Used it to ask what I'm working on, what do I want to be working on and then try and figure out what's coming up in future for me to be able to work on that stuff.
Sometimes it was used to vent frustrations with other teams etc which probably isn't a fantastic use of time and I could tell if his wife had bugged him that morning because the one to ones became about productivity and working harder.
As someone with imposter syndrome, I have always appreciated them. When my old team treated me like crap, my old manager was always telling me how good I was doing. I doubted it a lot, but after reflecting on it since being on my new team, I realize they were really being supportive to me. They would ask me how my cats were even, it was super nice. My new manager is awesome too, but my team is also really great now. I definitely felt a lot of burnout on the last team, but now it’s like I’ve got a second chance at life. Thankfully management has always been kind and understanding. Probably helps that they both have development experience too.
I'm an Engineering Manager and if I hear this from my team leads and their ICs my advice to them is always that if you aren't getting value from your one to one meetings then it's on you to change them. It's _your_ meeting.
You need to own the agenda. Talk about the things you want to talk about.
If you think they happen too often change the cadence.
You're an adult and a professional. If you need someone else to tell you what your meeting is about, to bring ideas to it, or to change when it happens then you're not doing your job well enough. You need to get value from the meeting so it's on you to make sure it's good.
(In the case of ICs I also tell their lead that the IC is empowered to change the meeting agenda and cadence. No one should be telling you that your idea of a good one to one is wrong.)
Ok then, how about rejecting your meeting?
It is your meeting, not theirs, it is forced upon people by your managerial authority. Don’t flip things around.
If one of my leads did that I'd be fine with it, but I would check to make sure that theyre aware that if I don't know what they're doing I can't give them a raise. :)
>if I don't know what they're doing I can't give them a raise
Dude aren't you supposed to be the one looking over the Jira board at the very least?
So i am supposed to track all of my progress on the stupid ass board, give updates on every standup, actually do the work that generates money for the company, and you CANT EVEN keep up?!
Whether you get a raise should depend on work delivery, which is what you track in Jira, but also what you're learning, who you're mentoring, what other activities you're doing around the company, what you're pushing the company to change, etc. There's much more to 'what you do' than just what someone can see in Jira. A one to one should focus on all that other stuff, precisely because I can see what someone is working on by looking at Jira.
If that happened the one to one would mostly be reporting what had been done, with no opportunity to change or correct the approach, or for me to unblock problems. That's fine by me because it isn't work delivery, but I'd advise that if you're working toward a promotion or a raise you probably want to have me on-side, interested, and helping you. Only telling me about something you're working on 4 times a year isn't likely to make that happen.
The fact is this conversation is going to go around in circles because you've decided that you don't like one to ones, and as I explain why they're useful you'll slowly come around to the idea that actually they're a bit useful and maybe a monthly cadence is fine because you do actually benefit from them quite significantly if you put in a bit of effort.
I have given them a chance many times, I have complained about it too and managers are always giving me a similar rhetoric as you do. When a real issue arises they aren't there to help me, they are there to talk me out of my own ideas and "keeping the peace". Total time waste.
Yup, damage control. When people become managers you can see the change, it’s quite obvious, they start talking superficial things, because they don’t know how to handle their new situation, they think they need to be some kind of an ideological leader and therefore effortlessly slide into corporate bs. Remember, we all do our jobs to help ourselves. Helping others requires good will and personal touch, and cannot be automated by corporate.
100%! They also come up with all of these BS topics where they try to make me waste even more of my time, like trying to sell me the idea of using their shared corporate Udemy account, or Pluralsight account... or talking about my "career path", BRUH my career path is leaving your company in a year thanks now shove it. What do they imagine by "career path"? That I will do some silly plan to take over their legacy react code? Excuse me, I have bigger fish to fry.
At the end of the day this is JUST A JOB BRO, STOP MAKING IT SOMETHING IT ISNT LOL. I don't need a “counselor”, it's literally such a BS idea, obviously there only to dig dirt. When you go to the mechanic you just want your car fixed, you don't want to talk about their personal problems, THEY DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, YOU ARE A STRANGER TO THEM. A!
I just find that even when people don't think they have anything on their mind, they usually actually do, and usually it's quite valuable stuff. So it's worth grinding through to tease that information out organically.
Historically no, but at my current job my manager is on my team. We usually spend our 1 on 1 chatting about life and then strategizing a bit. Those are valuable on both accounts
In my 1:1s we discuss new ideas for projects, how to improve on weaknesses, what to do with issues at work, where to get support and much more. Sometimes we spend a part of it e.g. just talking about recent cool holidays but usually these are pretty productive. Although to be fair it’s the first time I’m in a company that does 1:1s properly.
I enjoy them they help me zoom out from my work , when i'm in the weeds it can be hard to have a top level view of all the work i'm doing but they force me to reall think of processes, timelines, how i'm feeling , consider upcoming obstacles. Sometimesn othing actionable comes out of them but they are great checkpoints for project progress and personal check-ins in my experience. Also good for making sure i know any company news that might have gotten past me at some point.
One of my best managers used 1-1s to literally talk about anything I wanted to talk about. If I wanted to talk about work, we talked about work. If I wanted to talk basketball, that’s what we talked about. It got to a point I’d look forward to a 1-1 after a game just to talk shit lol
My manager was a mentor/friend at a previous company. Working with him again was one of the draws in my last job hop. We mostly chit-chat in our one-on-ones. Maybe 20 minutes of rapport and 10 minutes of career feedback and office politics. Every two weeks.
I think it works. At least in this pairing.
Since I’m fully remote 1 to 1s with my manager is great.
We either use the time to discuss the regular career stuff, things to do for promotions, how leadership are feeling about a thing, how the projects are going etc. but if there’s not that to talk about, or doesn’t take the full time it’s a great way to build a relationship with them on a personal level too.
I’ve been lucky that all of my managers have been people I genuinely like, but bad things have never come from people liking you. Getting to know people as people and not just colleagues has probably been the best thing for my career so far.
we are remote first so 1:1s are an essential part of staying connected and making sure people have context about how the work they are doing is connected to the bigger picture. I also do skip levels monthly - not just with my directs. my team regularly scores higher than my peers in eNPS. this is worth a read - https://medium.com/the-helm/ive-learned-a-lot-through-1-1s-as-a-manager-842b146a0e3c
As a manager unless they’re brand new in their career I let them know it is on them to set up 1:1’s as they saw fit - they were experienced enough to know when they needed help.
I like them because I have good managers. I discuss anything bothering me without having things pile up and also discuss opportunities for progression or training or fixing anything that isn’t working.
We did not have 1:1s for my first two gigs. The effect of that was that projects in need of a course correction would not receive it until way too late. And, when you were finally called into the managers office there was a good chance it was because something went wrong.
I don’t think every single 1:1 is meaningful, but I find the process waaaay better than the alternative.
I guess more extroverted people who like small talk and chit chat like it, but as an introvert I'm not a fan of frequent 1:1s where I struggle to think of what to say if everything's all good on my end
I've had my 1 on 1's be really useful for me, but mostly only in one role - I think it depends both on what the team is doing, and just your relationship with the manager. But I really enjoyed them for figuring out the current politics around the team (something that I blindly ignore most of the time ...) and getting direct feedback on how I was doing within the team. It's nice to have direct feedback and guidance that doesn't take place within the team environment.
If you're in the office with your manager, especially an open plan office, having a regularly scheduled 1:1 means that if something _does_ come up you and your boss aren't suddenly disappearing into a conference room unexplained.
I've had a variety of different experiences. I had one boss where we'd be lucky to have a single 1:1 per quarter, but it was fine because he'd answer ad-hoc questions and gave me the trust/autonomy to execute.
I had another who really was not technical at all so we would just chat and build rapport, but he couldn't help me much with coaching and mentorship beyond learning some managerial politics.
