Ask HN: What do you discuss in your one on ones? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you discuss in your one on ones?

47 pointsandher20 comments

I've been wondering what's the best use you can make of your one on ones (for someone who recently started working). What do you discuss when you have regular one on ones with your leads and irregular ones with org leads etc?

View on HN

I actively try to avoid discussing status. The 1:1 is primarily a meeting for them, whether or not they realize it. The goal in a 1:1 is primarily to get them talking about whatever it is that they want to talk about. Sometimes this just turns into chatting about non-work stuff. Sometimes we'll discuss problems they're having on the team. Sometimes they'll talk about work they want to do but haven't been given. Sometimes they'll have questions about "how the system works" (these are usually pretty interesting conversations). I try to tell stories from my own work history (frequently embarrassing ones) both because they're funny, and because it makes it easier for them to talk about their own potentially embarrassing problems. Sometimes I try to lead the conversation toward something that I want to talk about - like if I need to give them some feedback, or if I want to discuss their career development, or a new opportunity. Sometimes you can tell that they're circling around something they don't know how to bring up, and you can gently nudge them in the right direction.

Sometimes it's useful, and sometimes it isn't. Ultimately, if it helps to deepen trust and understanding, then that's a good result.

It's funny because when I read the sentence "the 1:1 is primarily for them" i didn't realize you were a manager. To the me the 1:1 is primarily for the manager. I need my manager to talk about their perception of how the work, more specifically my work, is going.

I'm an engineer, and my 1x1 meetings all feel useless to me. It is 100% a meeting for managers and I'd skip every single one if I could.

I would vastly prefer an ad hoc meeting when I actually have something to talk about instead of 30 minutes every week where I'm constantly struggling to find material for this useless meeting.

From experience, majority of 1:1's turn into detailed status updates rather than goals and career growth. When you think about it, your goals don't change every weeks. Which is why a weekly status update on your project will always be the main topic of conversation because it changes constantly. "Are you blocked?", "what's your ETA for XYZ", "did you talk to bob about ABC?". etc...

Your goals and career growth are discussed prior to your annual review. It's sounds bad but that's reality.

I've been on both ends of 1:1s. For a manager, they seem great - a regular meeting, a chance for staff to talk about things. But they're not. They're window dressing. If you need the 1:1 to see what mood your staff are in, you're not paying attention. If you need the meeting for your staff to be able to tell you what they could do with to make their work easier, you're not approachable.

From the perspective of a developer, they are an unwanted interruption, and a great example of the kind of make-work that gets in the way of productivity. You'll waste an hour in a 1:1, plus whatever time it takes to get back to what you were working on, and that is time that you usually can't spare.

I wish the managers earlier in my career had given me 1-1s. Done right, they can really accelerate your career development and help you get more out of your job, as well as be a better employee.

1-1s and being available/approachable are not mutually exclusive. Not every employee is comfortable bringing up nagging frustrations without a formal venue for them. Especially those earlier in their careers.

And in terms of interruptions, some of us would rather have an hour scheduled on the calendar that we can work around than random drive-by interruptions from a manager who wants to "stay in touch". A 1-1 is for those conversations that the employee might not otherwise initiate, and it's for exploratory chats that eventually make it to territory you might not have covered if you were only discussing what's front of mind.

A poor 1 to 1, performed because someone further up the chain has said they should be, can definitely be like that. You sit down, everyone says things they already know, and then you all walk away feeling like the time was wasted.

A good 1 to 1, with a manager who actually cares, can be fantastic. Until my last boss I'd written them off as a waste of time, but these days I'll actively seek them out. Good one to ones feel like a conversation, talking about how things are, what's working, what's not, maybe a heads up of potential projects with the aim of getting your input on them. When I left my last job I think my favourite one to one was the last one I did with my boss, I went in fully expecting it to just be "not much point in this", and ended up with a ton of advice on my new job, and how to best use my strengths in a different environment.

A truly great one to one does take a really good manager, and is helped along by a decent relationship with that manager, but you're doing yourself a disservice not to try and nurture that.

It's different for each of my reports, and it's different when I have my 1:1 with my manager as well.

My manager and I usually talk about high level strategy - he does more talking, letting me know about direction decisions that have been made or things I have to plan for.

One of my reports likes to go into a technical deep dive and get advice on whatever he happens to be working on. These usually run a bit long (a couple hours) so I have them scheduled such that it isn't a problem.

