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

In brief:

1. What worries you? Not some blatant project stuff but bigger deal issues. "How do I learn enough here to make a lot more money in a few years" or "I don't understand how our product is going to make money in this environment". Stuff like that is probably on your mind in some way (unless you are an unthinking dolt, but you wouldn't be asking this if you were) - get it out there and gain perspective.

2. Blind spots. You know how everyone in your life has some stupid thing that holds them back that they are oblivious to but is obvious to everyone else? You have it too. Find a way to convince your manager that you can tolerate real feedback and ask them about this. It will make your life better way beyond work.

3. Find out what worries them. Maybe in some way you can help them deal with stuff "beyond your pay grade" - your pay grade will eventually have to catch up :)

4. This should have been number one - get to know them as a person and help them get to know you.

Good luck. Doing any of these will put you on an exponential growth pattern compared to others.

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 I've been given tasks or been "re-oriented" in a 1-on-1, outside of scheduled work...

People 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.

I wish I could offer more on maximizing this time... However, I think I can help in another way.

Don't feel bad about 'blowing your trumpet' or complaining; that's exactly the time to do it!

My manager and I skip our 1:1s more often than we have them, and when we do, it's usually just a hang-out session.

We meet once every two weeks, and most of the time is just talking about random things we found neat.

However, there are times when another team is being difficult and I need help 'navigating the business'. These meetings are super valuable for that.

I can provide more in-depth information on the situation as a whole, and we can work on a plan - without needlessly involving the rest of our team.

1. Here's what I'm working on. (Is this a good use of my time?)

2. Here are my blockers. (Can you help clear the way so I can do my work?)

3. Here's what's going on in my life (relationship building, context for manager to understand your work and capacity)

As a manager, I use it as an opportunity to review objectives (the objectives themselves, not the employee so much - i.e. are they still relevant, achievable, etc - or should they be changed), and let my staff speak candidly with me about whatever they want. Sometimes this is strictly work related things like discussing improvements or them chasing updates on initiatives that they don't think have enough focus/visibility, etc. Other times it can be just watercooler talk or other rapport maintenance. I maintain a tracker for topics we discuss so I don't forget them, and can check in on them in the next 121(s). Also lets me keep notes and schedule time for actions I need to take to support, escalate, prioritise, etc. Often I'll ask pointed questions to really indicate the level of candidacy I'm prepared to let them go to - e.g., how's my management? What's your mood on those Sunday evenings when you realise tomorrow is monday? etc.

As an employee, I use it as an opportunity to discuss (demand) a reshape of my own objectives in response to emerging/evolving work, discuss what I want in form of support, and candidly discuss things I've heard on the grapevine but am not prepared to discuss with a wider audience. I also use it as a place to ask the possibly "dumb" questions and observations that I don't know if I want my peers hearing just yet. I'm also senior enough that I have confidential projects and knowledge I am prohibited from sharing so this is my one place to blab safely.

I use my 1-1 in several ways

A) Get info from my manager that they don’t necessarily want broadcast (speculation/uncommitted plans, inside perspective on what went down on something, etc…). Depends on the manager and your relationship, but I’d say 75%+ of my managers have been willing to give me info 1-1 that I wouldn’t get in a large setting.

B) Updates/discussions about side projects or other things that don’t fit into our other forums- putting together the holiday party, interviews, putting together team training, wild prototype/hackathon projects etc…

C) Advice on non-technical problems- “I’m trying to engage bob’s team for help, but their responses are very slow.”

D) Feedback and coaching- “I thought our delivery of X went well, but I missed Y’s dependency on us. Any thoughts on how I/we could have done better?”

E) Socializing/ relationship building. If you can, bond with that person, share stories about vacations/kids/ interests. My job can be a bit lonely and some days just talking can be the best use of time

F) Nothing- totally fine if we cancel our 1-1 occasionally, especially if we’ve already had ad hoc meetings.

Manager Tools has a podcast series on 1:1, from the manager’s viewpoint, including episodes for specific roles, https://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/important-topic-feeds...

If the company is big enough, you can maintain an evolving map of your team’s dependencies and contributions to other teams, then compare notes with your manager about this model vs reality. That’s one way to orient tasks within a larger business context, and it provides an ongoing topic which accrues over time into a joint asset.

Something I've noticed over my roughly decade career, having ~10 managers during this time...

If you're not having interesting conversation directly related to your work during 1:1s, it's likely that things are going well for you, or you have a bad manager.

Assuming you don't have a bad manager, then they would be discussing things that aren't going well with you. So if that's not the case, then you're doing fine. Use the 1:1 as a chance to talk about your backgrounds, interesting things you've noticed at work, eventual improvements you would back, possible cost savings opportunities, etc.

1:1’s are your time to make you more effective via your manager.

Don’t only surface what you did (I view that as the boring back up conversation). Surface what you need. Surface challenges you’ve faced. Surface decisions that are on your horizon. Surface what you want.

Your manager can’t read your mind, but you have 30m to help them act as if they can.

As an employee I found that the topics varied depending upon the current workload and stress level associated with it. If it was easy, quiet times we'd just shoot the breeze for a few and then call it good. If things were totally nuts they ended up being brainstorming sessions. The in-between times were when I made sure that my supervisor knew what my career goals were and how I was setting about reaching them when time allowed.

As a manager I schedule them once per month with my team and for 30 minutes and don't stress if they run short or long. It is their time to tell me about anything that they need to talk about. Most times we have a short, 15-minute chat and call it good. Last month I had one dev tell me that they were stressed beyond belief, not sleeping well, not eating well, and not happy. I've made sure to keep in touch with that one more often and provide help where I can (lower stress issues, mention company programs, etc.) IMO weekly gets old really fast and the manager should be able to recognize that and adjust accordingly. You do that for new people (like yourself) until they get settled in and are working as expected on code. After that you dial the meetings back gradually until they are as unobtrusive as possible but still within company requirements.

Use 1:1s to talk about things you can't talk about in a group setting. I tend to use them for two main things: organizational gossip and negotiation.

Often times managers have much richer insight in to other managers or where the department is going, but would be unprofessional to share that candidly with a whole team. Getting some unvarnished perspective has been seriously helpful for me to understand what's coming or learn how to 'play the politics'

Similarly they've been useful for me to practice some gentle negotiation - 'what do I have to do/show to get x on my year-end review' or 'I'm looking for x raise, how can I build a business case to convince you'. Whether or not they say yes right away, it's always insightful as to how the performance review system really works.

If you feel like there isn't enough to talk about in a weekly one-on-one then consider asking your manager to switch to every other week or even monthly. You also never have to use the full time of any meeting. It's fine to call it early if you've covered everything there is to cover. And like others have said, it's fine to skip scheduled one on ones if there's nothing important to talk about.

I've had all of those things happen as an IC and as a manager and they seem like common sense to me.

As an IC, the majority of my one on one time with my manager would be spent covering what I'm currently working on and if there's any problems that the manager could solve as well as looking at work down the line from a high level to see if there was anything I'm especially interested in.

As a manager, I wished all of the direct reports would ask more questions or have more input but I would usually cover the what I would want to talk about as an IC as well as try and be transparent about things going on on the business side that may not have been communicated well enough in my opinion.