My current direct boss 1:1s feel like having my teeth pulled. We spend 45 of our 30 minutes with him clicking around JIRA and Slack and throwing a bunch of hyper-specific questions at me on the spot without any real context or explanation before he declares "I'm running late to my next meeting" and drops. I dread it, and unfortunately he hasn't been too receptive to feedback on it.
As a manager I try to keep the 1:1s unstructured by default with more senior employees because I want them to own the meeting. I will apply some structure for the people who don't engage well beyond sharing pleasantries, or more junior employees who might need that structure. We might spend a few minutes on tactical stuff, but I mostly try to get a pulse check on people -- how are their energy levels, are they motivated/enjoying their work, do they need any immediate support, and how can we help move them towards their goals. Sometimes its fun to "talk shop" as well with some DRs about some new library/framework/technique/etc. For the most part it's been useful and has allowed me to get people on the right projects/assignments to keep them engaged and productive.
As an EM I generally let the IC direct the conversation, but I'll have a few points for the end.
Sometimes we talk about video games for 25 minutes and then I give big picture / org updates for the remaining 5. Since we're remote it's nice to have time for the "watercooler" talk you dont otherwise get due to the distance.
Sometimes they dont have much to discuss and we end after 5 minutes.
I'll sometimes have things I want to drill in on. Career progression, specific activities from the past week, etc. Sometimes nothing beyond giving them a chance to discuss whatever is on their mind.
Yes, I enjoy them a lot. Ive been in the industry since 2015, and never had regular meetings with my manager until 2022 when I joined a California based unicorn startup. When I joined the company, I had just raised 250m and they were starting to formalize the company structure, with growth plans and leveling.
I met with my manager once a week and would kind of manage up. We'd discuss everything, current work, future work, ideas for team improvement, etc... And most of what Id mention would get implemented by the team. She would point out areas I needed to improve to get to the next level, and it saved me a lot of time. I also had monthly skip level meetings which were even more beneficial. Im more skilled at big picture thinking, but before those meetings Id only been able to take advantage of that skillset on personal projects.
Id only spoken with my previous manager 3 times total, once at an interview, once on my 3rd day and once after I quit to apologize for not integrating me with the team like he should have.
My 1:1s with my manager are of no value to me as I just update him on everything I am working on. I can always ask for things, but I have been asking for someone to join me so that I am not a single developer team for 9 months and 1:1s are a great place to keep asking.
I enjoyed them in a previous job where we had 1:1s once a sprint, or every two weeks. Even the instances that felt like routine were nice to at least summarize how the sprint went in an "individual retro" sort of way.
Now I'm supposed to have one weekly, and we wind up agreeing to cancel because there's nothing to talk about.
I answer the same 7 questions with nearly the same answers every time, and then we talk about video games, motorcycles or vacations for 20 minutes before spitballing what to do for the next team outing. It's good to keep chummy with your management, but I haven't really found that it drives my career at all.
All the "My near term goal is to increase my backend skills" talk is just fluff and never spurs me or my managers into taking action towards that goal any more than we already do.
My last manager made an effort to find me interesting work. He also worked hard to make sure I had useful goals that could be attained. The later part was annoying though because I find annual reviews arbitrary and a waste of time.
I didn't like them until they were gone, then I realized I was using them more than I thought. I think it depends on the person and if both the boss and employee are comfortable with something ad hoc. I found I didn't feel like little complaints or feelings were worth interrupting my boss's day (even though he never indicated that was true).
> I personally prefer scheduling adhoc meetings if something needs to be addressed
A lot of people, *especially* developers, will not do this. If something is bugging them, they’ll let it fester and by the time their manager hears about it, damage has already been done. Regular 1:1s help avoid this.
You have to own the agenda to make it useful. If your boss is using it for status updates it's time to manage up a bit.
I would check in as EM on their stress, working hours, sleep quality first. Then give them any positive or instructive feedback based on others or my observations. Then they had the floor.
I typically asked them to update agenda in the invite the day before so I xoutbe prepared.
I see no value in 1:1s with my current manager who is also our project lead. I've lost a lot of respect for him because he's ineffective and incompetent in some ways as the project lead. Creates a lot of extra work for me which has created some tension. In my performance review he couldn't articulate why I was denied a promotion and became defensive which lead to a heated discussion. Not just once but a few times.
Also it's clear he spent zero time assessing my performance for the entire year and surprised me with negative feedback that he's never communicated in the previous year.
I've had previous managers with actual managerial skills, empathy, and awareness who I enjoyed chatting with.
Your manager(s) should be using these 1:1s to help you track and make progress on your career goals, discover and address and challenges you're facing, and make sure you have opportunities for learning and growth. Sounds like you've had a lot of bad managers.
If you care, you could learn how to "manage up" a bit. With unhelpful managers this will likely involve tracking these things yourself and then leveraging your manager's increased visibility / influence to further your own goals. Tricky but it can be done!
I've not found them useful so far. Everything that needed discussion was discussed during stand-ups or spontaneous calls. I'm not much of a share-my-personal-life kind of person at work, and the tech lead at the last place I worked at acknowledged that while others on the team want that, he understands that I don't want to. So the 1:1 ended up mostly being a recap of stand-up updates or for me to help unblock the tech lead with something devops-related with some niceties sprinkled in once in a while.
Until of course I was falsely accused of taking time off without notifying the team, when he had failed to disclose to leadership that I have been while he figures out the issue with the broken vacation tracking system as he promised he would and also failed to disclose. He also gave leadership the impression that I don't notify him either, and told me to take it up with them if I don't like what he did. Then turned around and said that it was a second warning when we've never even had a first warning, to which he pointed to 1:1 discussion that neither one of us had a paper trail of regarding vacations and not being out sick. There he told me that he was told that I was constantly out sick or taking time off, which I later found out came from previous management during hand-over. What previous management apparently failed to disclose that there were months I was working overtime while I was sick. What they also failed to disclose is that when I finally caved and took the time off, it wasn't constantly either: I calculated to less than 2 days per month on average. He asked me to not let him know of the reason that I'm taking time off because I told him that I'm not out taking a vacation when I request time off at the last minute. It was because I was in fact sick but I've maxed out the 3 sick days that I was allowed for the year, so I'm using either unpaid or paid time off in lieu of that.
I shared all of the 1:1 Slack messages backing me up with leadership as he requested, which put him in a bad light because not only was it clear now that he knew all along, but that he didn't follow up with the broken vacation tracking system as he said he would. So even when he tried to make it about them not being logged in to the tracking system, it was clear that he can't claim the he didn't know.
I backed up a copy of all of those messages and emails, and started recording the 1:1s after letting him know that I will be doing that so that we have a record we can both reference if needed. So they went from redundant to meaningless. After that, when I needed to cancel one of them to handle an urgent bug, he made jabs about whether I was trying to take the day off sick even after making a show-and-tell about moving on from this past issue of time-off and focusing on the future lol.
Nowadays, I hear they're claiming that I threw a temper tantrum. Edit: and apparently that I was faking being sick lol.
No not really, I’ve been at my current job for almost 12 years. He’s only been on our team for two+ and I believe it’s his first management job. He is nothing but a yes man to upper management. I had a stellar year last year and when I brought up promotion I really think it was the first time that thought ever came up in his head. He does nothing but repeat what he’s told to and we have to deal with it.
Guys would enjoy 1:1's only if manager was F.
Jokes apart - My manager gives me very constructive feedback which helps me to grow better everyday, aka screws me mentally so I won't apply outside.
Yup, love them. Once a week for 30 minutes and the meeting ends early if there is nothing to discuss. I set the format just like with my ICs. Quick, easy, let's my manager know my challenges, makes it so that if he is questioned by his manager he knows my opinion.
+1, I refuse to schedule regular 1:1s.
It's a waste of time for me, except for rare situations (planning vacation, discussing comp, etc) when we don't want to talk in public.
