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Comment by elliottcarlson | Hacker News Reader

(I'm one of the managers with a README in the article)

It really depends - I've had direct reports that have had plenty to cover on a weekly basis, and others that don't really have anything new -- the point of the weekly 1:1's is that they have dedicated time whatever they want or need from me - and it's their time to use as they see fit. If they want to skip that week because there's nothing new on their side, that's fine (but not every week), and if they are done in 10 minutes that's fine too. Other people have wanted closer to 2 hours a week of 1:1 time. It really comes down to the individual.

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We had/have similar concepts at my first employer NASA/JPL and my current employer Red Hat. At JPL we called them Quiet Hours, in practice were closer to 30 minutes and they were held at least monthly which is significant amount of time when managers had 15 or more subordinates. Sometimes we rolled them into lunches. At Red Hat Consulting, we’re geographically distributed (even if geographically organized) because of our projects so we do 15-30 minute calls once or twice a month.

It’s a practice I’ve induced my managers into since JPL. And they’re hugely emotionally helpful since I don’t normally have a team that I work with to bounce things off of at lunch or happy hour anymore.

Kudos to you Elliott. Sounds like you’d be a decent manager to work with.

I'm really curious now, for those who want more 1:1 time, what sort of topics are often covered?

Career progression, walking through or pairing on problems, even personal life topics - remote employees sometimes desire some additional contact as well.

I worked with a team of remote devs, and ended up on both sides.

As a dev seeking manager time, I wanted/needed information. Diagrams, access, contacts, meetings. There was no onboarding and nothing but a codebase for a massive system. This was more like every other week, though.

As a peer, I ran interference with a lot of the junior devs to make sure they had the info they need, to push for the info they didn't, and to get them hooked up with the people who had it. The lack of information enabled a lot of isolation and feelings of imposter syndrome, and the weekly chats gave my peers a forum to vent.

Being remote, communication & culture require a lot more attention and effort.

What I cover is a mix of decisions I need in the next week, technical questions I need help with, or a project I'm thinking about proposing. The general idea is to get some feedback on what it takes to earn a promotion, and where I stand.

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