And then there would usually be some time spent talking about personal stuff depending on how close I am with the manager/IC. One IC was someone I was/am pretty friendly with and we'd talk about different pop culture things going on. Another usually had some kind of family stuff they were dealing with so I'd offer an ear and some support. And some I just didn't get along with that well personally so we'd leave it at work discussions which is also totally fine.

Everything, really. for over four years I can count the number of times we canceled on a single hand. It could be work (but no status reports), kids, what is on my mind, current news. It’s not only about meaningful content but about getting to know the other person. Sometimes I am jut happy to listen when my boss talks about his side of the house. Ultimately if I know what affects my boss, I can help him if there’s anything in my sphere of work. 30 minutes is just a starter, if you need to reinforce a topic use the time for an elevator pitch why you need more time from your boss.

When I run 1:1's with members of my team, it's generally:

* 10 minutes shooting the shit

* 5 minutes (or less) getting status updates

* 15 minutes (or remaining time) on 'how can I help you' type stuff

I like this agenda because:

* I work remotely and don't get as much time as I'd like relationship building. The purpose of the 1:1 can be, all else removed, a chance to have a friendly conversation where I get to know someone better. It's great for everyone's mental health (my own included), and it can also be great for understanding people's areas of strength, work-related interests, and career goals.

* I try to get as much as I can in terms of status updates from automated means. Project tracking, internal docs, git repo, build tool, etc, are all sources of information for me to know where things are. Occasionally I miss things and ask about them during 1:1, but generally I don't like to treat 1:1's as a chance to get status updates. This is a problem best solved using tools, and our time is precious, so if I'm spending >5m on this during a 1:1 it might be a sign of an issue.

* Understanding where I can help the person is where I like to spend the bulk of my time during a 1:1. This can be unstructured, and help can be in various forms. Unblocking something, helping make a decision, providing information, helping mediate or resolve a dispute, provide feedback on something being considered, etc. Sometimes there's nothing, but in a majority of my 1:1's there's something to talk about here.

I'm happy to end a 1:1 early if we run out of things in the above agenda to talk about. I'd say 50% of the time I end 1:1's around 5 minutes early.

Lastly, I'd say if you're not sure if you're using your 1:1 time productively, it's not a bad use of your 1:1 time to talk about it.

I tend to avoid focusing on status updates on my WIP. In my 1:1s, I want to talk about me.

1. What do I need to do to get my next promotion/payrise, or how do I get onto the next bit of interesting work? Even if I'm happy with my current work and compensation, I use this as an opportunity to constantly make clear what my personal objectives are.

2. How well am I tracking against Q1?

3. How do you suggest I improve on Q2? If I have things I know are pushing down on Q2, I will ask for help.

In addition, I tend to use them for managing upwards - setting expectations, and making clear where I need something from my manager.

I got my hands on https://wizardzines.com/zines/manager/ and started having more productive one-on-ones :)

imo you shouldnt feel like you need to fill the entire allotted time every week (just reach out that morning and say something like 'no big updates this week, ok to cancel?'), and it's a great time to also align calendars and set agendas for deeper dives if you do need more time

i wouldnt see it as 'blowing your trumpet', this may be the only honest exposure your manager gets to your project some times, since others on the team are probably also on their plate

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 done here".

3) Any context she has for me that she got at higher level management meetings that I need to know.

4) Occasionally status updates on projects she is every interested in or that her management is asking about so she can be ready to answer them.

5) Every fourth or so meeting (roughly monthly) we talk about career development, projects that might be good to get involved in with high visibility or impact, etc.

When I was a manager managing more junior folks, they were something like this:

1) Talk about family/friends/etc. sometimes for 20+ minutes, however long they wanted to talk. Especially during COVID, I was sometimes the only person they talked to during the week.

2) Demo of their work since the last meeting -- UX demo or code review, whatever they want feedback on, if anything. Then I would give them product feedback or code feedback.

3) Context for their next task. They would either tell me what they want to do next or ask me and I would give them suggestions for next tasks and why each is important to the business and let them choose.

4) Anything else I can help with.

For senior folks, we'd usually skip #2 unless they wanted specific feedback.

The commonality was context. I operate better with more context, and so do people who work for me, so I see the main job as a manager is a conduit for context -- why are we doing the work we are doing.

"OKRs are not productive for our level of the organization and take up too much time, we shouldn't copy a practice just because Google used it"

its usually just a reminder about how many things are causing context switching and how that limits productivity

As a manager:

1. The most value I get is when people complain. It can be about the tech stack or about processes or lack of change. I then choose whether to solve the problem or teach the individual how to solve (coaching or teaching).

2. When the individual uses me to make organizational change happen. This usually happens with managers or staff engineers.

3. Gives me enough context to pull on threads and refactor the organization.

If you don't wanna do any of that and we don't even have fun stuff to talk about (once a month'ish) then I end the convo early.

Also, I often tell employees that it's their time, not my time and to come armed with topics and I'll do the same. But not everyone does this so I end early maybe 20% of the time.

As a manager, here is what I usually want to discuss:

- No detailed work stuff. That's not for this meeting

- How are you doing overall in the company/team etc ? (I am looking to understand if you still want to be with us and if not, why not)

- What is working well so far that wants you to keep doing what you do. This should come from both sides

- What is not working well that you need help with so that you can do better. This should come from both sides

- Are you on the right path in the team/company ?

- As the manager, what can I do better which I don't do today ? This can be tricky but I want honest answers and I give honest answers to expect the same.

Most importantly: 1:1 is more about the person, the individual and not the output as an employee.

First we talk about our Home Assistant setups and how we're using HA to chart and improve our houses. Then we discus how the kids are doing in school and in general (they're of similar age, have similar issues). Then, in the last 20 min or so, we turns to work and she asks about the things she wrote down last time (is this still the same, has it improved?), she asks if I'm still happy doing what I'm doing, what she can do for me, if I feel stuck with anything. I can vent, she writes down things. She makes useful suggestions and plans to address issues I raise. She may have some critique, I can be pretty chaotic, tend to end up with many side tasks. Talking to her helps. It's nice. I also ask about her struggles, see if I can help.

Edit (after getting 14 upvotes): My 1on1 is about monthly to quarterly btw. Weekly is a bit much if you ask me. Maybe good to say that my "team-lead" is not my PO or project manager, we have a matrix structure. In ways she is a colleague, but on the management axis she is "above" me.

Another edit: I'm in one project for .2 FTE, that manager wants to see me 1on1 every 2 weeks so that's after 2 days of work. Thinking about that project, I feel OP's pain. I keep pushing this person towards team meeting that I could join occasionally, somehow, he's not having it. Luckily he is certainly not responsible for my promotion, that's the manager from part 1.

For the first time in many years, I have a manager who doesn't cancel 1:1s, provides us autonomy to do our work, and gives specific feedback.

Our 1:1 structure is based off the CEO's suggested 1:1 format[1] and was something I put together because I wanted more structure. From what I've heard, members of my team have different formats with the same manager.

1. Check-In - personal check-ins on life

2. Discuss/Help/Review - items I need my manager to help or advice with, issues we need to discuss, or updates on projects related to OKRs

3. FYI/Think - items I'm thinking about or working on that manager may not be aware of. We don't always vocalize this section, sometimes its there for me to showcase things I'm considered e.g I think it would be cool to work on X, but I don't have a plan yet.

