One-on-one meetings are underrated, whereas group meetings waste time (2017) | Hacker News Reader

One-on-one meetings are underrated, whereas group meetings waste time (2017)

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132 pointslkrubner49 comments

I hate "meetings" but I am big fan of conversation. When I worked in a team room with 3 other engineers we just naturally had good conversations from time to time. There was no schedule, no agenda, no start or end time. But we solved a lot of things that way. I also chat with my manager several times a week about stuff. I feel if there is a need to schedule formal one-on-one meetings it indicates a dysfunctional environment.

I'm the exact opposite. Short meetings with a small group (preferably just one other person, as discussed in the OP) at a scheduled time with an agenda are a much more efficient use of my time than ambient conversation. I've worked on teams and with people who feel like you do and it drives me pretty nuts. I'm constantly getting pulled into low value conversations that are a distraction from what I'm doing. I can't determine ahead of time whether the conversation is more or less valuable than whatever else I'm doing because there is no agenda for "hey you got a sec?".

What I don't know is: am I just wrong about this, or are you, or is it just pure subjective preference? If it's just subjective, what's the best way to structure teams with respect to this? Is it all or nothing, or can you build a team with both kinds of people in such a way that they respect each other's preference?

Edit to add: To make a different point, I'm a big fan of standing closed-door 1:1s with your manager, because the conversations you can only have with your manager are the most awkward ones and asking for a one-off closed door meeting when it's uncommon makes it way worse. For instance, if you're having strife with a co-worker that you need to bring up with your manager, the last thing you want to do is walk over to their desk and say, "can we talk privately?". Waiting for your next standing meeting is a much better option.

“What I don't know is: am I just wrong about this, or are you, or is it just pure subjective preference? ”

Yes. It’s subjective. It probably also depends on the people you work with and the nature of the things you are working on.

> They can offer negative opinions about their co-workers, without worrying that their co-worker will find out and retaliate.

In my experience, if everyone on the team knows that they're expected to comment on each other in one-on-ones with the manager, that does wonders against team cohesion and morale.

I think you're reading more into the quote than is fair -- he says they can offer opinions, not that they have to.

Also you're leaving out that he mentions it gives people an opportunity to praise teammates, whereas in a public context it might be awkward/seen to have ulterior motives. (Maybe I'm weird but I've done this a lot in one-on-ones with managers. Especially if I was mentioning someone that might have been shy/didn't want the spotlight)

I think you need to look into the intent of that statement, and by doing so understand its consequences.

The intent seems to be to create a safe space for employees to share opinions about the status of the team. Is that not what a manager should do?

Or you can see it as a manager getting plenty of ammunition on members of the team to use at his or her whim. You're not creating a safe space, but rather a miasma of fear. Trust will break down in the team.

Yes please, I would much rather be praised in private than in public.

If the manager does evaluations based on others opinions. Run don't walk

Interesting. What is the alternative? That their evaluation is based on their own opinion alone? How would they gather the information to do that? They can't be party to all the work you do, that's not their job.

My ideal low-level manager (of a 5 person team or so) would in fact consider it their job. They'd be close enough to actual work to see with their own eyes how Alice is doing without having to ask Bob.

I don't want a manager who is micromanaging to the extent that they know more about my work than my peers do. To each their own I guess.

I guess we both want managers who know enough about our work to judge it, but I prefer if they get that knowledge by observation instead of hearsay.

It sounds like you've had bad experiences with peers. That's a bummer. For me, the people I work with, both my direct peers on my team and those I work with on other teams, are the people best positioned and who I most trust to judge my work. I'm really interested in their feedback on my work. It sounds like you'd prefer they just keep their mouths shut about you. That's not how I feel. What I want and expect from my manager is to clue me in to any negative feedback (possibly after converting it to be more tactful, constructive, and actionable) so that I can incorporate it into my work.

I honestly don't understand what the setup you're advocating for looks like or how it's an improvement. If you don't trust your peers to evaluate you in good faith, why do you trust your manager? They are also just a person with all the potential for flaws that entails. What does it look like to have a manager who is involved in all your work? Do they do all your code reviews? Do they review all your emails and chats? Do they attend all your meetings? That would be madness. I'd say my manager has direct insight into less than 10% of what I'm up to every day. But pretty much all of that work has some counterpart on some team who can speak to their thoughts on working with me.

But I think I'm just missing what you're suggesting. Paint me a picture of what your ideal system looks like in practice.

I do want to hear what my coworkers think of me, from their own mouths. It doesn't have to be tactful. The only person responsible for my emotions is me, and I never punish anyone for truth. I've followed that principle diligently for more than a decade, and it works well.

I also want my manager to know what tasks I'm solving and how difficult they are, the same way a construction foreman knows what the bricklayers are doing. If that requires looking at my code, so be it. But in my experience, when working with junior people I can be very aware of their work without having to look at every single line or email.

