Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 117 posts

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#31

Post by Wilem82 »

garyrichardson wrote: post #30
Wilem82 wrote: post #28

First of all, if you want to talk about something, you don't need to wait for the next scheduled meeting, you can just talk. Therefore the system of scheduled one on one meetings is nothing but bureaucracy. Therefore the question is "is there anything you discuss with the manager, ever?" And the answer to that depends on the manager's competence. If you can delegate your task to the manager and they are actually able…

This is not a model of working I’m familiar with. I work as collaboratively as possibly with my reports and my manager. 1:1 meetings are my most important. If I’m not discussing the non-obvious challenges we face, we are sharing our goals or tuning our shared vision.

Little bit of a contradiction there. You say collaboratively, yet you share your ideas one on one, instead of with the entire team. It's either one or the other.

Next, assuming the challenges you speak of are technical, the manager is no use talking to because they're not an engineer. The manager of course should know of technical difficulties to understand risks of delays, but that works through inviting them to engineer meetings where the team presents its consensus on the matter.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#32

Post by pvinis »

I love these meetings. When I am in one of these, we are both at the same level for me. We (or at least I) talk as if I'm talking to a friend about the good stuff and bad stuff in my experience of the last 2 weeks. Mostly related to work, but even stuff outside. I used to have these at my previous company, and when I moved to another one I asked to do this again, because it was something they were not doing already. I will ask in every company I work with if this is not already something that is done.

I'll just paste here my notes for the meetings I've had with my manager/CTO for the last few months. It's a running note so start from the bottom. Some items are more clear than others but it's my own notes. You will see some items like asking for access to something, asking their/company's opinion about things, suggesting ideas for better workflows, complaining with no solution yet, asking to clear up genuine confusion, comments about certain recent events, etc.

---

Involved in Machine learning, with employee Y

What raise will I get?

--

how Can we use our product as a client

Dubai 3 weeks remote

holidays minus. not paid or next year

standing desk for sharing

working less hours or days

okrs

—

https://twitter.com/notbrent/status/1159935844888637440?s=21

Bandung. progress as user story lead

yeh cheez

—

external therapists for devs

how do you handle time and requests and work

---

talk RN EU

still under a lot of work with travis

Friday off for a month?

month open source

Friday morning open source

--

sentry access

demo?

-----

I Became gql head somehow?

proud of purge

react native pr for crashes

review cool

-------

slack repo, we can archive it for slack questions, check the numbers doc.

budget for react Amsterdam?

————

Prs for small things lead to small things not being changed. Maybe I need a better way to work. Maybe we all need one. I find things to fix while working. I can’t create an issue, wait, create a pr, wait, then keep going.

Too many slack channels, everyone talks privately. Delete old.

Too many branches. Delete old.

strange. what does employee X do? not complaint, just curious.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#34

Post by geoffchan23 »

I'm going to try and add a different angle to this because most people here have covered what I wanted to say (performance, compensation etc.)

I would use this time to find out how your manager is doing in his/her role. Find out how you can help them. Talk to them about their frustrations and how they are feeling. Just because they are your manager doesn't mean you need to treat them like a boss all the time. Show them some care and empathy. It can go a long way for your career.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#35

Post by blahfuk »

echelon wrote: post #23
BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote: post #20

I cannot see the benefit of this meeting in a typical large or similar to governments-owned company

Then you haven't had a successful one. The manager's job is to unblock and empower as much as anything. Managers need insight into the health of their teams and how their reports think, feel, and operate. 1:1s are a fantastic sounding board for this.

This is the same ‘no true scotsman’ argument used with scrum. Over 15 years I’ve very rarely had anything productive come out of 1:1s. I think some people just require more support than others. I personally find them to be an enormous waste of time.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#36

Post by werber »

I've had a few roles with regularly scheduled 1 on 1s, the best were with bosses I worked extremely closely with, and those sessions were generally like, tech heavy heart to hearts, I still years go to a few of those bosses I no longer work with for advice. With the bosses I wasn't as close to or did not have a mutually respectful relationship with, it was usually a waste of time. Empty promises, mindless chit chat, casual gossip. The absolute worst was a role where we got scored on these chats as part of an attempt to quantify every aspect of the job. With that being said, when I want to meet one on one with a boss now, I ask them out to lunch and discuss whatever matter at hand.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#37

Post by gwbas1c »

Wilem82 wrote: post #28

First of all, if you want to talk about something, you don't need to wait for the next scheduled meeting, you can just talk. Therefore the system of scheduled one on one meetings is nothing but bureaucracy. Therefore the question is "is there anything you discuss with the manager, ever?" And the answer to that depends on the manager's competence. If you can delegate your task to the manager and they are actually able…

> If you can delegate your task to the manager and they are actually able to solve it, then you can use it to keep the progress rolling

Managers are supposed to delegate tasks to you, not the other way around.

If you are delegating tasks to your manager, (as opposed to your manager saying something like, "I'm going to assign this task to XXX," or "I'm going to go try and get team YYY to do ZZZ,") then your manager isn't really managing.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#38

Post by Beltiras »

I always have a plan. If you don't, you will just be chatting randomly. These meetings should be for your benefit and address workplace issues that your manager can solve somehow. You should beforehand have a good idea of what a successful resolution should be to the issues you bring up.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#39

Post by Beltiras »

geoffchan23 wrote: post #34

I'm going to try and add a different angle to this because most people here have covered what I wanted to say (performance, compensation etc.) I would use this time to find out how your manager is doing in his/her role. Find out how you can help them. Talk to them about their frustrations and how they are feeling. Just because they are your manager doesn't mean you need to treat them like a boss all the time. Show th…

This attitude works if you have a leader for a manager. Notsomuch if s/he's a boss.

Re: Ask HN: What agenda do you have for 1:1 meetings with your supervisor?

#40

Post by fhbdukfrh »

geoffchan23 wrote: post #34

I'm going to try and add a different angle to this because most people here have covered what I wanted to say (performance, compensation etc.) I would use this time to find out how your manager is doing in his/her role. Find out how you can help them. Talk to them about their frustrations and how they are feeling. Just because they are your manager doesn't mean you need to treat them like a boss all the time. Show th…

As a manager i would fight this approach because the 1:1's i schedule are for an exact flip of the relationship you describe. I certainly appreciate and encourage these feelings across all my teams, but unlike ICs it's my job and I'm given the time and resources to make these changes, it's not fair to expect someone to both execute well and put all the required effort into pushing for organizational improvement
Post reply on HN