4. What’s going well: a celebration or something to my credit

5. What could go better: item that could've gone better

6. Action Items: any TODO items for myself or manager

When there isn't a lot to discuss due to a quiet week or larger projects ongoing, my manager will check in on how I feel about my role, work, and capacity. It's helpful because I often get caught up in the day to day and it's hel,pful

[1]https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/suggested-a...

Your manager should want you to be happy and successful.

Clarify what is important (not just urgent) and why it's important. Present progress on key items, as your manager should be able to identify things you had not thought of. That should not require a deep dive. Highlight potential escalations. If you have a problem that requires your managers attention, also present a potential solution, then listen and hopefully learn.

Each quarter it's a good idea to revisit your yearly objectives, and progression towards these goals, which is the perfect time to also blow your own trumpet and ask for feedback on what you could do better.

Promotions and pay raises are often more about relationships with both your manager and his peers, so ask how you can increase your visibility across the organization. What problems can you help solve outside your day job?

If you aren't getting anything valuable out of the meeting, it's OK to just chat about personal stuff, or be silent and let the manager drive. Some managers are fantastic, and some managers are frankly in the wrong job.

FWIW, as someone who’s had direct reports for decades, 1:1s are mostly about building a relationship (two more things below). I want to have a relationship with trust and honesty (within the bounds of work, of course) while things are going well, so that when things go sideways we have a good grounding and can still work together.

“Sideways,” by definition, is not predictable. E.g., one of my people, many years ago, was harassed by another employee. If we hadn’t had a good relationship they may not have said anything to me.

The part that isn’t relationship-building is either (a) fire detection, or (b) career growth. Fire detection: I want to find signs of fires as early as possible; often they smolder for a long time before bursting into flames. Career growth: I want my people to be able to learn, grow, and progress without having to find a new job first.

Other commenters have said — and I agree — that tracking work is often done better in other contexts.

I find half an hour every fortnight is a better schedule, and the quality of the meeting has depended on the quality of the manager and my willingness to prepare and engage. When done right, it's a place to talk about my goals within the company and in my career, how they're going, how the company can help me, etc. It's a great place to show what you're interested in and what you want to do in the future, because hopefully the manager has a broader idea of what's happening at the company/team on a higher level, so they can talk to people to help you get where you want to be. E.g. want to talk at conferences? Your manager can ask around at their meetings, maybe someone knows someone looking to get company representation at a conference. Want to use and improve your architectural skills? Maybe there's a round of cross-Team engineers discussing and sharing tips regularly.

My goals from 1-1s are asking for regular feedback and preventing surprises.

I keep a running list of things that I need to talk to my manager about. I pull top 2-3 things off this list for each 1-1. And once a month I talk about career progress. Basically closing "gaps" especially if you're in a BigCo there's often a list of expectations that might be surprising (e.g. must do N interviews) and i'd like to see what I can do to close them.

Things on my list might include - Things I did that went well, and didn't go well. - Venting - Ideas I'd like to bounce off him. - Things that frustrated me (but dont block me yet) and seeing if he can help. - Ideas for new things me or my team could do. - Questions on who I should talk to for X thing.

My golden rule is never, ever use a 1-1 for project status updates. I'll provide one if asked but otherwise this is time for me.

Depends on your role. I (ea for quite a big company) use the time to discuss strategy and roadblocks. Additionally I address personal development if required. For myself I want to also check if I am doing the right things (by now I do know I do things right) and ensure my manager does delegate tasks that can be moved down. If your on a junior level it should be mostly about you: what can you start doing, how can you develop. Mid career it is a mix of checking the value you bring and if you can learn and develop more. Another thing to bring as checkpoint is stress and workload: your manager is the only person that can help you if needed, raise the topic early. Overload kills you and makes you deliver poor work, hence no benefit for employee nor employer. Oh, and look at Daniel pink - drive, might be beneficial.

We are 100% remote, so it is a great opportunity to catch up and build our relationship. I have a great manager and she is really good at what she does.

We usually start with some of the things I'm working on and some of the things I just finished. If I have some questions, I usually wait for this time to ask them. This really helps the rest of the week because I know I have this upcoming time and I don't need to seek her out to have a question answered. I will have her undivided attention in a couple of days.

About a month ago or so, I didn't have much work stuff to talk about, so I tried to cut is short. She seemed disappointed so I now make a point to also talk about non-work topics once the work stuff is done.

I think it really helps build our team.

I would agree with what people wrote:

1. What you're working on 2. Blockers (or how the manager can help with those) 3. Anything going on with you which could impact your work

In my current role, people are highly autonomous. 1:1 being held once every 2 weeks, or once a month is enough. Once a week is way too high touch.

The Manager Tools Podcast has a lot on this topic, from a managers perspective but still a trove of info: https://www.manager-tools.com/map-universe/one-ones

Things that work for me:

1. Discuss with your manager if it's ok to cancel when you don't have anything to talk about. Sometimes it's all fine.

2. If you're unsure of what to speak about, ask the manager to bring up what he wants you to talk about. My current one always ask me to rate my "happiness" with things are going, I like it as a starting point.

3. Try to reframe how you see your complaints. Part of our jobs is to complain: to notice the problems and to bring them up to the ones with decision power to fix it. I try to always put my complaining in this light, both because I think it helps how others see me, but also because it helps me to identify better what is a genuine problem and what is just a personal annoyance.

I started skipping most weekly 1:1 with my managers. But I wound up being there for a decade and we started blowing them off probably after I'd been there 4 years and was effectively the team lead, and didn't really want or need career help. Given that my managers, particularly the last one were all overworked that kind of worked out for them as well. Every now and then we had them but it was typically around raises and stock options and things like that, with the very occasional one around higher level project strategy and deliverables. The retros we had were usually where everyone complained about staffing, and I didn't really need a weekly 1:1 to complain about it more.

I actually asked my manager to increase the frequency of my 1:1s from bi-weekly to weekly. It's never status updates/work stuff. It's more on the mental plane.

We ponder a lot on self reflection and self-improvement. There is no 'agenda'. I like to think it's more of a flow state discussion combined with a good chemistry where there is no notion of being judged. The room quickly becomes a safe place to talk about anything and everything.

Sometimes, we would talk about how things are going in my personal life. How has my sleep been. Am I mindful of the things that could be holding me back? If yes, what am I doing to unblock myself. If not, he pushes me to the right direction of thinking and I strike gold. Every time.

Soemtimes, we 'thonk': he brings up very tough questions:

- The last time you cried, was it out of emotional pain or remorse?

- If you could chose, who would be your ideal sibling?

We both answer, we both discuss.

I think we're both suckers of productivity and these 'sessions' activates my brain on a whole new level. Which is the main muscle for knowledge workers like us.

I would have these 1:1s twice a week. But I also know his calendar looks like Van Gogh's artwork. ---

Here's why I never talk about work with him:

- I am fine unblocking myself at work. If I'm dependent on another team, I talk to the team and I resolve it. I include him on a barely negligible threshold.

- I seldom complain about tasks I'm working on. Understand this: not every task is going to be exciting (how else will you differentiate between the boring ones?). It's a task. It's come to pass.

- I seldom bring up people and compatibility mismatches with my team. If I do bring up, it is to validate whether the way I resolved it could be better.

- I bring up salary. But I also know he is not my employer. We both report to the same employer.

I think the reason we work (I like to think I'm very difficult to manage..) is because I put myself into his shoes when I ask him for help/support.

* Talk about what you were working on for the past week.

