I am 40+ years old and have never had weekly 1:1s with my manager in my career. I think I can manage myself well enough and when I need his help or vice versa, I just schedule an hour together. What's your experience and opinions on this. I feel like I am the only one feeling like this?
Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
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Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#2In my experience, most of the time they are either (1) a waste of time or (2) a place to play politics.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#3In my experience, most of the time they are either (1) a waste of time or (2) a place to play politics.
This has been my experience as well. They have been 'we got to fill in papers for HR'.
I'd like to think that some-one is doing these right, but they aren't me.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#4All of my best engineering happened when I didn't have a single meeting with my manager for 6 months.
That being said if you manage to get that one good unicorn manager (that 1 in 50) who knows how to actually manage, they are fantastic. If you you have a standard manager, you have to put in a lot of work to get value out of them.
If you have a bad manager, they may actively harm your mental health to the point where you are no longer able to function in your position.
The iron test of a 1:1 is asking "do I feel listened to," which is distinctly different than "did they hear the words that I said, and respond." They should also give and solicit feedback and set expectations appropriately.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#5Just use it to understand what your manager's priorities are and how you can better align yourself to his interests. Working in big tech is basically being at the beck and call of your manager. Truly worked for some terrible managers in my career and I'm pretty sure it will continue for the rest of my life.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#6All of my best engineering happened when I didn't have a single meeting with my manager for 6 months. That being said if you manage to get that one good unicorn manager (that 1 in 50) who knows how to actually manage, they are fantastic. If you you have a standard manager, you have to put in a lot of work to get value out of them. If you have a bad manager, they may actively harm your mental health to the point where…
> do I feel listened to
This is a good litmus test. A lot of managers refuse to understand the details of the systems and talk about how engineers need to provide "executive" summaries. This is the most bullshit argument I've ever heard. I spent many years at AWS, and one of my fav parts of working at AWS used to be Charlie Bell randomly picking Directors and Senior Management to answer basic reliability questions about their service. If they are unable to do that, they would be reprimanded infront of the entire organization. It was the perfect way to keep managers inline with the actual reality of their engineering organization.
AWS had many faults, but keeping managers honest was one of the good parts of working there.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#7Weekly? Too often. An hour? Too long.
A fortnightly 30min calendar event is about right, and even then sometimes we skip it because there's nothing to talk about. That's the point, it's there if we need it.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#8I've never had weekly 1:1s and rarely have monthly ones, but when I'm in a positioning when I'm managing people I always, always put in place a optional weekly 1:1 meeting which I used to just listen...
I always encourage colleagues to speak about anything they want, rant, complain ask for a raise, anything. It's their time and I'm all ears, but the most important thing is that I am always there for that time each week no matter what.
Without consistency it doesn't work.
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#9To me they are great, so much so that our team has expanded 1:1s to the point where everyone has a one on one with each other (one 30 mins meeting every two weeks where the participants change every session).
The benefit I take out of these sessions is that it allows people to be human easily. Big calls like a retro are incredibly useful but no matter how much people are comfortable with each other, due to size of the group alone, people won't always truly speak their minds.
With 1:1s you have two humans speaking with each other, conversations naturally flow much better this way. Which proves to be a good place for people to be natural, discuss ideas and take those ideas to other sessions (such as the retro).
Re: Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s?
#10Tell your boss how you feel.
About 1:1 - if your boss is shitty, theyre shitty, if your boss is great theyre great