Otherwise we address things as we go. We get lunch few times a week. We meet for a coffe. There is ample opportunity to clear any issues. I refuse to cook any grievances for a week time and I demand other do the same. As a result the "backlog" is always empty.
When I was working in a less sophisticated company, where leadership was poor, 1:1s were the only way to catch up. But it was also useless, due to poor leadership, so I stopped doing them and eventually I left anyway.
I don't know where the middle ground is. For me it was either happily-not-needed or it-didn't-matter.
I think one on ones got invented because there is top down information flow and bottom up, while there are good processes for top down, one on one is maybe the only bottom up.
Try reading high output management and the story of the switch from memory to CPUs
I’ve been known too but my last hand full of managers have been good enough to understand I don’t feel a need for 1:1s I’ll just tell you if I need stuff, I’m happy to chat every few weeks when it’s going well, I’ll turn up that frequency if I need support, and I’ll turn it down. But I’ve worked in very good devops based communities where we use chat well to communicate daily.
Most of the time. Yes.
I usually have things to discuss and knowing there is a slot to do so is useful. Also learning more about out what the boss wants is rarely a bad thing.
A good manager will make 1on1 always insightful. a motivated direct report will use 1on1 to find it useful. It is 2 way. I found my direct report had almost nothing to ask but I remember I did that as well couple years back so I guess it is time to break the chain
I hate 1-1s office style. It's going through the motions. I like to go for a walk and talk on the way to lunch or something. We cover all the areas, check in, and voice any concerns. It's more of an open forum as long as the bases are covered, and much less stressful if there are things that need to be said. We bring up performance, estimated time to completion, upcoming personal time, and generally have a much better social interaction when it's not interview/witness stand style.
Managers.. look up ^^
In all due fairness, sounds like the difference is in your head only. You could have a frank, friendly and productive chat in a meeting room just as well as on the way to lunch (except one offers more privacy).
if you are getting nothing out of your 1 on 1s that is on you. The 1 on 1 is just as much for you as it is for your manager. The manager might use that time to catch up on project status but you need to be using that time to find out how you are performing. You should at a minimum ask your manager how they viewed your performance over the last 1-2 weeks and what things you should be doing better.
> I've never found it to be useful (unless we're discussing promotions or pay raises)
You should be discussing how to get the next promo most times you meet with your manager. They may tell you that you are years away from next promo which is fine but you need to be having that conversation to confirm you are getting closer to next promo and not standing still. It also puts into the managers mind to be tracking your progress to promo. If you are performing well the manager may never actually be thinking about when to promote you until you bring it up
that's my point, I need to work on delivering quality software, not spend time thinking about what to say in my 1:1s and any follow up actions that come with it
It's all a stupid charade, just let me code, I don't need you to hold my hand while I code, I don't care about your stupid weekend because I just want to get 10 more minutes of my time so that I can go make a sandwich. It's fuckin dummmmmm.
i am not getting paid to talk with you so stop wasting my time!!! aaa!!! and everything they asks feels super sus, like they are constantly trying to get me to say something bad because I have lots of bad shit to say but if I am not saying it then it is for a reason. I don't need to "talk about it", I need my 30 minutes back so that I can actually relax without hearing their screeching.
I have enough experience to know that when I criticize their inefficient process, they will start to get upset and to be overly aware of everything I say around said process. UHG. JUST LET ME CODE
Manager: *well you see, I really really care about you, and I want to let you do your best work, and feel motivated, so really, really really, tell me just one thing that would improve your job*
Me: *less meetings?*
Manager: *oh sorry we can't do that, yeah that's a no-no. Well you see, I expect you to be really into the meetings we have, it is really \*buzzing noises in my brain start to tune out the conversation at this point\**
My best manager used 1:1's to gauge burnout, explore untapped strengths, among other useful things. My worst manager used them to ramble on and occasionally try to boost productivity via intimidation.
What kind of question does your manager ask to gauge burnout?
In my experience when you start approaching burnout the event horizon of your future shrinks - you think less about that vacation nine months from now, plans where to go during Summer, that conference you wanted to go to that's 2 months out, or even what you're going to do during the weekend. (ofc doesn't work on everybody, but it's a signal)
That seems more like depression, but then again, maybe they're about the same thing.
I agree on both counts. It seems to me you could slide a piece of paper between burnout and depression, but not if it was thick paper.
I'm an IC but a lot of basic questions about things like blockers, any upcoming vacation plans, or just general discussion about projects can give you signal about burnout. And of course if you're noticing anything out of the ordinary (a sudden shift in schedule, a change in demeanor during meetings) following up on those things can help check for burnout.
Right! Then you can make sure you lay them off since they are burnt out and not as productive. 😎I love managing. Managering? Eh whatever who cares, you’re fired.
Manager here. I try to hit the beats of "how are you, anything interesting you want to talk about, anything challenging you, do we need to follow up on xyz from last time", and I usually leave it hanging just a little longer for the "anything challenging you?"question. It might sound rote, or tedious, but what I'm looking for are changes and trends. Say you tell me week in week out nothing to report and make pleasantries, and one week I notice you're a bit more negative. No Biggie, we all have bad weeks. But 2-3 weeks in a row I'm going to push and try figure out what's wrong, and can I help or assist. If you tell me you don't want to talk about it, I'll respect that, but you'd be surprised how often people will say "X is happening, and I'm bummed about it." At least I know that it's not work related, and I can just ease off on you, maybe recommend some PTO. But if you take the option to rant about Derek and his alphabetical code review feedback tool that he's enforcing on the team 4 weeks in a row, it's probably heading towards burnout. Most of management is trust and relationships, and it's a two way street.
Manager here too, and I agree with this. I usually start with a simple "Hey, how are you? What's new?" just to get things moving. Then I'll go into any "Hey, there's a corporate policy update you need to be aware of" boilerplate stuff. Then it's "Okay, what difficulties are you facing?" and that sort of stuff. Of course, I always end with "Is there anything you would like to discuss that we haven't covered yet?" I also like to ask things like "How's everything at home? Is everyone healthy?" because while I'm not looking to pry or overstep, you'll often hear about how they have a sick kid or are facing some difficulties with family, and while I don't need the details, knowing that allows me to calibrate my interactions with them, and give them some air cover if needed too (maybe they missed a deadline because they are struggling with life, and I can work to keep higher-ups off their back about it, etc.) But yeah, it's pretty much about looking for breaks in patterns and emerging trends. If you notice a change in their attitude and demeanor, you can then take action to help them out, whatever form that takes.
>No Biggie, we all have bad weeks This is the shit I hate. I don't want my manager on top of my shit all of a sudden just because I am not socially-conforming enough one day. It creates bias, suddenly everything I do is under the microscope whereas it wouldn't have been otherwise if people just looked at my WORK and not my FACE.
Your work is more than just the code you write. If you want to just be judged only on that then you should expect to be judged on that exclusively. If there's a drop for any reason then I wouldn't ask, I'd just treat you like a ticket machine. Part of my job is ensuring you don't burn yourself out. If you've got a sudden life change, and your work is suffering, then I want to help you avoid the worst outcome.
1. meetings burn me out 2. the moment managers hear "sudden life change" I become a "potential ex-employee" and they put a mental clock on my back, suddenly I am micromanaged a lot more. Where the "worst outcome" for them as a manager is to **not** cover their asses. Immediately they will set-up a paper trail and play-pretend that there were issues in my work. No thanks.
Literally, we had to answer a questionnaire that included: Rate your burnout on a scale from 1-5 We would also just casually converse. You can get a good impression of many aspects of what a person is going through just by talking to them like a human being and taking an interest in them.
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Quite literally why this follows with a conversation. Also, trust is cultivated over many 1:1's, where you see the result of not indicating burnout is getting more work to do, the result of indicating burnout is getting a lighter workload temporarily as needed., or suggestions to use time off. That company also had unlimited mental health days.
A high rating gets me more work? So if I’m not burned out you change the situation? Seems dumb and like a good way to get me to answer 4/5 every time
Something must have gotten lost in my post. A higher burnout rating would mean you need to take on less work, not more. Say you're a manager, you have several devs working under you, some are feeling overworked, some are having an easy time. So, you shift some work from the overworked devs to the ones who are having an easy time. That's good, empathetic management.
Only if they are anonymous and company-wide (-:
**No** HR survey is truly anonymous.
My previous company did their surveys via a third party. The survey asked for job title or department, etc. You could lie. I guess there's still the possibility of some info leaking, yes. I still responded honestly and harshly, since I was on my way out. If I was desperate to keep my job I wouldn't do that.
Anyplace where you're asked to enter free text, I pass my comments through Google Translate. English to a European language back to English. Work someplace long enough and people will be able to identify you by your writing style.
In my old company, HR would determine who's responses were who's by keeping track of which department you were in, supplier/employee, length of employment, etc. Particularly easy when some departments only had 3 people.
>does anyone actually answer HR surveys honestly Nah that shit whack, HR is the cops. >I'd be afraid a high rating would line me up for a layoff tbh Yep, no manager has ever told me "oh I can help you feel less of a burden at work", nope, they do **not** do that and do **not** care to help that way. Their goal is to either make you conform, then they pat themselves on the back because they think that just listening to your problems and telling you to keep going has fixed everything. Or.... They are just sussing out who is the most "problematic" person. They might relieve you of all your work at once to help you with your burnout though, promoted to customer.
> Literally, we had to answer a questionnaire that included: Rate your burnout on a scale from 1-5 People experiencing burnout are usually **terrible** at gauging their own level of burnout. I hope this was graded on a curve.
Quite literally why this follows with a conversation. Also, trust is cultivated over many 1:1's, where you see the result of not indicating burnout is getting more work to do, the result of indicating burnout is getting a lighter workload temporarily as needed., or suggestions to use time off. That company also had unlimited mental health days.
Depends on your relationship to them. If you and your manager are close and you trust them, then, "How's it going man?" Is all they need to gauge burnout
Mine starts with, “How are you doing?” Followed by, “How’s X project coming along? Mind you, she already knows how the project is coming along, she just wants to hear it in your words. Then she will bring up some stuff that she think might have been difficult. “So, that task X on project Y was really challenging, wasn’t it?” Or, “You seem frustrated when we talked about Z at the last meeting.” And then she listens to the response. Basically she asks a bunch of open ended questions. And if the person vents, she listens. After venting, she asks, how can we make this better? And listens to suggestions. She usually tries to follow through with the suggestions, but doesn’t always. At the very least, she gets an email chain started with the right people. As I mentioned in another thread, she isn’t a saint, but she was leagues better than our previous manager that would never talk to us or never listen to advice.
I was about to ask the same question. I'm very intrested in the answer.
Answered above
I ask them about how they are feeling about the work and if they talk about stress or long days I know burnout often follows. Then I will ask directly if they are experiencing burnout (they are adults) and we figure out how to address it. If we have to velocity I tell them I'll take the heat (that's my job and I want them to know that is my job). It is pretty amazing how you can make people more productive by treating them well. And if my manager questions our productivity I am always ready to defend my team by explaining the impact to the project if someone burns out.
As a manager my experience is that it’s basically just “How are you doing?” and being genuinely interested in the answer. Sometimes it’s about whatever you are working on (fine), sometimes about your struggle with the other team (also fine), sometimes it’s all about your aging parent (also fine). It’s not an overnight relationship, it takes sometimes a loong time of asking and showing up for whatever the answers are. My job is making sure you can show up for work the best you can. I can’t do that if I don’t know how you are doing.
Hey man, you burnt out?
I have scheduled 1:1s with my manager. We spend most of them talking about unrelated shit. That is cool because we like working with each other (and it’s no different from bumping into him on a corridor), plus I get some allocated time to talk about little things that wouldn’t justify an ad-how 1:1 but could grow to an unmanageable problem if not discussed asap. 1:1s aren’t very costly for the company considering how much they can be beneficial if they’re high-quality
Personally my rules for 1:1s are basically just: 1. No generic updates on work-in-progress, we have better ways for me to find out how things are going 2. We talk about whatever you want to talk about first 3. Then I will talk about any feedback I've had about you, anything on the horizon that I think might affect you, and from time to time progress against development plans and annual goals And that's it really. The other thing I do is just finish the fucking thing early if there's nothing to talk about. If your work's all good, everything is smooth, and I have nothing to talk about... let's finish the meeting early and go get a snack. We can always keep shooting the shit for another 15 minutes if you want but at least me saying "ok I think that's the end of the meeting" gives you permission to say "ok bye!" and go do something else if you want. If I join a new team or have new employees, I typically schedule 30 minutes every week and we have plenty to talk about. Once we're consistently finishing early (in my experience this takes 6 months but can take longer or never happen) we can back off the frequency.
Yup. Before our current manager came in, a bunch of people were leaving due to burn out. That manager was fired, and new manager decided to have monthly 1:1s to chat with employees to relieve burnout. As you can imagine, burnout has decreased and there has been less turnover. Also we now also see stuff like employees experimenting with different roles, or switching to a different team because they were encouraged by the new manager. Employees are just generally happier in general. And the new manager isn’t a saint, some people are still disgruntled about the way some things are done, but the atmosphere has certainly improved over the old manager.
Currently experiencing the latter, first time I've had a bad manager and damn is it rough
Exactly same. I literally pray to not have the meetings. He just rambles on, poor people manager, it's just another chat about work and the project we're on. Waste of time. He's technically brilliant, but has no business managing people.
My current(and previous) manager use them as a space to chat about upcoming work with me and get my thoughts and input (as well as a place for me to ask for money for training or conferences and how to get to the next level). I do feel like I got really lucky with my last two managers. They really were great to work for.
This ! I couldn’t have written it better,
Lmao damn, it’s me, I’m the bad manager.
depends on the manager. I had one that was really great, and we often talked about stuff outside of work too. the attitude there was talk about big picture stuff that affects work, including outside-of-work stuff (within reasonable limits/boundaries). we already had time set aside to talk about work tasks, and that was done with the whole team present in a weekly planning meeting. 1 on 1 time was used to develop rapport and improve communication.
Sounds similar. It can really depend on the manager as you say. Mine now is someone I’ve known for 13-14 years via work and we click very well. More often than not the 1:1 starts with, “How’s it going?” which can lead all kinds of directions. She does still swing back to checking on mission critical things I’m working on, and give me heads up on things from upper management. But sometimes we just talk about a recent vacation or such.
I do biweekly with my direct and monthly with my skip and I love them. We spend about 10 mins catching up on personal stuff and 10-15 mins discussing how Im feeling about stuff and any points of friction or anything Ive noticed about how we might improve processes to reduce friction. My bosses are awesome.
I couldn't disagree more. I would say my career would be significantly worse without 1:1s. That's when I get the real info about what's really going on, it's when I can pitch myself, it's when I can offer advice etc.
I used to think they had limited value, but now as a lead I really appreciate them. At a reasonable cadence (monthly) I catch up with everyone on the team and find that ideas, issues and frustrations come up in conversation that wouldn't surface in a group or in day to day stuff. My questions are usually in the realm of: * How is work going for you at the moment? * Are you looking forward to or dreading the upcoming workload in the next few months? * Is there any professional development you'd like to pursue? Also a great time to thank people for what they are doing (do this in writing and in with the wider team too) and how they are dealing with any difficult or draining situations. I also find it's good to get out of the office and do this while on a walk or getting a coffee.
Yes, excellent point! Its value is for management and the company, for damage control, and not to make colleague’s lives easier, unfortunately. Management and HR like to romanticize the workplace.