* Talk about what you observed your colleagues had been working on, just to get some team context and make sure you aren't too narrowly focused on your own work.

* Talk about what you want to work on, in terms of your own interest and motivations, and how well you think that aligns with the business direction or any OKR/KPI that leaders care about.

* Talk about what your manager has been working on and whether there's any work your manager could usefully delegate to you.

* Talk about what your leaders (directors / VPs) are working on and whether that would have any impact on your team's work.

There are other good answers, but I want to emphasize that a 1:1 is where you most definitely should blow your own trumpet. You may have done something great or important and your boss may not have noticed. Make sure they do so that it (hopefully) comes up when it's time to consider your raise.

Also, though hopefully not often, that thing you think was so wonderful was not received that way. If that's the case, it's good to know soon so you can deal with the consequences (fix if needed, or at least learn that things like X aren't received well after all).

Think of how you can maximize the impact on your organization, career, and personal well-being-

- Ensure that your manager understands what motivates you. This has a profound impact on the opportunities that you will receive.

- What impact have you made on the company's operations over time?

- Where do you intend to head with your career? What is your 1, 2, 5 year plan? Does not have to be set in stone but having some idea can lead to an insightful discussion.

- What opportunities lie ahead? What can you do over next 6-12 months to steer your career and maximize impact on the organization?

Do you see your manager as a mentor? Might be a great venue to seek mentorship as well.

I consider 1:1s to be lethal for team working, and only make sense if each report is completely siloed. If, as in the real world, we are working together on projects as teams then any decision making made or direction given behind closed doors without team awareness will cause serious problems with cohesion.

There is nothing more annoying than trying to figure out what this person has been instructed by their manager in secret, so that if necessary you can countermand it in order to get stuff done properly.

It is a peculiarly American construct, and seems rather antiquated after experiencing modern team management style.

Mandatory weekly and it's 90% bullshitting/filling the time. I hate them but oh well. I'm pretty decent at conversation but they should be optional because they're pointless.

I 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".

* human stuff -- "hows the husband? How are the kids?" or "how bout that $SPORTS_TEAM", etc. Small talk relationship stuff, keep it light but do try to build a bridge, just be cognizant of power dynamics and roles

* what i'm doing this week -- literally, what is on the plate. keep it short, this should be tracked elsewhere, but never hurts to give a summary

* moderate challenge -- what is giving me trouble and may need an escalation or other resources to assist. "status: yellow" sorta stuff, not an issue yet but could be. no action items, just information.

* escalation -- stuff I need manager help with but was not on-fire enough to warrant its own call or breaking the flow. action items for the boss, basically. "I need support on $X, I need you to talk to $OTHER_TEAM to get some traction"

* what are their concerns? what are their code: yellow items and what do they need to escalate or send down to you? "We've got Project Y coming up and it will need some preliminary work on Z, can you brush up on that ASAP?"

* other general feedback, esp. related to performance. If you get fired, rebuked, celebrated publicly, or promoted it shouldn't be a surprise because you got explicit feedback as to where you're at.

The cadence for 1:1s is more for your preference/needs than your manager's. If you want a 50 minute meeting every other week, suggest that.

(As a manager,) I do think that weekly is too frequent for my taste for a standing 1:1 once the initial relationship is established and mutual ways of working are understood. I tend to have weekly 1:1s when first working with someone new, but prefer every other. (Again, it's not about my preferences over theirs, but I'm telling you mine here.)

Ideally, there isn't much to talk about wrt the work you are doing. It should be covered in daily interactions and regular scrum/status updates.

Everyone is different, but 30 minutes of what should be a casual conversation is hard to structure and get good use out of.

An hour every other week would be nice. It would give enough time to talk about yourself, what you've been working on, and gives enough time to open up about issues/concerns/ideas that may take a while to discuss organically.

I've usually had 30 minutes scheduled for these (weekly or biweekly), both as manager and employee. >50% of the time it's "we talked about everything already on signal yesterday, so we can skip it this week? yes" but sometimes it's useful for discussing a new product idea or addressing a specific roadblock (resources from other departments, usually, or sometimes concerns re: a vendor). I tend to do things more async but unscheduled, though -- send an email or a message which doesn't require immediate followup but sometime in the next ~week.

I think 30m biweekly is more optimal. If I ever had an actually junior direct report I'd be more inclined to be more formal, available, or frequent on these, or someone who I knew to have difficulty raising issues in other settings. I've never actually had a 0-2 year experience direct report, though, as I actively try to avoid direct reports generally but particularly early-career people.

I find AARs on projects (successful and unsuccessful) to be far more useful than most of the cargo-cult-management tools. Also, having dashboards on status of various things and current blockers kept updated, ideally automatically through tools used in the workflow itself, and a clear directory of who to contact for what component.

There are several ways in which you could approach this. First, it is a growth opportunity for both you and your manager.

. It is your time with the manager and not the other way. So you drive this meeting.

. It is a great opportunity to build/reinforce trust (both ways) so do not cancel them unless it is an emergency, on vacation, etc.

. Always set an agenda ahead of time and share with the manager.

. Since you seem to have a weekly 30 minutes, do not always talk about projects/operational things. It will soon get boring and you will feel like canceling the meetings.

. Is your manager open to feedback? Share where they excel. Share what you have learned from them. Also share when you expected something different than their exhibited behavior and show genuine care to understand why they did what they did (of course in a more conversational empathetic way).

These things go a long way in building trust, engagement, and relationship. A good manager will also grow from these interactions and perhaps implement similar style with other direct reports.

Lastly, [a shameless plug], if you like this and want to know more, dm me on twitter @muthax I will send a link to an app (in closed beta) we are building that helps users have meaningful 1:1 conversations.

What I have liked both as a manager and as an employee is to talk about things that are important but not urgent, especially focusing on the employee's experience and happiness. I think they day-to-day work stuff belongs mostly elsewhere.

When I start 1:1s with a new engineer, I will ask about why they took the job, what they were hoping to get out of it, and where they see themselves as going professionally. Then over the long term it's my job to make sure that they are getting what they want out of the job and staying happy enough that they stay, so I'll return to those early conversations and update them.

Lara Hogan has some good resources for managers: https://larahogan.me/resources/one-on-ones/

Regarding the OP's situation, though, it sounds like they are feeling responsible for directing the 1:1. I'd say that's a bit of a managerial failure. But answering the question directly, in the OP's shoes I might turn to broader questions. Ask about the company strategy, and how the employee's work fits in. Ask for career advice. Ask about manager's relationships with higher ups.

1:1 is not used for "report". Weekly summary can do that. Use it for discussions, questions, problems to solve, career path, big pic and team goals sync

I'd suggest at least some amount of small talk updates. Being a person to each other is a good way to develop a good relationship and have sympathy for one another, which can improve working relationships to no end. Doesn't have to be artificial, just share some thing about what is going on with you (but keep it positive), and listen to their personal update too.

I'd also use the meeting to signal any feelings you have about the direction of the team/company, as well as ensuring that your view of where the work is meant to go is valid. Keeping everybody with an aligned idea of goals is important when you're collaborating.

If you feel the need for a deep dive, I'd suggest picking a single topic before hand to ensure that the 30 minutes is used effectively, but I would say that if they're a manager that getting technical is probably not the goal here. As a manager, you want to know about risks and opportunities to make future decisions. I'd aim it at that level.