Another coworker just gives status updates, lets me know general status, points out any new issues or changes in existing challenges that I may not be aware of. I keep on top of what's going on so they're pretty short.

Another report likes to chat about the industry, what's going on, random stuff from within the company. This 1:1 is more like a little break for both of us. Sometimes we just skip if either of us is busy or there's nothing to talk about.

No two are the same, but I always try to cover two minimum things: 1) Pass down any new information that is relevant to what they're doing, and 2) Ask if there's anything they're blocked on that I can help with.

Not trying to hijack this conversation, but how do you convince a company that regular 1:1 meetings are worth it?

As a lead developer/eng manager, I tend to discuss in my 1-1s with my team things that are of concern to people, changes people liked, changes people didn't like, and why to everything. I will ask for feedback on how can I better help them. As a company, we also ask each person what is one thing the person can do to improve. I will also ask what ideas people have to improve the team, or observations they had that are of concern - sometimes people don't feel as comfortable sharing their thoughts in a group setting, especially if someone is overbearing. It also is an opportunity for the team members to step away from product development craziness and reflect.

I also give the monthly performance review then too, but I try to de-emphasize that because the numbers aren't too important except as a rough bar of the feedback being given upstream to higher management.

The one on ones that I have with my director of engineering and VP are geared towards a variety of topics, such as feedback they have heard about me from other co-workers, things of concern that I have done, things I can improve upon, things I am doing well, and suggestions for things I can try to apply to improve team performance. My director of engineering is also interested in the performance of each person, the contours of their situation, and what I am doing to try to improve their output, while the VP is a little more interested in the higher level aspects of overall team performance and management.

1-1s are as useful as the people involved make them. A good manager is important because if the person isn't trying to make use of the meeting to draw out more information on how to improve the team dynamic & help the person get better, then it is a waste, but on the flip side, the person must be cognizant to a degree, and be willing to make the effort to improve.

My manager of the last couple of years asks the same handful of questions every single time, a structure that I felt a little skepticism toward when he was detailing it in our first such meeting. But they work really well as prompts to get me talking and I feel consistently "heard" when leaving our one on ones.

What are those questions?

At my workplace we are given a template, which is primarily status reports. Since it is supposed to be my meeting I proposed allowing me to use my own discussion items. This was agreed to. We have meetings once a month. I jot down thoughts when they occur during the month and then discuss them in the meeting. Discussion items include:

- What am I excited about

- Where do I want to go/grow in my position/career

- Any clarifications need to be made

- Any problems or frustrations

I rarely look forward to these meetings, but I usually find them helpful. A lot of items get discussed which never would have been, which is of great benefit to me, the department and management.

I work on a team of three so I get to talk to my manager (who's technical, BTW) several times a day for immediate work-related stuff. We then have monthly one-on-ones for higher level discussion, with no need to talk about low level day-to-day stuff. We usually go through the formalities first -- upcoming leave, progress on development plan, etc., expanding on these as appropriate. We then usually have time to talk about other things like any interesting techniques/technologies we've discovered that might be useful, good books/videos/talks we've read, etc.

Whatever the dev wants to talk about, it's their meeting. Hopefully nothing project/team related. We have team meetings were we can talk about team stuff, we have daily stand up and possible meetings for project related stuff. They only time I want them to talk about project related activity or team related activity is if they feel they can't talk about with other developers.

But mostly, It's about them, how they are doing, where they are doing well, how they can improve, where they are going with their career. Hopefully feedback to me about me too.

I wonder how common these one-on-one are? Apart from bi-yearly reviews, I've never heard of something like this, although the environment I currently work in is particularly toxic in this respect.

I follow the format from Manager Tools. That's where I learned about one-on-ones.

https://www.manager-tools.com/map-universe/trinity-one-ones

Essentially, 10 minutes for them, 10 minutes for me, 10 minutes on the work front. It varies by person and phase of the moon. Personal stuff is important to discuss, I think.

I'm still learning how to do this after six months. We _rarely_ fail to have one-on-ones.

It depends on who I am having my one-on-one with. If it is my day-to-day manager we discuss tasks for the sprint and beat, scheduling, task priority, some overall project status topics, etc. If I'm having a one-on-one with my line manager we discuss how I'm feeling overall, big picture in terms of the project or studio, what my goals are, what it looks like I'll be doing (or what I want to do) after the current project, performance feedback, etc.

Focus on making forward progress. Report on what is blocking you from doing your job, and propose alternatives rather than just state that you are stuck.

They're generally a waste of time. Fortunately I don't have them at my current job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com