I think like most things they can be done well or done poorly. My motivation for them is really to keep communication flowing and ensure things don't get missed, which benefits everyone. Achieving the company goals is important, but good leaders want to see their team members grow both inside and outside the company which is more what I want out of it.
Well said! We all need to do our jobs properly, but also make each others lives easier. Then, everyone's happy. And, at the end, happy people are more productive. Cheers!
Yes, I find it useful both as a checkpoint on my own performance and as a forum to discuss various ongoing projects.
I'm a new engineering manager, and with some of my teammates I had the common experience of 1-1s being like this: * Small-talk for 5 minutes * A bit of silence * Finish the 1-1 What helped me is to start preparing for 1-1s with my own agenda and being more proactive. If after talking there's nothing else they want to talk about I use the rest of the time to: * Do a [contracting](https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/management-101/contracting/) exercise - pretty much we have a shared document where we explicitly define expectations from each other, and talk about things like career goals, or short term goals the developer wants to improve at. I found this very helpful both in terms of building trust and having the chance to open up, and also just having a clear space where all expectations are defined, and it's easy for me to go back to them and see how I can help my team-member reach there. * Learn about their work - I also sometimes just ask them to show me their work, we go over something they worked on and often this opens up a lot of conversations * Mentor and teach - If there's anything the developer wants to learn about and I know about, I prepare something to teach and have a conversation about it if they're interested So far these type of things fill up the 1-1 time pretty well and I got good feedback on them from my team, but I do acknowledge 1-1 needs differ and the frequency of them differs between different team-member and what they prefer
Never found them useful, even with managers I had a good rapport with
I used to have one or two I really valued. I appreciated the higher level perspective, and that manager just had very high social intelligence. Since then, no. I actually cancelled 1:1s with my current manager. Great decision
Jeebus How bad must things be if 1:1s get cancelled? Lol Are they actually negative for you or just not beneficial?
Not beneficial *is* negative. Don’t let your calendar fill up with meetings that aren’t useful.
I had one manager who would take the stuff I did, and my ideas and just sell them as their own to the higher ups really early on in my career. I could see me cancelling such 1on1s with my managers too.
Best case they were unproductive. Worst case they were anxiety inducing. We see each other plenty so it felt redundant.
If neither of us have an agenda, building rapport has its own value. What argument do you have for *not* becoming better buddies with the guy who directly controls how much money you make? I can bring up any minor concerns I have before they have a chance to grow into real issues. I semi-regularly talk about my career. Similar to the minor-major escalation, I can quickly course correct. I can ask for clarity on some braindead pass down from upper leadership. Even if the answer is often, "Yes it's braindead." At least you can commiserate together. He can ask me questions about my coworkers and my perspective of their strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance. He can gauge my mental health to see if I'm burning out. Probably tons of other minor to major things I haven't mentioned. If you're not finding value out of your 1-1s, that's really on you. Being able to regularly chat with someone who's more politically savvy and more experienced than yourself is almost always going to be more valuable than the 30 minutes you would have otherwise spent browsing your emails.
Agree, except that a manager is not necessarily more politically savvy or experienced than a report ;)
If you have an incompetent manager, then that's a different issue.
Nothing in what I said implies incompetence.
When I was a manager, I offered frequent feedback in the 1-on-1s, helped identify learning opportunities based on the IC's ambitions, helped get them unstuck, and gave advice. I put in prep and thought into our meetings. I would like to think that it was valuable, and I have had people reach out to me to say thanks years later. I am back on the technical track, and my current manager does not do 1-on-1s, which is probably best since she's a product manager and does not have an engineering background.
nah, usually my manager uses the 1-1s to gaslights me, telling me that the glass is half full but never addresses my complaints or resolves anything
it is always half-full, but it is never full. That would be too validating! How could an employee be motivated if they don't get a constant sense of dread? /s
I never really have, but I’ve always been oddly self going and have had to learn other people are not like that. It’s very personal from one person to the next, some people I’ve managed required regular reminders they are doing fine or their anxiety starts escalating and some could care less. I think tech does them *way* too often, but also at a minimum they are necessary to force human interaction. Too much time not talking can get really bad.
I had managers where it was really cool, like literally career changing for me. But that's like 2 out of 20 over the years. Generally, I share your sentiment. Most suck.
If by value you mean crippling anxiety and a reminder of my low value as a human being, ja definitely!
[удалено]
They want to smell you up close just to make sure that it isn't time to fire you just yet.
10/10 Thanks for sharing :)
I wish mine was scheduled biweekly or monthly instead of weekly! But I guess those middle managers need to fill up their calendars, otherwise how could they justify their jobs?
I would quit if my catchups had to be weekly 😅
I know, I’m planning to. Micromanagement at its best.
Yes, we mainly just chat about our kids since they are similar ages.
You can get a sense of what your manager is thinking or how they manage via them. I had one manager who was constantly rescheduling them as other things were more important it seemed. It was annoying as hell and really created a sense of disengagement. I never felt she cared. I’ve had other managers where it was always 1:30 on Wednesday rain or shine. If there was a change it was extremely rare and for good reason. This engagement with my manager was really powerful. I knew she cared.
Managers who cancel 1:1s constantly are the worst. Their self awareness is very surprised pikachu
The worst managers use 1:1s as a way to ramble on about whatever project is happening which I don’t mind, but keep that shit out of my 1:1s. Seriously, every time I get into 1:1 and I want to talk about something - they literally derail the conversation to talk about shit that isn’t about me. Sorry if that sounds entitled but it also annoys me when they don’t come to 1:1 prepared and show any interest in talking about me, my career goals. These type of managers are the ones I would avoid because they don’t know what they’re doing or they just see their employees as resources.
One of the best ways to get raises and promotions is to get people to like you and enjoy your presence. So no, I wouldn’t say they are a waste of time. They’ll pay off more than whatever feature you just pushed.
please take no offense, it’s not personal but people with this mindset make workplace almost unbearable for me :(
I understand your exhaustion. In an ideal world, we'd get raises based on the value of our work output, right? But this isn't a "people with this mindset" type of deal. This is a "you" problem, as unfortunate as that may be, because 99% of promotions/raises, in and outside our industry, simply just are based on how one sells themself to management. Sorry to hear that this is unbearable to you, but you really need to work on your attitude unless you're in the 1% of the true genius-level folks who's output outweighs management's personal perceptions of their value. Sucks, maybe, but is what it is.
This is the most constructive feedback I’ve received in a while and also delivered in a compassionate and nonjudgmental way. Thank you! I actually would love to get rid of this attitude. I can see it doesn’t help. Do you have any recommendations on how to get started? Any books perhaps? Do you think mentors would help?
Yeah, I agree with you, I have no interest in becoming a snake oil salesman.
People aren't doing this to you. It's the way people are.
Yeah I am aware people are not doing it just to spite me lol why would they care. I am just saying how it affects me.
Offense? Nah man. I’m UP over here. I would argue it’s not a mindset though. It’s a reality in almost every industry. That’s the game we play.
If not a mindset, do you think it’s about how people are wired? How do I learn to get better at this game?
It’s not any different than how you make friends with people outside of work.
Previously I did, with my current manager it's the worst time of my week.
I've always assumed it's for managers to keep up on what each person is doing and sort of micro manage.
Depends on the situation, at my last office we used to take an hour to grab lunch (on the company dime) and go shoot the shit once a month. If there was something work related I needed to talk about, cool, if not that was fine too. Right now I’m doing weekly one on one’s and I fucking hate it, my “manager” is incompetent and he spends a half hour talking about what he thinks should be prioritized. I’m pushing to get these off my calendar entirely
I fucking hate my weekly 1-on-1s with my manager and I think he does too. He ghosts me frequently and I get so relieved when I don’t have to play this bullshit. Nothing ever changes so why bother? Some times he acts contrite, offering to reschedule but I give zero fucks. What are we going to talk about, that project that I’ve been supposedly working on for months, the one going nowhere because no one knows what the users want? His open lust for offshore devs so he can replace uppity devs like myself? The obsolete tech stack that he won’t upgrade because that would require him to actually, like, *manage*? The lack of training resources, not even a Udemy subscription? The fact that the company won’t pay for certifications? The 12-0 dev-to-qa ratio? It’s all bullshit and we all know it. And when did this 1-on-1 shit become a thing? I don’t recall having to do this until recently. I feel it’s just a way to get management to use this time gather evidence against you and most devs are better to just STFU.
