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Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#241

Post by ryanSrich »

jonathankoren wrote: post #239
ryanSrich wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with my comment? I never said don’t talk to your employees ever. A recurring 1v1 where you have to poke and prod information out of a subordinate is not constructive. If you have concerns, bring them up when they happen. No need to pull teeth every few weeks just to make yourself feel better as a manager.

I’m being absolutely serious. If you’re poking and prodding, you’re doing 1:1s wrong. You should talk to your manager or HR about how to run effective 1:1s. If these resources aren’t available, you need to reach out to others managers at the company or in the community. Lastly, this doesn’t imply that it’s a sign of desperation, but reach out to your reports. Ask them if they think the meetings are effective, and rai…

> If you’re poking and prodding, you’re doing 1:1s wrong. You should talk to your manager or HR about how to run effective 1:1s. If these resources aren’t available, you need to reach out to others managers at the company or in the community.

You're misrepresenting what I said, and are being disingenuous. See my comment here → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34332925 - I was not advocating for poking or prodding.

> Lastly, this doesn’t imply that it’s a sign of desperation, but reach out to your reports. Ask them if they think the meetings are effective, and raise your concerns. They’re an equal partner in this meeting, and should be for their benefit just as much, if not more than your benefit.

Thanks for the incredibly obvious advice.

> Honestly, given your comment, “But for the love of god, don't schedule a recurring meeting just so they can tell you things that are easily gleaned by reading a git commit.” tells me that you don’t actually understand what an effective 1:1, nor team meeting is. If you’re stuck a dramatic reading of the status reports, you failed to set the expectations of the meeting, and should learn how to run effective meeting. There are literal books written about this.

I'm being absolutely serious. I do not believe effective meetings exist. At least not how meetings are typically defined in the modern workplace. They are solely for the purpose of creating the illusion of work. I've read many literal books on the topic, and believe them all to be mostly trash.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#242

Post by tyroh »

1:1 are for building relationships and talking about long-term goals, in work or otherwise. It's also a good time to discuss big picture goals, seeing where the work you're doing fits into the grand scheme of things (at least within the company)

This goes both ways: if you're the direct report, it's best to build rapport with the manager so you can work more smoothly and especially to get that raise or promotion later on.

I guess sometimes its hard to build the relationship for some people, but often it does take time.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#244

Post by mattm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #101
jedberg wrote: post #73

I'm currently a high level IC, and this is what we talk about: 1) Pleasantries about our kids/family/how our last vacation was/etc. for a minute. 2) Any questions I have for her, which usually mean questions about corporate policies or procedures, or questions like, "I need to know about project X, who would be a good contact", or things like, "I need to accomplish Y, usually I would do it like this, but how is that…

I guess it varies by person but talking about kids/family/friends is pretty much off-limits for me at work. Completely irrelevant and none of their business. Most other discussion I handle as "anything you say can be used against you." I have never worked in a place without office politics and have learned the hard way that you cannot trust superiors (or really anyone) no matter how genuine they seem. They will alway…

I can be guarded as well at times but has this approach really helped you when push comes to shove?

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#245

Post by sandos »

Its weird, Ive worked in development since ~2005 and I have never had recurring 1-on-1s with a manager. Every single place (including 10+ years of consulting) has had some form of scrum, where the scrum master is different from the manager, and the manager is not mandatory in the scrum itself. So the teams manages itself, with maybe occasional input from managers. Mostly managers arrange other meetings, often with the entire team though, but on a several week interval.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#246

Post by karmakaze »

As you mentioned, booking 60 mins every other (or third) week even if you don't use all the time seems like the obvious quick improvement.

One thing to keep to a minimum is current work status, unless there's a particular large blocker that no one has a good way through/around. Normally this would be in your team's stand-ups with the project manager who is usually not your manager in larger companies.

Usually it starts with the manager asking what items I have to talk about. Time you take to collect and share these determines what you can cover that the manager didn't already have planned.

One part should be uncomfortable discussions. Occasionally there will be some interaction with a team member (or usually other team) that didn't go very smoothly and the manager gets notified of it. They'll mention it to me and get both sides. Try to find a way to avoid these poor communication cases. It's natural to be defensive, but better if you can think of it as puzzle to solve without blame. Do what works. The normal feedback I get is insensitivity--I put the problem/solution first in discussions and could be blind/brutal to others' feelings (but have greatly improved through these discussions).

Career development. It could be support (financial, expenses, time) to continue learning and doing things outside of your day-to-day work. Attending conferences (is that still a thing?), writing public engineering posts, books, etc. Also leveling-up. Frank open discussions of what position you're working toward, whether management or individual-contributor is the track you're interested in. Gaps in your strengths to work on and concrete things you can try to fill them.