I wouldn't worry about blowing your own trumpet - you're going to be your only advocate here and you'll be competing with others that do.

Mostly talk about pending organizational changes (since we've had 3 rounds of that over the last 12 months), or strategic initiatives our team should take. Of our team of 12, I'm the youngest but also the one with the most "rounded" experience, so he tends to ask my opinion a lot, which I appreciate.

Other than that, just the usual gripes about weather, travel disruption and useless project managers.

If you are happy working on your own and you don't need weekly 1:1s or support from your manager, feel free to suggest bi-weekly meetings. That's what I do with my manager. We usually talk about how my current projects are going, what projects are coming up in the future. I also explain new methods or tricks I have discovered and we discuss if or how this could benefit others in our team.

Former staff eng current manager here. When I was programming it was really common for me to steer 1:1s with my manager to personal topics. We talked about the city we lived in, projects we were working on, etc. I felt like it was more important to create a relationship with them than to talk about daily activities. That way, when I had larger initiatives I wanted to accomplish or things I wanted done that needed participation outside our group I would bring them to the 1:1.

Now that I'm a manager I see that everyone brings a unique sensibility to these meetings. The employee's work style, emotional temperament, ambition, project, and team dynamics all come together to form what they want to talk about. In general I try to have the employee run the meeting. It's their time to get information about what's going on in the company or give me feedback on how the team / project is progressing. As other's have stated, your manager shouldn't be leading a lot of the conversation unless they're delivering feedback on how you can improve.

So I have been on both sides of the one-on-one. I see this as a time to get uninterrupted feedback on processes and day-to-day things that don't fit well within team stand-ups.

It's also a time when you should be able to express yourself more directly. It is certainly ok to use this time to talk about what you are doing. That's kind of the what the manager is looking for. Ensuring there are no impediments that get glossed over in Slack exchanges or stand-ups.

You also shouldn't feel pressured to fill the entire time. Some weeks are just slow, or things are more mundane and all parties are in sync. Some weeks it feels like I need more time, depending on your manager you could schedule another sync the next day about a specific issue.

If you don't already, it may be a good idea to take daily notes, so you can do a round-up of anything that came up in the week. This will allow you to make the best use of your meeting time without forgetting important details or questions that came up.

Other than that I try to keep my one-on-ones casual and open. It's ok for there to be a little silence.

My manager's generic concerns are:

1. Are you happy with your work? I talk about what I'm proud of, what I'm bored with, what I'm putting off out of dread. We occasionally problem-solve around the third one buy usually it's a petty complaint that I need to voice before rolling up my sleeves and our meetings are early in the week.

2. Is anything in your way of making progress? I rarely have much to say because ICs at my company maintain as much fluidity as we can and I'm not shy about talking about my difficulties in public.

3. Are there any problems I'm not aware of? This is where I get an opportunity to percolate issues upwards. Sometimes bad processes make extra work, occasionally somebody's contributions are going unnoticed, etc. Sometimes this is fruitful, sometimes problems aren't going to be resolved. My manager just doesn't have that much power, but at least we've got rapport.

I frequently turn these questions around on my manager. It's good to know what's going on in his head, and I occasionally get to help problem-solve.

Use 1 on 1s to talk about stuff that you think is a problem/issue that isn't an immediate blocker. This might be interpersonal issues with coworkers, organization stuff that isn't working or something that might be useful if it existed, project general direction outside the scope of near term work planning, etc.

If you've done that in depth already maybe you have too many 1on1s.

Senior-but-not-staff engineer here. My manager and I keep a Trello board with a list of items to talk about including concerns, goals, projects to check in on, and so forth. It's keeping a pulse on how your relationship with your job is, and whether you are meeting or exceeding expectations.

Our 1-1s are typically 45 minutes but sometimes go longer and we have them every two weeks. OP, I would definitely ask your manager if you could change up the length and cadence if what you have isn't working for you.

We use them as a check-in on basically all aspects of my job: How is everything going, how is the team doing, how is the company doing, feedback in both directions, reviewing past performance + future goals. Put simply, if I have a formal performance review and am surprised by anything in it, especially anything negative, the 1-1s weren't doing their job.

But out of all of that, I think the absolute best way you can use your 1-1s, if you are ambitious, is to explicitly ask your manager: "Where is my performance relative to my current role, and to the role one level more senior than me? What do I need to do to progress in the direction of the latter?"

My manager and I have a spreadsheet where we track all the formal criteria written out for my role and the next role up, and my performance on each of those criteria. When all of the criteria for the role one level above mine read "meets" or "exceeds" expectations, it will be time for me to request a promotion, knowing I have clear evidence I have earned it. Simple as that. (We also keep a brag doc that's less formal but has specific concrete examples of good performance in it. Nothing wrong with "blowing your trumpet" in this context, at all.)

I very much like this system and it's worked for me well so far at my current job.

My experience is positive. I have 1:1 with my manager fortnightly for 1 hour. I am not a remote worker but I am remote from my manager so don't have water cooler chats during the week.

We have a template that we go through to ensure that anything can be tracked and also so we don't forget to cover anything. We don't have to cover everything in each 1:1 meeting, it is a guideline.

Importantly, I can also reach out to my manager directly for ad hoc things at any time.

We don't talk about the same things that are discussed in standup.

We do talk about my overall current and upcoming workload, any issues with my KPIs and how manager can help, any new company policies, my training goals, manager's training goals, what my plans are to take annual leave, as well as a generic "anything to discuss" section.

Then if time allows, we also chat about other things besides work.

The meeting is scheduled so isn't interrupting anything, and can be shifted around the calendar if there is high priority work happening. However we try hard to reschedule rather than skip it.

When starting with a new manager or direct report I usually ask that they read this blog post from RandsInRepose: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-t...

> I don't want to just keep blowing my trumpet, or just complaining.

Complaining is fine. So is general chatting. The time is basically an opportunity to discuss what is on your mind. Share new ideas. Talk about potential problems. Ask for an update on your personal growth and progression. Give feedback on your manager. Ask for feedback on your manager.

I wouldn't worry about being super efficient. The habit of regular 1-1s is what is important and building the relationship between manager and direct report. Some 1-1s will be quick and easy and over in a fraction of the time. Some will stretch the meeting time. Try keeping to natural conversation and avoid robotic responses and status updates.

Does your manager know how you feel about your sessions? :)

Some ideas completely without context:

- make it less frequent

- make it about you! (that's the original reason for 1:1s anyway)

- pitch your ideas - what are parts of your life at work (from culture to codebase) you'd like to improve but you feel you can't?

- talk repeatedly about how to grow

- ask about what's happening in other parts of the org where you don't have good visibility

1:1s at staff/senior level have always been about annealing the TODO graph to optimise for delivery. Who do I need to do what. Who needs to talk to me. Who can my manager talk to on my behalf to get X done so that Y can unblock Z. It’s a weekly check in where we passively infer project status by actively discussing ephemeral Gantt chart optimizations.

On top of that there’s how I’m feeling. And how I’m feeling about colleagues A, B and C. The best 1:1s for me have been when I feel like I’m helping my manager by giving him a heads up on things that would have otherwise surprised him, particularly about human/human interaction. In many ways, managing junior ICs must be bliss when the 1:1 is about the status of their isolated tasks. The real quagmire begins when you have relatively senior people trying to accomplish something together as a team, with your manager acting as the PM you were never assigned.

