51–60 of 212 posts
I also think the managers should come with conversation starters to these meetings. Be curious about what your reports do and proactively ask them about something specific they did last month and anything they can do to improve. Coming with a blank slate because you think you are doing someone a favor by giving them your time will always lead to status updates or awkward silences.
I also think the managers should come with conversation starters to these meetings. Be curious about what your reports do and proactively ask them about something specific they did last month and anything they can do to improve. Coming with a blank slate because you think you are doing someone a favor by giving them your time will always lead to status updates or awkward silences.
I have 1:1s every 2 weeks with my engineer manager... and that's basically 99% of the contact I have with them. My eng. manager rarely attends my team's sprint plannings (or any other Scrum ceremony like retros, standups, etc.). We rarely (if any) discuss long-term technical planning/ideas/solutions. They know which products we maintain and in what we are working on, but not much more.
In the 1:1 we are very open, but it always feels like "this is something we have to do, let's carry on with it". They always recommend me some blogs, conferences, sometimes books... but to be honest I'm quite past that phase in my career: it's not that I don't appreciate recommendations, it's that I have been working for more than 10 years in the industry and I have pretty much clear what's my "career path", and it doesn't depend on engineer managers (my "career path" is to keep being an IC, doing a good job, not getting too attached to companies... and switch jobs every 3 years or so).
Seems to me that the job of the engineer manager is just too lightweight. We hire them people because they have two things: a) good people skills, and b) a good track of experience working on tech. We never get to "use" my engineer manager for point b, and point a is summarized as "let's have a good chat every 2 weeks".
I used to have a boss who’d ask me to rate my company satisfaction with the company 1-10 at every 1:1. This always struck me as one of the laziest/misguided management moves I’ve encountered, and I’m sure he felt it was both accurate and clever. If you manage people, and don’t understand that basic power dynamics will always trump encouragements for “openness”, you are naive at best and willfully blind at worst.
Not to defend the constant ratings, but imagine managers are not in fact all stupid for a second, and that they realize the power dynamic is there. You still need to do the same job and fulfill the expectations of your own manager, as a manager. It's easy to assume stupidity, and I'm sure there's plenty dumb moves made, but what you find cringy another report finds cool and easy. I bet there are people who would love…
Completely unimportant, but anyone else call them one to ones ? Where did this one on one thing come from? A one on one is a boxing match or a schoolyard fight, not an open chat. 8:2:1 is a ratio of cocktail ingredients. 16:9 is an aspect ratio. 1:7 is a steep hill to climb. To , by , and in respectively. The latter two would be weird choices but at least they’d be consistent with the syntax of x:y. “on” though?! Whe…
My random etymology guess here is one on one is from the origin of one vs one. One coming out ON top of the other. So one on one becoming simpler slang implying the same as versus. Now one to one implies an equal relationship and especially in our field it feels weird imo to call them one to ones. Typical, you aren't equal levels in a 1:1 meeting. So maybe the one on one caught on because of the subtlety of one being…
It's strange how so many informal conversations have become formalized. Phone call? Book a calendar invite. Talk to your manager? Schedule a one-on-one. Want to raise a technical comment? Issue a Jira ticket. Not to say that this is all bad, but wondering if it's really helpful.
I hate unscheduled phone calls; I've asked recruiters to make an appointment first, so I can be mentally ready for a phone call. Else I'll be interrupted during focus time (headphones on, balancing seven things in my head simultaneously, you know the drill).
> Talk to your manager? Schedule a one-on-one.
For random day to day stuff, sure, scheduling something might be overboard. But for more serious business, you should put aside some time for both. This is also about respecting each other's time and schedule; you are not the center of your manager's attention.
> Want to raise a technical comment? Issue a Jira ticket.
I think this is an important step to take so that you sit down and think about the issue; it's like rubber ducking, if you can't explain it in e.g. a ticket, you don't understand the problem well enough. Second, task tracking software is documentation; in ten years' time you will thank yourself for making a ticket. (That said, I don't believe storing it in 3rd party software is good, ideally all documentation, including tickets, would be in your git repository. Commit volume and churn is a bit of an issue though).
They’re basically kabuki nonsense like most of corporate America. No one benefits but everyone goes through the motions.
I disagree. I approach 1:1s as an opportunity to just shoot the shit if that person is interested, or if there is something on their mind they can choose to chat about it. As the article states, it's that person's chance to completely dictate the conversation. I think the best is to personalize things as best you can (depending on your team size). Some personalities are less interested in talking, which is fine―I jus…
It's strange how so many informal conversations have become formalized. Phone call? Book a calendar invite. Talk to your manager? Schedule a one-on-one. Want to raise a technical comment? Issue a Jira ticket. Not to say that this is all bad, but wondering if it's really helpful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you that if the worker wants to turn it into a status update, they should be allowed to. However... why do they feel like turning it into a status update? Is it because the manager isn't sufficiently looped in to what's happening on a daily basis?
because we have nothing else to say. we don't need any help from you, the manager. the project is going fine, but you're our least helpful resource. I'll go to the subject matter expert if i need specific things answered. I'm not fighting with any teammates. I'm not blocked. i was perfectly productive before this meeting, but now I'm interrupted. we already talked about career development. we don't need to go over th…
You will love this HBR article : https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers