Ask HN: What's your opinion on weekly 1:1s? I am 40+ years old and have never had weekly 1:1s with my manager in my career. I think I can manage myself well enough and when I need his help or vice versa, I just schedule an hour together. What's your experience and opinions on this. I feel like I am the only one feeling like this? |
but 15-30 makes sense. Check-in, air grievances, get feedback, etc. If there is nothing to discuss then do the "how 'bout those Patriots?" watercooler shit for 10 min and then get back to work.
same idea with standups. they're good, but you don't need them every day, and they don't need to be more than 20 minutes. regular touchpoints make sense, but unless you need to be on it everyday they're just burning daylight
I didn't have them when I started my career, had them much later on both sides (as a direct report, and as a manager), so I guess I can do the comparison. From my experience this is the single most simple and efficient practice that you can put in place to: a) keep healthy relationship with your boss / your directs, b) always be up to date and on the same page, c) actually *save time* on your agenda and get distracted less.
The wonderful thing that happens when you start doing 1:1s: you always know that you will eventually and very soon have time to ask your questions, so you need fewer other meetings. And it is scheduled, so you get to plan your entire week! instead of being distracted by spontaneous meetings.
But as I mentioned, you've got to do them right. For the above to work, it has to be regular (weekly), scheduled, and mostly done on time. The manager must understand that this is not a reporting meeting. That is, if you have a 1:1 with your manager, you got to talk first and about anything that is important for you.
About 1:1 - if your boss is shitty, theyre shitty, if your boss is great theyre great
It works as a nice check-in to make sure we're both aligned on what needs doing and what I'm actually working on.
For established, productive staff they become a waste of time unless one side is driving them.
They can also be "an opportunity to subtly shake up the conventional wisdom in the course of a regular corporate ceremony".
no need for artificial mandated interactions when you organically interact all the time.
1:1 serve an important role in companies of a certain size, but come at a terrible cost.
As an employee, I think weekly 1:1s are a waste of time.
it’s a social call, but it’s a useful one. we’re fully remote, it’s good to reinforce that humanity thing.
We have daily scrums for a reason, right?
This would be ideal and if the managers only job is to manage a team, this has never been the case for me though. Management has always just been an added responsibility for me. Generally I'm doing the same work as the team + managing the team so I'm not just sat around waiting for someone to come to me with something they need help with.
Additionally, I have had rare cases where team members won't ask for help when they do need it, it's not easy for some people to admit they are struggling. If you just wait for them to come to you, it's often when they reach breaking point. In these cases a regular time slot to catch up is useful.
There really is no right or wrong, you can't manage everyone with a set template. Some people are independent and like to be left alone, some thrive off feedback loops, others enjoy the social aspect of a 1:1 and will spend it telling you about their weekend or just getting to know you better.
What works for me is setting the 1:1s and making it it clear they can be cancelled by the team member if they want.
The benefit I take out of these sessions is that it allows people to be human easily. Big calls like a retro are incredibly useful but no matter how much people are comfortable with each other, due to size of the group alone, people won't always truly speak their minds.
With 1:1s you have two humans speaking with each other, conversations naturally flow much better this way. Which proves to be a good place for people to be natural, discuss ideas and take those ideas to other sessions (such as the retro).
If anyone sees anything wrong with my statement, I'm happy to discuss. Hopefully I'll learn something new.
Different people have different needs and the benefits such 1:1s provide may feel more or less useful.
For the employee, it’s a way to receive undivided attention from the manager. You can ask followup questions on an initiative that may not be right for a group call. The manager can share some context about what is happening that is more relevant to you than others. It’s a place to praise exceptional efforts or achievements. It’s a place to give constructive feedback or ask about things that are not going according to plan. They are great to make coordinate longer time off. For brainstorming an approach or validating a direction.
The manager should be listening attentively. It’s a way for them to get a qualitative feel for what is going on with each of their team members. They should see these 1:1s as a track of conversations instead of one-off chats. When done regularly, they can show a mood trajectory that is a signal for how projects and people are doing.
I can not imagine working with people without 1:1s. This goes both for my manager and for my team. Without the live in-person connection the relationship would only be based on mechanical processes, metrics, and written communications. All of these are important but without talking with people, they are too transactional and mechanical.
Weekly 1:1 meetings can be very beneficial for both the manager and the employee. It provides a regular forum for open communication, feedback, and goal setting. It also helps to build trust and maintain a strong working relationship between the two parties.
During these meetings, both the manager and employee can discuss progress on goals, address any concerns or roadblocks, provide feedback, and address any personal or professional development needs. This can help to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals and can lead to increased performance and job satisfaction.
Overall, the effectiveness of these meetings may depend on the individuals involved and the nature of their work. Some may benefit more from more frequent or less frequent check-ins. It's important to find what works best for each situation and adjust accordingly.
Side note: not sure if I should take that as a positive or negative signal about the quality of my writing.
That being said if you manage to get that one good unicorn manager (that 1 in 50) who knows how to actually manage, they are fantastic. If you you have a standard manager, you have to put in a lot of work to get value out of them.
If you have a bad manager, they may actively harm your mental health to the point where you are no longer able to function in your position.
The iron test of a 1:1 is asking "do I feel listened to," which is distinctly different than "did they hear the words that I said, and respond." They should also give and solicit feedback and set expectations appropriately.
This is a good litmus test. A lot of managers refuse to understand the details of the systems and talk about how engineers need to provide "executive" summaries. This is the most bullshit argument I've ever heard. I spent many years at AWS, and one of my fav parts of working at AWS used to be Charlie Bell randomly picking Directors and Senior Management to answer basic reliability questions about their service. If they are unable to do that, they would be reprimanded infront of the entire organization. It was the perfect way to keep managers inline with the actual reality of their engineering organization.
AWS had many faults, but keeping managers honest was one of the good parts of working there.
An hour is too long, just cut it short if you’ve got nothing to chat about.
The other comments about never talking to your boss and being productive are stupid wishful thinking and you should ignore them.
Your job as a senior is not to sit and hack away at code; that is a job for juniors.
You have to do “team” things too, and part of that is knowing what your team mates and boss are doing and expecting.
How are you planning on doing that without talking to them?
Most likely at least one member of your team is not communicating and it’s easier to apply a blanket policy than single one person out for it.
So, don’t take it personally, you’re not being micromanaged.
If the cadence feels too short, suggest you do it less often, but saying you see “no value” in them and want to opt out is the wrong approach, gonna make your boss unhappy and not solve anything.
Sometimes they are only 5-10 minutes long but having a long running fixed slot is beneficial to me. If there's something to discuss it's easier to just bring it up there than scheduling a meeting out of the blue which makes everything a bit more formal and people might be wondering what it's about.
On top of that we also have quarterly feedback 1:1s and we usually realize there's not much to discuss as if there's something wrong it would've been discussed at the weekly meeting already. Which seems better than the alternative of having things pile up until some quarterly meeting.
Now that I'm full WFH, I think they are useful, as long as both you and the manager are sensible about it. It gives a weekly timeslot to address any concerns, ideas for improvement, or whatever work-related thing you might need to discuss (e.g.: time off).
Quite often there's nothing to discuss. We join the meeting, state that there's nothing on either side to address, and then we say "ok, have your 25 minutes back, cya next week".
I always encourage colleagues to speak about anything they want, rant, complain ask for a raise, anything. It's their time and I'm all ears, but the most important thing is that I am always there for that time each week no matter what.
Without consistency it doesn't work.
A fortnightly 30min calendar event is about right, and even then sometimes we skip it because there's nothing to talk about. That's the point, it's there if we need it.
I'd like to think that some-one is doing these right, but they aren't me.
I have a VP with whom I spontaneously meet or even go to eat with, cuz it works best for them. I have engineers who enjoy the pace and cadence of a regular sync to chat about anything and everything (or just major progress), and I have engineers who will just poke me if anything comes up. And they love it!
If you have to question the potential ramifications of this, it means you should look more carefully at your culture and who you're hiring (and perhaps yourself, to validate if your concerns are even justified).
It's all about what works best for you, so I believe a good manager will let their engineers set the pace -- I encourage everyone under me to do the same, and it's been phenomenal for our collective dev health and passion as my #1 focus... the progress and profit will come as byproducts.
I found when I managed people, lighter touch management got me better results.
As a person being managed, again lighter touch works better - I can focus more on delivering actual results/value than “having something to fill a meeting”.
I guess maybe it’s of value for juniors or people new to a place?
Pastoral stuff can be done every quarter or as necessary.
A lot of people don't do this, and your manager has no way of knowing whether you will or not. Some devs will just sit and be unhappy for months and then leave. Your manager is trying to do better and give you an opportunity to proactively raise things. Maybe he also wants to make sure you know about changes ahead of time. These are positives.
I have monthly 1-2-1s with my boss, and I check in weekly with my team. Those meetings are scheduled for about an hour, but if everything is fine we just end the meeting after 2 minutes.
It works pretty well.
Normally I think of them as unnecessary ceremony, but in my current project they just sort of happen in-between and I'm happy that they do, because my manager is simply good at his job and takes care of any blockers that might be there.
But if I got a person visibly younger than me trying to "coach" me on life and productivity again or any woo of this sort, I would decline these meetings entirely and perhaps both me and the company could have another go at evaluating whether I'm a "cultural fit".
To be fair, I was a bit short in my description: I do have a great relationship with my manager and he is one of the best managers I ever had. Also, I am not a developer, but a product manager, so already used to steering the 'ship'. We are in a relatively small team of 6 and we are all sitting together (including manager).
Some people enjoy frequent, active communication - daily standups, weekly 1:1s, all the Agile ceremonies. They work socially and rely heavily on collaboration to make progress as a team.
Others find frequent interruptions for all those regular meetings disruptive and unhelpful. They're comfortable working autonomously and prefer to communicate spontaneously when the need arises.
I don't think this is an introvert/extrovert thing. It's more like a process/people thing. Ironically the first group often describes itself as being Agile but it's the second group that usually is.
IMHO a team needs to pick its path and if it needs to grow then it's best to bring in others who want to follow the same path (and to discuss their style early and openly during the hiring process). The same person might thrive with the right team but be very uncomfortable and leave quickly if the culture fit isn't right.
I think 1:1s encourage bottling up of problems, with all the damage that causes.
Helping out a fellow human with their immediate need is almost always worth the context switch, IMHO.
It gives me a chance to manage upwards, give my opinions on team dynamics, on upper management, etc.
1) Biweekly staff call. This was scheduled for an hour, with the understanding we would end it early if we ran out of things to talk about. Normal topics were company updates, new initiatives our team was expected to participate in and an open forum for discussion amongst the entire team.
2) Bi-weekly 1:1 calls, offset from the bi-weekly staff call. I set these for 30 minutes, but had a buffer in case they went long. These were the standard 1:1. For new hires, these were weekly for the first 6 months or so.
3) Adhoc communication in-between via text, Slack, Zoom, etc.
You (OP) mention not feeling like you need the calls. You are not alone in this feeling, and it might not be a “feeling.” You might not need the calls. When I was an IC, I never really understood the need for the calls either - if I needed something from my boss, I’d call him up and ask. Some people are like that.
When I became a manager, I scheduled those calls because that’s what you’re supposed to do and I was very concerned about doing what I was supposed to do. I hadn’t ever been a manager before, didn’t really know what I was doing, and had just been handed the reins of a high-producing team.
That said, I found most of the team did want an individual touch point. Some just wanted to shoot the breeze for a bit, others wanted to talk through a problem they had or show off something cool they had been working on. One guy scheduled his own 1:1 before I could and every time had a checklist he would go through, describing every significant thing he had worked on since we last spoke.
Over time, I evolved to the system I described above. My main goal was to ensure I talked to everyone at least once a week, mainly to make sure they were ok and didn’t have any un-aired needs. At our company we had lots of meetings and lots of conference calls, so I figured the bi-weekly cadence would cut down on the meeting load for my team at least a little.
- if you're a developer, then your manager is supposed to be available to manage you "day-to-day"... so if any problem arise, you can just ask him directly. Obviously, if you're experimented, you wont need your manager often...
- if you're a manager, then you need to schedule 1:1 with your own manager (manager of manager) because it's easier to synchronise schedule and have a consistent consolidated reporting on a regular basis without spending to much time (remember: you must be available for your teams problems... and the younger your team, the most time they need).
So have the weekly call. If it only takes 30 seconds to say, "Nothing this week", fine. But you have the habit established so that it is easy to talk when something does come up. And I've found that over time, it helps build a productive working relationship so you don't end up being a lone worker hiding in your corner, stagnating away.
You can talk without having weekly scheduled 1:1s. If there's a topic that needs to be addressed and you are the one thinking about it first, then you gather the necessary people, you write the necessary text for them to know the context before the meeting happens, and you scheduled a meeting inviting the people you think should know about the topic. Having scheduled 1:1s is orthogonal. I like to treat my managers using the hollywood principle: "don't call me, I'll call you"
Someone I manage explicitly came and asked for a weekly 1:1 meeting, because it was hard for him to stay focused or productive without it and indeed his productivity went up after introducing it.
Me and my manager have no scheduled 1:1 but it works well. I think I'm also the type of person that scheduled 1:1 would work well, because we tend to have 2-3 1:1 per week anyway when things are remote and we need to be in sync or brainstorm ideas and meta-issues.
But with my previous manager, scheduled 1:1 didn't lead to anything except "you're doing fine".
If someone is not sure if would be useful, one can always try for a short time and then talk if it's helpful or not and change it accordingly.
And you can have unlimited PTO, too, but does it really happen if you don't have some minimum set amount of time you have to use?
A easy tip for this is to set every meeting to 30 mins but keep the next 30 mins free. Sometimes people worry that they did something wrong when a long meeting is cut short. Works for most meetings not just 1-1s.