Also, some amount of ticket triage, for our sins.

When I first moved into management, I wrote an article about how my direct reports could get more value out of our 1:1s. I'd probably write something different now, but the broad strokes remain true. https://erik.wiffin.com/posts/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-you...

1. Don't make it a status update. It's your time, and that's probably not the best use of it. 2. Spend some time figuring out what you want to get out of our 1:1s. If you don't know, tell me that, and I'm happy to work with you to figure it out. 3. End the conversation with next steps/action items. It's easy for me to say something that you interpret as a promise even if I didn't mean it that way and calling out action items explicitly is a good way to keep that from exploding into a huge problem.

It might help if you give us some context as to what you already talk about in 1-1s.

With my direct reports (I am in data science, so the project timelines/structures may be a bit different), rather than ask for a status report, I will ask them if there is anything they're having trouble on/issues with. If there are issues, I help them solve and/or troubleshoot, and also demonstrate my approaches for dealing with that kind of thing. (Prefacing that this is not likely the only way, but it is a way that has worked for me.)

If there are no issues on their current project(s), then I ask for dataviz--what are they finding/working on finding/are models improving/etc.

Beyond that, it's discussions of project resourcing: are you hitting deadlines, when can we expect to wrap up this stage, etc.

Finally, if nothing else, I'll try to engage in some conversation--my style as a manager relies on ensuring the personal and work well-being of my direct reports.

OTOH, what do I talk about with my manager? Kind of the mirror image of what I expect from my direct reports:

1). Status updates on current projects

2). I'll ask for my manager's opinion on my approach to a solution. If they say it's fine, I'll note that (good for CYA); if it's not, I'll ask for their thoughts, or demonstrate having tried their way (if I have), or my estimation of the success of that approach. I try to do all of this in a way that lets me gauge how invested they are in said project. If their answer is all generalities, they're not likely super invested. If they can talk specifics, then I assume that I have support if I need it.

3). Ask if there's anything else we haven't discussed.

4). Get to know them; managers are people too, and you can help yourself by being in their good graces.

I'm a senior engineer, so let that color the content of my discussions.

First thing I talk about is project status. Usually this is just to catch them up, but it's also a test to see where he's at in his understanding of our successes and challenges. That opens up a conversation for the next stretch of road we think we'll build (aka what should we do next quarter).

Then we'll usually talk about whatever. Twice a year I make it a point to talk about promotions and what work they're doing to help me get there. I have this conversation because most managers believe promotion work is all your work until you're promoted, then they'll claim some subset of your success for their own. This pattern reminds them if they want me to grow, they need to invest and lay plans.

Next is mostly just personal stuff. My manager is pretty adept around home repairs and I'm still learning so I usually get some good ideas from him.

Check out the classic Rands article “The Update, the Vent, and the Disaster”, written from the manager’s POV: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-t...

1-1's are probably useful for the very ambitious types who want to climb the ladder as they can make their manager clear the path for them.

For people who want to stay in their current role and just keep doing their job as well as they are paid to do it, 1-1's are like pulling teeth and a huge waste of time.

I think you should look for a manager that gives you actionable advice that allows you to have large impact. Some people think that it is your job to figure out how to have large impact (which I agree) but I have found that there are managers who don't care, don't know or who want to keep you working on projects that will not have impact. I strongly recommended networking (reaching out to coworkers to learn how much their managers are giving them specific and concrete direction) to find the managers that care enough to proactively improve the careers of their reports. Then you want to transfer to those managers. It is a total waste of time to manage your manager. If your manager isn't telling you how to get promoted then you should find another manager.

I have a bunch of 1-1's with my team but I tend to tell them it's not necessary unless there's something in particular they need to bring up. If business as usual, then skip it and focus on work. I'm not entirely sure if that's the right approach though. Thoughts?

Changed 10 managers in 5 years so I stopped caring what we're discussing in our 1-on-1s after a while.

At my previous job, my manager and mostly of my colleagues was 7 hours ahead, so I was struggling a lot in the first months and I was feeling a bit abandoned. Then me and my manager, agreed to have a regular 1-1 weekly meetings to discuss the open points and the difficults that I was facing. This was a big improvement for me but also for him to have an idea of what I was doing. We also discussed about strategies and roadmaps in our projects and sometimes about our future because we faced at least three fully reorg starting from C-level. He also gave me some feedbacks about my job and my approach. For me this weekly hour was a gold mine.

My actual manager is in my timezone and the whole team usually meet everyday for a 30 minutes daily sync, so no need for a dedicated 1-1.

An interesting detail I have seen in a bunch of my 1:1s is that I have more often found us talking about other employees performance, project direction, decisions. That's probably a good thing or signs that your manager is completely clueless on what is going on.

1:1's are your best chance to improve your personal relationship with your manager, especially if you are remote. He must like you and must not ever feel threatened by you. Anything else is secondary as long as your work is at least "satisfactory".

1-on-1 meetings with your manager can be an incredibly valuable opportunity to discuss your progress, get feedback, and address any concerns you may have. To make the most of your 1-on-1 meetings, it's important to have a clear agenda and specific topics to discuss. Here are a few ideas of what you could talk about in your meetings:

Goals and objectives: Discuss your current and upcoming goals and objectives, and any challenges you're facing in achieving them. Review progress and talk about what you need from your manager to help you achieve them.

Feedback and development: Ask for feedback on your performance and areas where you can improve. Talk about what you're doing to develop your skills and any opportunities for training or development that you're interested in pursuing.

Career development: If you're interested in moving up within the company, discuss your career aspirations and any potential opportunities for advancement. Talk about what you need to do to prepare for the next step and what the company can do to support you in your career development.

Communication and alignment: Make sure that your manager is aware of what you're working on and that you're aligned with the company's goals and objectives. Communicate any problems or issues you're facing, so they can help you find a solution.

Current projects and work: Give an update on current projects and work, share any successes or difficulties, and discuss any upcoming deadlines or deliverables.

Personal and team updates: Share any personal news or updates and also, if there's any team-level update you've noticed that's worth mentioning.

It's important to keep in mind that 1-on-1 meetings are not just for discussing business-related topics, it's also about building a strong professional relationship with your manager, which is key for career development.

Finally, it's also important to remember that 30 minutes may not be enough time for deep dives into certain topics. If you feel that a 30-minute time slot is not sufficient for a topic you would like to discuss, you can request more time or schedule a follow-up meeting.

Weekly??? Sounds like one thing to talk about could be the frequency of 1-on-1 meetings.

My introduction to 1:1 was with a notably bad manager and that has given me a bad taste for them.

Once a week is a horrible schedule. That's a regular production killer as you need to task switch from focused work up to the corporate game level. Before the meeting I spend time thinking about what to talk about and after the meeting I need to refocus, which takes time.

During the meeting I try to keep things light and social and parse the information I share with consideration of my manager's ability to handle it. I also have to consider how my dislike for the meetings might be perceived as hostility by my manager and be harmful to my career.

Yes, I hate them.

It's okay to skip 1:1s if there's nothing to talk about. I think it's more important to have a standing meeting were both parties know they can bring up "serious things" than to use every standing meeting to its fullest.

As to what I talk about during my 1:1s, if it's not just bullshitting with my manager and building rapport, it's usually "this thing is hurting me/our team. What can we do about that?" Or "I feel like I'm kicking ass. How can we raise my awareness to the org?"