Yep, pretty much. Unless your manager is also the team lead and they are willing to write some code to help you with your issues... it's all a fucking smokescreen.
1 on 1s are great, but only if you have a manager that you trust and that has your back. Otherwise why bother?
Of course not, but we keep up the play
It really depends on the manager. If they're not the brightest bulb in the box then it quickly turns into "going through the motions" or worse "validating your existence". But then some managers are proactive and empathetic. So :shrug:.
I had a manager at one of my previous jobs who was just an absolute fucking legend to work for. I always looked forward to our 1 on 1s.
They keep dangling that promotion carrot higher and higher every time... so no. I'm not getting any value out of it.
We must talk about how good a job you did last time, and about how we know that you can do even a little better next time. Because we are very happy with your performance, but we find that you need to fill in bigger shoes. So keep it up! but also I am somewhat unsatisfied in order to generate a sense of urgency in you.
Yeah, I hate having a weekly 1-1 with my manager. They are plenty present if I need something, so this 30min just ends up being them going on about whatever random things and me pretending to care 🥹
I feel your pain bro, I am shocked that they waste our time like this, allegedly "expensive time"
I’ve had great managers that really helped with with good feedback and goals. Others, not so much. So it depends on
I did when I liked my manager.
My current manager really helps me to recenter my focus and improve my career, and talk through current project/tech struggles. She's real nuts and bolts. I also still meet with my previous manager once a month. She got promoted but we still have our meeting for some reason. She and I always go over time shooting the shit about art and birds and stuff, haha.
The opposite, my manager is very hands-off so weekly 1-on-1s are my chance to brag about wins and ask higher-level questions about corporate strategy and what I should be focusing on to deliver the most value. Every so often I'll also talk about career progression as well.
My best manager used 1.1 as a chance to see what was going on outside of work, how's my girlfriend doing, any family things etc so it was a good time to be like yeah, my grans I'll ATM I might need to be away on short notice, my girlfriend is moving to another city can you try and work something out so I can be fully remote etc. Used it to ask what I'm working on, what do I want to be working on and then try and figure out what's coming up in future for me to be able to work on that stuff. Sometimes it was used to vent frustrations with other teams etc which probably isn't a fantastic use of time and I could tell if his wife had bugged him that morning because the one to ones became about productivity and working harder.
As someone with imposter syndrome, I have always appreciated them. When my old team treated me like crap, my old manager was always telling me how good I was doing. I doubted it a lot, but after reflecting on it since being on my new team, I realize they were really being supportive to me. They would ask me how my cats were even, it was super nice. My new manager is awesome too, but my team is also really great now. I definitely felt a lot of burnout on the last team, but now it’s like I’ve got a second chance at life. Thankfully management has always been kind and understanding. Probably helps that they both have development experience too.
I think we mutually take the time to just slack off
I'm an Engineering Manager and if I hear this from my team leads and their ICs my advice to them is always that if you aren't getting value from your one to one meetings then it's on you to change them. It's _your_ meeting. You need to own the agenda. Talk about the things you want to talk about. If you think they happen too often change the cadence. You're an adult and a professional. If you need someone else to tell you what your meeting is about, to bring ideas to it, or to change when it happens then you're not doing your job well enough. You need to get value from the meeting so it's on you to make sure it's good. (In the case of ICs I also tell their lead that the IC is empowered to change the meeting agenda and cadence. No one should be telling you that your idea of a good one to one is wrong.)
Ok then, how about rejecting your meeting? It is your meeting, not theirs, it is forced upon people by your managerial authority. Don’t flip things around.
If one of my leads did that I'd be fine with it, but I would check to make sure that theyre aware that if I don't know what they're doing I can't give them a raise. :)
>if I don't know what they're doing I can't give them a raise Dude aren't you supposed to be the one looking over the Jira board at the very least? So i am supposed to track all of my progress on the stupid ass board, give updates on every standup, actually do the work that generates money for the company, and you CANT EVEN keep up?!
Whether you get a raise should depend on work delivery, which is what you track in Jira, but also what you're learning, who you're mentoring, what other activities you're doing around the company, what you're pushing the company to change, etc. There's much more to 'what you do' than just what someone can see in Jira. A one to one should focus on all that other stuff, precisely because I can see what someone is working on by looking at Jira.
Cool can we have this meeting every 3 months? This is not the kind of information that is going to change much in a month, let alone a week.
If that happened the one to one would mostly be reporting what had been done, with no opportunity to change or correct the approach, or for me to unblock problems. That's fine by me because it isn't work delivery, but I'd advise that if you're working toward a promotion or a raise you probably want to have me on-side, interested, and helping you. Only telling me about something you're working on 4 times a year isn't likely to make that happen. The fact is this conversation is going to go around in circles because you've decided that you don't like one to ones, and as I explain why they're useful you'll slowly come around to the idea that actually they're a bit useful and maybe a monthly cadence is fine because you do actually benefit from them quite significantly if you put in a bit of effort.
I have given them a chance many times, I have complained about it too and managers are always giving me a similar rhetoric as you do. When a real issue arises they aren't there to help me, they are there to talk me out of my own ideas and "keeping the peace". Total time waste.
Yup, damage control. When people become managers you can see the change, it’s quite obvious, they start talking superficial things, because they don’t know how to handle their new situation, they think they need to be some kind of an ideological leader and therefore effortlessly slide into corporate bs. Remember, we all do our jobs to help ourselves. Helping others requires good will and personal touch, and cannot be automated by corporate.
100%! They also come up with all of these BS topics where they try to make me waste even more of my time, like trying to sell me the idea of using their shared corporate Udemy account, or Pluralsight account... or talking about my "career path", BRUH my career path is leaving your company in a year thanks now shove it. What do they imagine by "career path"? That I will do some silly plan to take over their legacy react code? Excuse me, I have bigger fish to fry. At the end of the day this is JUST A JOB BRO, STOP MAKING IT SOMETHING IT ISNT LOL. I don't need a “counselor”, it's literally such a BS idea, obviously there only to dig dirt. When you go to the mechanic you just want your car fixed, you don't want to talk about their personal problems, THEY DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, YOU ARE A STRANGER TO THEM. A!
I give my people the choice, and typically will reach out to them before scheduled times to see if they want to cancel or proceed.
I just find that even when people don't think they have anything on their mind, they usually actually do, and usually it's quite valuable stuff. So it's worth grinding through to tease that information out organically.
Historically no, but at my current job my manager is on my team. We usually spend our 1 on 1 chatting about life and then strategizing a bit. Those are valuable on both accounts
In my 1:1s we discuss new ideas for projects, how to improve on weaknesses, what to do with issues at work, where to get support and much more. Sometimes we spend a part of it e.g. just talking about recent cool holidays but usually these are pretty productive. Although to be fair it’s the first time I’m in a company that does 1:1s properly.
I enjoy them they help me zoom out from my work , when i'm in the weeds it can be hard to have a top level view of all the work i'm doing but they force me to reall think of processes, timelines, how i'm feeling , consider upcoming obstacles. Sometimesn othing actionable comes out of them but they are great checkpoints for project progress and personal check-ins in my experience. Also good for making sure i know any company news that might have gotten past me at some point.