Planning. I try to get a sense of what is known in management circles in terms of company/product directions and timings. Of projects that are being considered provide feedback as to which ones you think are important long-term or urgent. Also state your preferences but don't expect them to always be assigned.

Autonomy. It's amazing what you can get if you simply ask. I asked one manager about 20% time and they right away said "OK". I only really wanted 10% and even then it was still hard for me to take time off the team's work to do that much, but it's great to have it for those times where you have an idea you want to explore. The last year, I asked to be more of a technical advisor on more than one project rather than being a full member on a project team. This year I'll be an advisor first and foremost and choose how much time I spend working with various project teams. A bonus was being asked to draft up an engineering roadmap for the part of the system that I'm the most knowledgeable with. I'd been asking for autonomy to run "bottom-up" engineering originated mini-projects for a couple years and I did do some of them during Hackdays or 10% time but now it's more formalized than ad-hoc.

Processes. If there's stuff that's not working well and you have some ideas for ways it could be improved. Also developer culture, if you have ideas mention them or just try starting some and see if it gets traction and mention them.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#247

Post by jameshart »

jonathankoren wrote: post #240
jameshart wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what young developers (possibly other employees too) really want is not to be asked what they want to do , they want to be told what they would be good at . They don’t know! I didn’t when I was a young dev; still don’t if I’m honest. And for years all I ever really wanted a manager to say was ‘here’s a pathway I could see you going down’. If there is one thing mentors and managers can usefully do it is to stop as…

I don’t see how any of this is different from what I said.

What do you want to become? Tell me your goals. Let's help you make a plan.

All very empowering manager buddy stuff.

To a junior developer, sitting across the table, it all sounds like

I can't do anything for you. If you don't know what you want to do, you're a failure. I don't even know what you do here.

What I want to hear from a manager who understands me:

Here are the pathways open to you. Here's where I see you fitting in. Here's what you could be doing in a few years. Here's what I'd like to see you achieve.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#248

Post by Invictus0 »

screamingninja wrote: post #35
Invictus0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DO you consider yourself an introvert by any chance?

Note: introversion != lack of social skills Also: introversion != lack of motivation or overall perspective I personally doubt introversion has much to do with the parent comment. Several bad leaders over time can easily jade a person's perspective towards their leadership, ESPECIALLY if they end up discussing daily operations during their 1-on-1 instead of the big picture.

Introversion doesn't necessarily imply a lack of social skills, but in my experience, that is typically the case. We are also on HN, whose commenters are not exactly known for the social acumen.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#249

Post by seanosaur »

MK_Dev wrote: post #218
seanosaur wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's ok if the initial answer to "where do you want to be in X years" is a shrug of the shoulders. Defining that can be important but that doesn't mean it has to be solely on the employee to define. Good leaders will help their people answer that question and help them grow. This is why a regular check-in/1:1 is important.

On a number of occasions that I was asked this question, I replied with a question of my own: "where _can_ I be in X years in this company?" Unfortunately, I never received a reply even remotely close to a satisfactory. Satisfactory answers would include opportunities and directions, with big bonus points for an attempt to find overlaps with my general desires, motivation, and strengths.

That's a great question to ask! And now you've got me thinking of my answer to that question for my direct reports.

I will say that there does have to be some "meet in the middle" with this entire exchange. If my directs aren't interested in 1:1s, the meeting won't be effective.

Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?

#250

Post by rgoulter »

akerl_ wrote: post #46
mshake2 wrote: post #7

These have always been an enormous waste of time from my perspective. They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time. Anything process-wise should be handled through scrum. Anything personal can be handled with ad-hoc 1-on-1 meetings as needed, but should be pretty rare. 1-on-1s for process really do harm to transparency and accountability. If I had a nickel for every time…

As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue. If somebody has to block out an adhoc meeting to raise a concern, it feels like a bigger deal. That won’t stop all people or all issues, but it does set a higher bar and that means some conversations won’t clear it. My 1:1s are not all on the same cadence, and some of them end up spending m…

> As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue. If somebody has to block out an adhoc meeting to raise a concern, it feels like a bigger deal. That won’t stop all people or all issues, but it does set a higher bar and that means some conversations won’t clear it.

I think this is a significant part of the 1-on-1: to catch problems when they're small / solvable, rather than only recognising the problem when it's beyond the point of repair.

A "just raise the problem if you have it" only works if people have high psychological safety.

Though, if in the 1-on-1 the reportee doesn't feel confident raising issues/concerns (or aspirations), then I'd agree the 1-on-1 is useless.

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