Basic questions that I would like a sync answer to and to give space for any conversations that need to happen.

With technical managers: how things are going, what needs to be solved to speed things up, what is holding the progress up.

With non-technical managers (which I would expect to have 1:1s in the first place):

- How it is going

- How the team is doing

- What I need

- How my life is

- How his kids are

- What I would like to see happening in the team or company

Usually if this is a team manager, he had zero insight from the daily progress or process (why should he). So to see where problems need to be solved for the team, whom to promote or move into another position, etc. can only come from such meetings. And he also needs personal, confidential opportunities for that.

Not everyone is vocal, not every team member understands what is a problem or an issue in the first place...

Make it whatever you want it to be. This could include:

-- Asking about upcoming projects -- Asking about things happening in the business outside your group -- Sharing about tech that interests yo -- Discussion about his / her career goals and your own. -- Discussion about opportunities for long-term improvement in whatever you are building. -- Sportsball, social plans, and other chit chat

Basically, make it whatever you want and/or maybe even talk candidly and ask what they would like to see in your meetings so that you can come prepared and make the time worthwhile.

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.

I used to have both good and bad managers.

Good ones mentor, teach something new, explain what's happening at the company.

Bad ones give you shit in some form, inject gossip into the conversation, try to cover their ass.

I also believe that one week and 30mins are are not enough for 1-on-1s.

In my company, we do 1-on-1s once a month for 1 hour. The manager asks questions like:

- How are you? - What's the skill that you are trying to improve this month? - How I (the manager) or the company can help you to improve this skill? -Do you feel that your responsibilities in the company are common with your personal goals?

I think that these meetings are successful when there is a clear agenda and both sides are prepared.

Personally, I feel very happy with these meetings.

It's just a meeting to maintain the relationship with your manager. From your point of view, a good relationship will mean better opportunities in your company, pathways to promotions and salary increases and the opportunity to build trust. From the managers point of view it increases staff retention, it allows them to understand what people are doing and what they're working on and it allows them to know _who_ is doing the work for them at a more personal level

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.

Standard topics for me are:

1. What's up? (chewing the fat about any relevant life topic)

2. My frustrations with the process and possible improvements.

2.1 Followup to recent changes in this area.

3. Experience with recently developed/released features.

4. Follow-up to company wide changes (related to things such as layoffs, direction changes, etc.)

I used to not be a fan of 1on1s while working on-site but since I've started full-remote it has become more valuable time for me since that's basically the most time I spend with my lead in a sprint or two.

The mission of your manager is to help you to be productive. So this is one obvious theme: what is going on, what is holding you back, how your manager can help you to circumvent the obstacles.

Another theme is getting a helicopter view of what is going on with the company and the product. ICs are tend to have a tunnel vision on their tasks on hands. Getting a bigger picture helps tremendously to be more productive by forming informed decisions on the priorities.

If there's anything that needs to be discussed, we discuss it, good or bad.

Otherwise, we fill the rest of the 30 minutes with discussions about the weather, our hobbies, our daily lives. Given I work fully remotely and live alone (but do maintain a relatively good social life, nonetheless), this is one of the few work meetings I actually look forward to. I'm lucky that my line manager is a really nice person who shares many of my interests and hobbies as well.

We're a mostly-remote company doing cooperative and independent project work, so these meetings are a bit more socially-oriented. We talk about whatever. Our pets, our hobbies, sometimes small work things that come up that I need to prepare for. Same goes for talking to my VP.

We hold some in-person standup, but mostly via slack on that and we sometimes do a more impromptu video call among concerned parties. It's mainly because it helps to see each other on cam.

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.

It'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.

You say 30 mins isn't enough for deep dives. Can you change from 30 mins every week to 60 mins every two weeks to allow more time for in-depth discussions?

If you don't have anything to say, why not simply start the conversation with "I don't have much to talk about today. I could give you a quick update on my progress since last week. Is there anything you would like to take up first?"

If there's nothing else to talk about 5 minutes into the meeting, just end with "I don't have much more to talk about today. Let's meet again next time?"

A useful acronym to follow is PPP: plans, progress, problems. This can apply to tactical day-to-day work or higher-level things like career development.

1. I need X Y Z, can you get me it? 2. Here is what I am worried about. What are some things that you are worried about?

Usually takes the 15 mins for coffee

We use https://lattice.com/ for our people operations and managing 1:1s. Some suggested talking points they recommend include:

  career growth 
  collaboration / teamwork 
  engagement / morale
  feedback
  productivity

Action items include setting growth areas and defining OKRs

Weekly is a bit too often. Bi-weekly should be sufficient. These meetings just guarantee that every employee at the firm is getting regular guidance from their manager, and giving feedback. It reduces the risk of people doing undesirable things due to isolation. Aside from that, if you are very engaged with your projects, it did be easy to chat about them.

My staff and I talk about anything they want. What's bothering them, what they want to do, things they are excited about. I don't want a status update from them, that's what stand ups are for. I want to know how are they doing and how they can be in a better spot than they are now. It's literally about them and nothing else.

I send an email in advance with the 3 or 4 priority things I want to talk about, and if there's nothing to discuss I just say that and we cancel. Usually it's key work updates, if there's any help or information I need. I've never had a direct report of mine take the lead like that, bit I wish they would!

Hey there! I feel your pain. I used to be in your shoes at a bigco too. I'm testing an app in closed beta and getting great feedback already. I would love to get your feedback if you're interested. All those who are interested DM me on twitter @muthax I'll send you a link back.

As a person leader, I typically followed a pattern which I think I found here.

Ask them how they're doing. Ask them if they have any blockers. Ask them if how I can help them with any of their blockers. Ask them what has been done on the blockers since last meeting (if they're holdover).

Seemed to be a reliable pattern for myself at least.

shameless 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.

I never had 1 on 1s with the Manager more then once or twice a year. It was mostly about salary, contracts and maybe some performance review.

Casual one on ones if you meet in the office I mostly used for chit-chat. Managers do so much heavy stuff, so keeping it light should benefit the relationship.

Just propose to do a bi-weekly instead?

A 30 minute weekly 1on1 meeting sounds like a waste of time to me. Monthly, maybe. Quarterly? Fine. Ad-hoc when needed? Ideally. Personally, I opt out. My recommendation is to talk about making them less frequent if you (as expected) have nothing meaningful to really talk about.

More pay, more wfh, better working conditions. I just shoot the shit if all of all of those are good.

We got rid of weekly / monthly one-on-ones and instead just assigned a counselor

A LOT of employees didn’t like doing them, and this has worked very well. Issues bubble up through the counselor and managers can focus on the project

This has worked very well (I’m also at a very big bigCo)

Looking back now retired - I think I was always too keen to get out of those meetings to get the value out of them that I should of. A manager is the best resource to help you with your career - setting goals and helping you achieve them.

What went well this week

What could have gone better

what processes need improvement

Career/personal/project growth and updates

1) Wins for the week

2) Losses for the week

3) Ongoing struggles

4) Professional development

5) Is there anything I can do to make your life easier?

Do you prepare an agenda of topics you want to discuss?

I prefer 1:1's to be your time. If weekly is too frequently for that, you should be allowed to schedule it on a frequency that works better for your needs.

This would be a great question to ask your manager in your next 1-on-1.