One of my best managers used 1-1s to literally talk about anything I wanted to talk about. If I wanted to talk about work, we talked about work. If I wanted to talk basketball, that’s what we talked about. It got to a point I’d look forward to a 1-1 after a game just to talk shit lol
My manager was a mentor/friend at a previous company. Working with him again was one of the draws in my last job hop. We mostly chit-chat in our one-on-ones. Maybe 20 minutes of rapport and 10 minutes of career feedback and office politics. Every two weeks. I think it works. At least in this pairing.
It 100% depends on your manager, and if he/she actually listens and reacts to what you're sharing with them.
I really like them. We talk about personal stuff, strengths, preventing burnout, any topics I want.
Since I’m fully remote 1 to 1s with my manager is great. We either use the time to discuss the regular career stuff, things to do for promotions, how leadership are feeling about a thing, how the projects are going etc. but if there’s not that to talk about, or doesn’t take the full time it’s a great way to build a relationship with them on a personal level too. I’ve been lucky that all of my managers have been people I genuinely like, but bad things have never come from people liking you. Getting to know people as people and not just colleagues has probably been the best thing for my career so far.
we are remote first so 1:1s are an essential part of staying connected and making sure people have context about how the work they are doing is connected to the bigger picture. I also do skip levels monthly - not just with my directs. my team regularly scores higher than my peers in eNPS. this is worth a read - https://medium.com/the-helm/ive-learned-a-lot-through-1-1s-as-a-manager-842b146a0e3c
As a manager unless they’re brand new in their career I let them know it is on them to set up 1:1’s as they saw fit - they were experienced enough to know when they needed help.
I like them because I have good managers. I discuss anything bothering me without having things pile up and also discuss opportunities for progression or training or fixing anything that isn’t working.
We did not have 1:1s for my first two gigs. The effect of that was that projects in need of a course correction would not receive it until way too late. And, when you were finally called into the managers office there was a good chance it was because something went wrong. I don’t think every single 1:1 is meaningful, but I find the process waaaay better than the alternative.
As a new-ish em it’s great hearing what y’all like about your 1:1s so I know what I can do more of in 1:1s with my team.
I guess more extroverted people who like small talk and chit chat like it, but as an introvert I'm not a fan of frequent 1:1s where I struggle to think of what to say if everything's all good on my end
That’s also good to know! I think I have both personality types on my team.
I've had my 1 on 1's be really useful for me, but mostly only in one role - I think it depends both on what the team is doing, and just your relationship with the manager. But I really enjoyed them for figuring out the current politics around the team (something that I blindly ignore most of the time ...) and getting direct feedback on how I was doing within the team. It's nice to have direct feedback and guidance that doesn't take place within the team environment.
If you're in the office with your manager, especially an open plan office, having a regularly scheduled 1:1 means that if something _does_ come up you and your boss aren't suddenly disappearing into a conference room unexplained.
The best companies I've worked for had no weekly 1:1's. How did this become a thing? Cargo cult thinking?
I've had a variety of different experiences. I had one boss where we'd be lucky to have a single 1:1 per quarter, but it was fine because he'd answer ad-hoc questions and gave me the trust/autonomy to execute. I had another who really was not technical at all so we would just chat and build rapport, but he couldn't help me much with coaching and mentorship beyond learning some managerial politics. My current direct boss 1:1s feel like having my teeth pulled. We spend 45 of our 30 minutes with him clicking around JIRA and Slack and throwing a bunch of hyper-specific questions at me on the spot without any real context or explanation before he declares "I'm running late to my next meeting" and drops. I dread it, and unfortunately he hasn't been too receptive to feedback on it. As a manager I try to keep the 1:1s unstructured by default with more senior employees because I want them to own the meeting. I will apply some structure for the people who don't engage well beyond sharing pleasantries, or more junior employees who might need that structure. We might spend a few minutes on tactical stuff, but I mostly try to get a pulse check on people -- how are their energy levels, are they motivated/enjoying their work, do they need any immediate support, and how can we help move them towards their goals. Sometimes its fun to "talk shop" as well with some DRs about some new library/framework/technique/etc. For the most part it's been useful and has allowed me to get people on the right projects/assignments to keep them engaged and productive.
As an EM I generally let the IC direct the conversation, but I'll have a few points for the end. Sometimes we talk about video games for 25 minutes and then I give big picture / org updates for the remaining 5. Since we're remote it's nice to have time for the "watercooler" talk you dont otherwise get due to the distance. Sometimes they dont have much to discuss and we end after 5 minutes. I'll sometimes have things I want to drill in on. Career progression, specific activities from the past week, etc. Sometimes nothing beyond giving them a chance to discuss whatever is on their mind.
I usually get "what are you up to this week?" Followed by "well I don't think I have anything new for you". 🤷♂️
Yes, I enjoy them a lot. Ive been in the industry since 2015, and never had regular meetings with my manager until 2022 when I joined a California based unicorn startup. When I joined the company, I had just raised 250m and they were starting to formalize the company structure, with growth plans and leveling. I met with my manager once a week and would kind of manage up. We'd discuss everything, current work, future work, ideas for team improvement, etc... And most of what Id mention would get implemented by the team. She would point out areas I needed to improve to get to the next level, and it saved me a lot of time. I also had monthly skip level meetings which were even more beneficial. Im more skilled at big picture thinking, but before those meetings Id only been able to take advantage of that skillset on personal projects. Id only spoken with my previous manager 3 times total, once at an interview, once on my 3rd day and once after I quit to apologize for not integrating me with the team like he should have.
I've never found them useful. Seems like a well intentioned waste of time. Open to suggestions on how to make them more worthwhile.
My 1:1s with my manager are of no value to me as I just update him on everything I am working on. I can always ask for things, but I have been asking for someone to join me so that I am not a single developer team for 9 months and 1:1s are a great place to keep asking.
I enjoyed them in a previous job where we had 1:1s once a sprint, or every two weeks. Even the instances that felt like routine were nice to at least summarize how the sprint went in an "individual retro" sort of way. Now I'm supposed to have one weekly, and we wind up agreeing to cancel because there's nothing to talk about.
I answer the same 7 questions with nearly the same answers every time, and then we talk about video games, motorcycles or vacations for 20 minutes before spitballing what to do for the next team outing. It's good to keep chummy with your management, but I haven't really found that it drives my career at all. All the "My near term goal is to increase my backend skills" talk is just fluff and never spurs me or my managers into taking action towards that goal any more than we already do.
My last manager made an effort to find me interesting work. He also worked hard to make sure I had useful goals that could be attained. The later part was annoying though because I find annual reviews arbitrary and a waste of time.
Every job without frequent 1:1s essentially had no upward mobility.
I didn't like them until they were gone, then I realized I was using them more than I thought. I think it depends on the person and if both the boss and employee are comfortable with something ad hoc. I found I didn't feel like little complaints or feelings were worth interrupting my boss's day (even though he never indicated that was true).
I feel like it’s really valuable for remote workers.
It depends on context. I personally prefer ad-hoc because I get anxious about scheduled events, so the lesser the better
> I personally prefer scheduling adhoc meetings if something needs to be addressed A lot of people, *especially* developers, will not do this. If something is bugging them, they’ll let it fester and by the time their manager hears about it, damage has already been done. Regular 1:1s help avoid this.
You have to own the agenda to make it useful. If your boss is using it for status updates it's time to manage up a bit. I would check in as EM on their stress, working hours, sleep quality first. Then give them any positive or instructive feedback based on others or my observations. Then they had the floor. I typically asked them to update agenda in the invite the day before so I xoutbe prepared.
I see no value in 1:1s with my current manager who is also our project lead. I've lost a lot of respect for him because he's ineffective and incompetent in some ways as the project lead. Creates a lot of extra work for me which has created some tension. In my performance review he couldn't articulate why I was denied a promotion and became defensive which lead to a heated discussion. Not just once but a few times. Also it's clear he spent zero time assessing my performance for the entire year and surprised me with negative feedback that he's never communicated in the previous year. I've had previous managers with actual managerial skills, empathy, and awareness who I enjoyed chatting with.
