My goal is to end the conversation as soon as I can to get back to work, so I stay away from many topics and just basically give a status update on in progress and next up.
Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
61–70 of 287 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
My management do not attend standup and I prefer it that way.
Wait WHAT. Who is standing up then?! Just the workers? haha That is hilarious. If you never had the stand up again, do you think anything would change in your day-to-day?
I think standup is a great way to communicate blockers or solutions (understanding that it will be quick, else you parking lot it until after the meeting) with teammates. It restricts interruptions to that 15 minute block instead of randomly throughout the day (which can break flow).
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#63It's overdone, IMHO. Should be at the discretion of either party after a certain period of time. Doesn't need to be a forever weekly or even biweekly routine.
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#64shameless plug: I've been on working on an app for 1:1's plus tasks using AI for the past 2 (after many pivots). It is self hostable. https://www.atomiclife.app/. Will have github repo up soon and a formal Show HN.
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#65People sometimes use 1:1s as status updates. That’s a poor use of time. Most status updates can be done asynchronously via email or a myriad of tools.
The 1:1 should be for meaningful conversation. Get to know each other as people via casual conversations. A mini retro on a project. Deep dive into something that went well. An FYI on an issue with a lot of nuance. Answering individual questions about that big Wednesday announcement. An onboarding track of conversations for relatively new team members. Expectation setting for the future of the project, team, or company. Feedback on something that could be improved. Raising a concern from the direct report.
There should always be a running agenda and anyone can add to it. If there is nothing to talk about, you skip. But have a cadence. In a remote company these are more important than in physical office environments.
Running good 1:1s is a skill that can be honed. If anyone is interested in learning, I’d be happy to chat. Contact info in profile.
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#66These 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…
I agree. There is a place for 1:1 meetings as needed but a standing weekly 1:1 is a "management smell" in my experience.
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#67These 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…
"They only serve to make a manager feel like they know what everyone is doing, all the time." As a manager it is critically important that I have a sense of what my staff is doing. New assignments come in all the time that require quick turnaround. I need to know who on my staff is available for such projects.
A 1:1 seems like a wildly inappropriate place to discern that information.
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#68I have weekly 1-on-1s and I do enjoy them. I work for a big-ish company and half of the team works remote full time.
Similar to other comments, we chat a lot about personal stuff and crack some jokes. But I also make an effort to note down things that I want to ask about. Sometimes it's about what the vibe is on the business side, sometimes it's about my career or feedback on what I did recently and sometimes I ask mundane things such as "do we have a stock image account for my presentations".
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#69Books & video games, mostly.
Re: Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?
#70These 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…
I'm a manager running two teams right now. The way I run my 1:1s I try and keep status updates out of them as much as possible. Like you said, "here's what I'm working on" type updates should be handled by Scrum. I still run 1:1s every two weeks with each one of my direct reports for a few reasons:
- There are some people who just won't speak up or request an ad-hoc 1-on-1 if something is wrong. It's just a personality thing. I can use this time to ask them about things and try and get them to open up. I have two people on my team where the world could be on fire and if I asked them how things were going they'd say "fine". Direct 1:1 time with them is super valuable for me to dig in a bit. - Especially now that we're remote 1:1s allow for us to handle a lot of little things that aren't super important all at once. "I don't understand how to submit and expense report even though I read the documentation". It doesn't make sense to have a specific meeting for that since it's going to take 5 minutes, let's just tackle it in the 1:1. - As my team has gotten bigger, a lot of my information starts to come through the same few people. I rely heavily on my project leads for updates which means everything is filtered through them. 1:1s give me a chance to hear other people's opinions on things without them being filtered. - I use this time to discuss career and personal goals. "What do you want to work on next?", "Here's a plan to line you up for a promotion next year". - I'm never going to force to chit chat about our lives if they don't want to, but I have multiple people on my team who want to have some sort of connection to the people they work with. There are some people who half our 1:1 is talking about travel or sports.
Honestly, my philosophy is our 1:1 is your (direct reports) time. You provide the agenda and you tell me what you need. If you want to cancel it every time, that's fine. If you want to spend 30 minutes talking about our weekends, that's also fine.