At my last workplace 1-on-1s were mostly about managers coming up with creative ways to explain why promotion or salary raise is kept getting delayed, weeks after weeks, months after months. ;)

Netflix, movies, TV shows, hobbies, personal life. Sometimes work stuff.

I've had great managers in the past and I've had absolute shit managers in the past but one thing that is constant is my need not to talk to them. There are really only a couple of times we need to talk outside of the twice a year review the first being if I'm fucking up and I try to avoid these calls. The only other time we need to talk is if we have company business to discus, since my manager isn't technical if he needs to run something by a technical person I am happy to help or if I see a company need and have a solution I will reach out to them to get their opinion. Outside of that I don't need or want to talk to a manager ever.

Weekly seems like a lot. I would recommend switching to once every two weeks.

Also, don’t use 1-1s for project statuses. These can be done async or via ad-hoc meetings.

It's a total waste of time. Gets almost awkward.

"What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?"

Nothing important. Usually it's just telling them what I did over the past 2 weeks.

Weekly sounds exhausting! Who thought that up? Every two weeks feels like too often sometimes. Any way you could change the schedule?

"A week isn't enough time to get things done"

People are so fucking lazy. You're a disgusting sack of shit. Do better.

At your next 1-1 ask “What is the best way for us to use our 1-1 time? How should I be thinking about this meeting?”

You have weekly 1 on 1 meetings? Most places I've worked its hard to get 1 on 1 every 6 months

> WEEKLY one-on-one meetings

Totally unsustainable! Does the manager do anything other than one-on-one's all week?

On the off chance that we don't cancel beforehand, we generally chat for 5-10 minutes about whatever. It's rare that there's actually something to talk about, because I prefer to let my manager know about any concerns or blockers I have with an async slack message as soon as they come up rather than waiting for our next 1:1, and we have plenty of unscheduled casual chats throughout the week.

It's perfectly fine for you to just not have 1:1s if you get all the benefits of them elsewhere.

Books & video games, mostly.

Blockers on current work performance, and things you want to learn.

How to take over the world or at least the adjacent cubicles.

people are so fucking average

A week isn't enough time to get things done you make me sick

Pay raises.

In our company - while we all have varying skills and experience levels - we are all peers - we don't have managers.

As such we 'guide' each other, being a guide for our peers is opt-in but everyone has a guide.

This is by _far_ both the most effective and natural process I've ever experienced, and my peers seem to feel the same way.

I have three folks I that I guide.

I have a 20-60 minute one on one VC with each of them roughly every 2 to 3 weeks.

We all talk to each other more frequently than that on Slack so the feedback cycle for anything important doesn't ever need to take that long.

If they don't feel like having a catch-up that day I'll happily move it for them (for example shift it forward a week), but we do have at least one a month and sometimes two.

With new starters and less experienced engineers I like to start at a higher frequency for less time, e.g. twice in the first and second weeks, then weekly for a month etc...

We do a 360 / self and peer review every 3 to 6 months - this mainly involves sending out a small survey to people we've been working with I given project/client to ask for their feedback.

If anyone wants to shift who they're peered up with that is absolutely fine (and encouraged).

Everyone who wishes to guide others meets up (virtually) for a general sync and sometimes some training / educational talks once a month.

We maintain a handbook / guide to being a guide on our wiki.

Topics of conversation are mostly organic but the common themes are:

- How's life?

- How's the project / product you're working on at the moment?

- How's your work / life balance?

- Anything you need extra support with (that you haven't already raised throughout the week)?

- Are you planning to join/attend any of these (meetup/talk/Brownbag etc...) this week/month?

- You're due to send out a 360 to your peers in the next X weeks, do you have any questions about doing so?

- What are you watching/listening to at the moment?

- General discussion on any shared hobbies / interests.

Etc...

As someone whose worked in tech for 17~ years - this method really is pretty great when most others have been more of a pain than value add.

For reference the company is a (modern) tech consultancy, with a size currently around 750, mostly engineers / developers of varying specialities, it seems to scale very well and operates pretty much the same as 3 years ago when we only had around 200.

Manager perspective here.

1) Best thing you can do is understand the "why" for decisions you don't agree with. I find people get grumpy and quit because they don't like decisions being made, but are surprisingly timid to ask "why". Sometimes they have made an assumption that isn't true, which makes them feel like the company is making bad decisions, when it's actually a bad mental model of the goals. You might need to ask "why" a few times to get to real reason (see "7 whys"). Asking "why" can lead to a few results:

- The ICs know something I don't, we're making a mistake, and by asking "why are we doing X??" we catch and fix a big problem much earlier.

- The IC isn't aligned to some macro strategy. They think Y is the most important thing, but in reality, no one cares about Y, and the whole team/company will succeed or fail based on X. Some people struggle hearing this message, but if we can get on same page, they understand "X is what really matters", and start operating with that understanding, it's one of the real ways we can 10x a person's output. They don't write 10x the code, but they work on 10x more important problems, and even their small decisions that are more aligned with the macro goals. ICs who are fighting the macro strategy in every small tactics debate can derail a team -- if you really want to fight it, it should be a dedicated conversation with your manager/leadership team, not every code review/meeting.

- If you get an honest "why", and it really doesn't align with your morals/goals, might be time to look elsewhere. This might be "we're doing this because our VP wants a promo" or "I'm not sure, but product asked us to and eng can't challenge them" or "just make this change so Alameda can bypass risk assessments"

Getting to a shared "why we do what we do" can take quite a few 1:1s, but is super worth it. The people who don't get there usually end up leaving, and usually do so crankily. The people who get there are happier, more productive, and once they fully grok the current strategy they are more likely to be able to influence the long term strategy for the better.

2) Development and long term career goals:

- Format: save a 1:1 every quarter (or so) to go over this in detail. Don't cover anything else in these meetings, and don't try to make this 5 minutes at the end of every 1:1.

- Keep it prioritized: Keep a note of things you want to talk about in next career focused, append to it, and read/review/edit it before the meeting so it's really a stacked list of what's important, not just what's top of mind.

- Be direct: tell them when you expect your next promotion -- your manager should know your expectations and are't always smart enough to ask. If you close but not guaranteed a promo next cycle, and your manager knows you are expecting they can help fine-tune your output with remaining time (and their representation of you). If you're not close and you are expecting it, you should have that conversation sooner rather than later.

3) Complaining

Complaining in a 1:1 can be pretty healthy if done well, and pretty toxic if done poorly.

- Do bring your top concerns to your manager, and ask for help fixing them. Managers should help fix many, and will sometimes need to explain that this one isn't one we can fix, but always worth talking about what is bothering you most over time.

- Prioritize: Don't bring a bunch of concerns to your manager just because they are "top of mind". I've had employees spend the first two thirds of every 1:1 telling me about a concern, and after 20 minutes of probing, realized: they are aware of how to solve it, they have it covered, and are just taking about it because it was the topic of the last meeting they got out of. 1:1 time is valuable, please make sure it's prioritized.

- Do feel free to just vent to your manager when you're super annoyed. That's cathartic, and can be a safe space to complain and get it all out. They might add a strategy to help, of fix a mis-aligned "why", but just venting for the sake of venting is find too if that's what you need most (it often is). Smart managers will probe to see "is this a vent problem or a fix problem", but smart ICs will start it off by saying "I know we have to to this, I know why, I just want to vent about X because it's really bugging me". A good manager should be able to listen and shut up for these when needed.

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.