What I don't want is "triangling". If it's considered normal for Alice and Bob to talk about Carol behind her back, team friendship becomes impossible. That's exactly what I see in American-style software development: team friendship doesn't happen. When someone quits the team, they stop being a friend. Whereas in Russian teams I've worked on, based on the above principles, the norm is that former coworkers stay friends. Today I was visited by a friend from Moscow with whom we worked briefly 12 years ago.

(Thanks for carrying on this conversation by the way, I have found it interesting.)

The fact of the matter is that not everybody wants to provide you feedback (positive or negative!) directly to you, regardless of your principles. You're swimming upstream against human nature. Some people won't believe that it won't affect your relationship and some people just feel that it's awkward to have those conversations directly. These are normal human concerns, there is nothing nefarious or gossipy about it. Managers can grease the skids.

I think maybe we've hit on the misalignment. I'm not taking about managing junior developers... My work does not resemble brick laying. There is no single output artifact that my manager can look at to determine how I have performed. Working with other people and teams is a big part of my job. The best way to get insight into how I've performed in my work with those people is to hear it from them.

For what it's worth, I think your thing about friendships is a misdiagnosis of the problem. I also made lots of life long friends at work a decade ago and now don't anymore. But I don't think it is my workplace culture that's changed; it's just me, I've gotten older and less open to new people.

Hard disagree. Managers aren't omnipotent and getting feedback from people that somebody collaborates with is useful. This is usually positive feedback and is very useful for identifying strengths! Sometimes this is negative feedback and it becomes essential to debug the issue.

Yes this sounds bad, but (a) it absolutely does not say you're expected to comment on each other, much less negatively, just that it's a regular opportunity to do so if needed, and (b) given you have a negative opinion of a coworker, all of the alternatives are worse. Just doing nothing and letting the problem go unaddressed (whether the problem is that your perception is wrong or that the employee is under-performing, both should get fixed), waiting until the next performance review when the damage has been done, assuming the boss will notice the problem anyway. These are all worse than knowing you can bring it to your manager's atention within a few days of deciding it's time to escalate the problem and let him / her deal with it.

If you have a problem with someone, speak up and get it addressed. That doesn't mean you have to sit and bitch and gossip about people. But don't let a problem fester. It's worse for the employee who might eventually get fired and have developed a terrible reputation for not fixing their problem, it's worse for the company who may be paying for sub-par work, and it's worse for you for having to compensate for their poor performance without proper recognition.

If everyone developed the people skills to give and take this feedback freely from peers that would be great, but in reality that just won't happen at every job and sometimes you need to escalate. When you do, sooner and more direct is better than later and via some 360 review form.

> given you have a negative opinion of a coworker, all of the alternatives are worse

I think the most honest alternative to to talk to the coworker; if that doesn't help, tell them you're going to escalate; and only then escalate.

Yes, there are people who will go to the boss right away, behind closed doors and preferably anonymously. But I don't want to be like that.

Presumably that might be baked into the “bring up on mgr 1:1”

I feel like if you've got problems with people badmouthing each other to the boss .... that's a problem all on its own, an invitation to a meeting doesn't make it a problem.

You can do that thing anytime anyway.

In my experience a 1 to 1 meeting cane help avoid defensive impulsive responses. Removing the reduced fear of broad judgement I think is a factor. They also covey personal respect which helps and feels good. Cutting out distractions from uninformed meeting participants also helps IMO.

The best way I have seen to handle this was by a former manager who made sure we ate lunch together most days as a team. It wasn't mandatory, but it was informally expected to happen. That team had zero communication problems.

Having lunch together is the most overlooked things ever in team building aspect.

It sounds so insignificant, so silly, but it is the natural way to build camaraderie between team member. People lower their guard, and have nothing to 'prove', unlike...uh, work.

Even better with beer.

> It sounds so insignificant, so silly, but it is the natural way to build camaraderie between team member.

This strongly depends on the type of people you are working with. If I knew I'd be expected to have group lunches every day I would not even bother applying to the company. Based on my experience with team lunches, it means that I can expect at least an hour(often even more) of every day to be lost to uninteresting, forced conversations. I am so much more productive now that I have a job where I can casually continue my work while eating lunch alone.

Yeah, I hated that. Lunches are personal time, since I have to recover it anyway, I would prefer to have a few moments where I enjoy a meal and not have to think about work.

Interesting, for me personally having the expectation I'd eat lunch every day with the team sounds less than ideal

What if I want to skip lunch so I can leave earlier? Any team lunch lasts longer than 20 mins and impedes my home time. No thanks.

This article is quite nefarious. I would not recommend this kind of management in order to instill fear and division among your team.

I have to agree. The premise in the headline is so obviously agreeable, but the application described sounds like it would make for a terrible place to work. This isn't an article about building a supportive work environment that sets realistic expectations and fosters a mutually-supportive team environment. It's about the one-on-one meeting as the most effective tool to extract as much work as possible out of each individual worker—which obviously is quite hard in a group meeting.