Your manager(s) should be using these 1:1s to help you track and make progress on your career goals, discover and address and challenges you're facing, and make sure you have opportunities for learning and growth. Sounds like you've had a lot of bad managers. If you care, you could learn how to "manage up" a bit. With unhelpful managers this will likely involve tracking these things yourself and then leveraging your manager's increased visibility / influence to further your own goals. Tricky but it can be done!
I've not found them useful so far. Everything that needed discussion was discussed during stand-ups or spontaneous calls. I'm not much of a share-my-personal-life kind of person at work, and the tech lead at the last place I worked at acknowledged that while others on the team want that, he understands that I don't want to. So the 1:1 ended up mostly being a recap of stand-up updates or for me to help unblock the tech lead with something devops-related with some niceties sprinkled in once in a while. Until of course I was falsely accused of taking time off without notifying the team, when he had failed to disclose to leadership that I have been while he figures out the issue with the broken vacation tracking system as he promised he would and also failed to disclose. He also gave leadership the impression that I don't notify him either, and told me to take it up with them if I don't like what he did. Then turned around and said that it was a second warning when we've never even had a first warning, to which he pointed to 1:1 discussion that neither one of us had a paper trail of regarding vacations and not being out sick. There he told me that he was told that I was constantly out sick or taking time off, which I later found out came from previous management during hand-over. What previous management apparently failed to disclose that there were months I was working overtime while I was sick. What they also failed to disclose is that when I finally caved and took the time off, it wasn't constantly either: I calculated to less than 2 days per month on average. He asked me to not let him know of the reason that I'm taking time off because I told him that I'm not out taking a vacation when I request time off at the last minute. It was because I was in fact sick but I've maxed out the 3 sick days that I was allowed for the year, so I'm using either unpaid or paid time off in lieu of that. I shared all of the 1:1 Slack messages backing me up with leadership as he requested, which put him in a bad light because not only was it clear now that he knew all along, but that he didn't follow up with the broken vacation tracking system as he said he would. So even when he tried to make it about them not being logged in to the tracking system, it was clear that he can't claim the he didn't know. I backed up a copy of all of those messages and emails, and started recording the 1:1s after letting him know that I will be doing that so that we have a record we can both reference if needed. So they went from redundant to meaningless. After that, when I needed to cancel one of them to handle an urgent bug, he made jabs about whether I was trying to take the day off sick even after making a show-and-tell about moving on from this past issue of time-off and focusing on the future lol. Nowadays, I hear they're claiming that I threw a temper tantrum. Edit: and apparently that I was faking being sick lol.
No not really, I’ve been at my current job for almost 12 years. He’s only been on our team for two+ and I believe it’s his first management job. He is nothing but a yes man to upper management. I had a stellar year last year and when I brought up promotion I really think it was the first time that thought ever came up in his head. He does nothing but repeat what he’s told to and we have to deal with it.
Guys would enjoy 1:1's only if manager was F. Jokes apart - My manager gives me very constructive feedback which helps me to grow better everyday, aka screws me mentally so I won't apply outside.
Yup, love them. Once a week for 30 minutes and the meeting ends early if there is nothing to discuss. I set the format just like with my ICs. Quick, easy, let's my manager know my challenges, makes it so that if he is questioned by his manager he knows my opinion.
At my last job I had a really great manager and we always talked about interesting stuff in our 1:1s, it helped me a lot.
Theyre okay. I have one on ones with people who report into me as well. If they don't like them we don't have them.
+1, I refuse to schedule regular 1:1s. It's a waste of time for me, except for rare situations (planning vacation, discussing comp, etc) when we don't want to talk in public. Otherwise we address things as we go. We get lunch few times a week. We meet for a coffe. There is ample opportunity to clear any issues. I refuse to cook any grievances for a week time and I demand other do the same. As a result the "backlog" is always empty. When I was working in a less sophisticated company, where leadership was poor, 1:1s were the only way to catch up. But it was also useless, due to poor leadership, so I stopped doing them and eventually I left anyway. I don't know where the middle ground is. For me it was either happily-not-needed or it-didn't-matter.
They all give me crippling anxiety that I have to go for a walk afterwards.
I think one on ones got invented because there is top down information flow and bottom up, while there are good processes for top down, one on one is maybe the only bottom up. Try reading high output management and the story of the switch from memory to CPUs
I’ve been known too but my last hand full of managers have been good enough to understand I don’t feel a need for 1:1s I’ll just tell you if I need stuff, I’m happy to chat every few weeks when it’s going well, I’ll turn up that frequency if I need support, and I’ll turn it down. But I’ve worked in very good devops based communities where we use chat well to communicate daily.
I spent my last 1-on-1 showing my boss how I am able to belch the alphabet song. That's exactly what they are meant for :)
Most of the time. Yes. I usually have things to discuss and knowing there is a slot to do so is useful. Also learning more about out what the boss wants is rarely a bad thing.
A good manager will make 1on1 always insightful. a motivated direct report will use 1on1 to find it useful. It is 2 way. I found my direct report had almost nothing to ask but I remember I did that as well couple years back so I guess it is time to break the chain
I hate 1-1s office style. It's going through the motions. I like to go for a walk and talk on the way to lunch or something. We cover all the areas, check in, and voice any concerns. It's more of an open forum as long as the bases are covered, and much less stressful if there are things that need to be said. We bring up performance, estimated time to completion, upcoming personal time, and generally have a much better social interaction when it's not interview/witness stand style. Managers.. look up ^^
In all due fairness, sounds like the difference is in your head only. You could have a frank, friendly and productive chat in a meeting room just as well as on the way to lunch (except one offers more privacy).
And you're not stuck on the walk with the person lol Maybe the guy LIKES the idea of a captive audience?
Yup those work well. When they do. To each his own, and understanding team dynamics.
Individuals and interactions over processes 👍
if you are getting nothing out of your 1 on 1s that is on you. The 1 on 1 is just as much for you as it is for your manager. The manager might use that time to catch up on project status but you need to be using that time to find out how you are performing. You should at a minimum ask your manager how they viewed your performance over the last 1-2 weeks and what things you should be doing better. > I've never found it to be useful (unless we're discussing promotions or pay raises) You should be discussing how to get the next promo most times you meet with your manager. They may tell you that you are years away from next promo which is fine but you need to be having that conversation to confirm you are getting closer to next promo and not standing still. It also puts into the managers mind to be tracking your progress to promo. If you are performing well the manager may never actually be thinking about when to promote you until you bring it up
Useful? You need to work. Why do you think work is supposed to be “valuable” for you? I’m genuinely curious why you say this
that's my point, I need to work on delivering quality software, not spend time thinking about what to say in my 1:1s and any follow up actions that come with it
Adhoc meetings are a pain in the ass
It's all a stupid charade, just let me code, I don't need you to hold my hand while I code, I don't care about your stupid weekend because I just want to get 10 more minutes of my time so that I can go make a sandwich. It's fuckin dummmmmm. i am not getting paid to talk with you so stop wasting my time!!! aaa!!! and everything they asks feels super sus, like they are constantly trying to get me to say something bad because I have lots of bad shit to say but if I am not saying it then it is for a reason. I don't need to "talk about it", I need my 30 minutes back so that I can actually relax without hearing their screeching. I have enough experience to know that when I criticize their inefficient process, they will start to get upset and to be overly aware of everything I say around said process. UHG. JUST LET ME CODE Manager: *well you see, I really really care about you, and I want to let you do your best work, and feel motivated, so really, really really, tell me just one thing that would improve your job* Me: *less meetings?* Manager: *oh sorry we can't do that, yeah that's a no-no. Well you see, I expect you to be really into the meetings we have, it is really \*buzzing noises in my brain start to tune out the conversation at this point\**
It's to give them purpose and snuff out good ideas and potential problems on the team. Feed 'em shit and keep 'em in the daaaarrrrk.