Of course, a manager who does that effectively is also doing their job as a manager well. One reason I will always refuse to become a supervisor is that being a good manager (i.e. nice and reasonable to work for) and being a good manager (i.e. extracting the maximum surplus value out of each worker) are often directly in conflict, as this article shows.

ETA: In fact, I can think of a manager just like this at an employer I recently left. Individual meetings were a tool to push each of us to the limit, try to pit us against each other, &c. Employees hate this boss, but management loves them!

I ignored the article admittedly, and was focused on peer meetings - scanning it now the article seems to be evoking a prison warden / informant model which is just terrible.

I wonder why perspectives like this are considered more or less acceptable, if Machiavellian, but an article on eg how to read your manager for signs of political weakness and use it for your own benefit would probably be considered extraordinarily immoral.

> One reason I will always refuse to become a supervisor is that being a good manager (i.e. nice and reasonable to work for) and being a good manager (i.e. extracting the maximum surplus value out of each worker) are often directly in conflict, as this article shows.

You seem to think that getting the most out of the employee is harmful to the employee, but I don't think that makes sense. If you're not asking them to work extra hours, it just means you're figuring out the best way to make them efficient. That's good for THEM (promotions, new skill-sets, new opportunities). It's also good for the business.

Also, as long as they're using ethical means, why would the business trying to get the most bang for their buck be an implicitly bad thing? As an employee (I'm not a manager), I'm happier if I feel like my time is being used productively, and I'm less happy if I feel like I'm collecting a pay check but my services are not being put to good use. I want to work reasonable hours, but I'm an adult and I'm not there to slack, I feel better about myself and my situation if I'm earning my paycheck.

I'm curious which part seems nefarious to you? I guess I didn't perceive it that way, but a lot of people have.

bad implementation of a good idea

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16002687

I'm not a manager, but it seems to me that one of the biggest obstacles managers face is that they often have less information than the people they manage. Humans are gossipy creatures, but we tend to gossip with peers, not with those we perceive to be higher or lower status. (A lot of times the person that is most clued into the happenings in the office is the receptionist). I think managers would be smart to focus more often on one-on-one meetings. I'm always baffled when managers don't have time to talk to low-level employees. If I were a manager, I think I'd definitely want that.

The problem with one-on-on meetings is they proliferate information silos where relevant parties aren't aware of impoprtant details because they weren't involved in conversations.

Group meetings don't always waste time. They nearly always waste time, for very simple and fixable reasons:

1) There is often not a clear leader for the meeting. Oh, the ranking manager make be the "leader" but the actual leadership is lacking with no clear attempt to keep things on track. From this follows the next two issues:

2) They nearly always lack a clear agenda, or given an agenda, it is not strictly followed. Issues arise that are allowed to derail things. These frequently involve only a subset of participants that should address these issues "offline" but instead waste everyone's times.

3) Given the agenda slippage, each person ends up feeling they need to say something, to be heard, in order to be seen contributing. So everyone comes up with something they think they have to say, further breaking the agenda for the real reason for the meeting and making it longer.

The above contribute to nearly any scheduled meeting I'm involved in going 50% to 100% over time. I however am known for generally being quiet in meetings because I self censor for "is what I need to say relevant to the direct purpose here, to all members of the meeting?" When the answer is "no", I follow up afterwards. Often on issues I wouldn't have been aware of without the group meeting, but that only concern one or two other members, and I would have wasted the time of 5 or 6 or 10 other people to go into detail on it in the meeting itself.

In short, group meetings aren't the issue, poor leadership of the meeting it the problem.

I think the author should consider acquiring some facilitation skills, rather than rejecting any other model than him and someone else talking.

The reality is that both need to happen regularly. Issues that are too sensitive for the entire group are talked about during the regularly scheduled 1 on 1 or an ad hoc 1 on 1 if the issue is urgent.

I am bootstrapping a 1:1 meeting tool, so I always pay attention to the subject here on HN.

I chose the idea because I believe it is a great resource for a manager to build trust and a team as a whole improve.

This is the article that was most upvoted in HN about the topic and it has a complete opposite take. It goes for a _"divide for conquest"_ tactic that seems very hostile to the team members.

As someone who manages people I think the author's approach will lead to a culture of fear. Ultimately it will lead to poor results and retention. I prefer the guidance given by Manager Tools (https://www.manager-tools.com/)

Manager Tools is amazing: the single best source of practical guidance for managers that I know.

Nice article but some people may not feel comfortable telling the truth in a one on one meeting either. In the article the author even admits that if he deems that his one one one participant falsely blames someone else (which could be subjective) he'll try to boot them off the team if possible.

Lost me at having a meeting with marketing people. No one should have to do that.

So the author basically proposes everyone to go behind others' back to stick it to each other and promotes to rat on each other. And he even feels good about it. Wow.

regardless of meeting size in any company where people don't trust each other there will be more gossip and backstabbing

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