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Comment by bllguo | Hacker News Reader

7:30 meetings are horrifying to me

also, do 1-1s need to be weekly? what about biweekly? i only have a few direct reports and even then i feel weekly is too often

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> i only have a few direct reports and even then i feel weekly is too often

1-1s aren't about how _you_ feel. They're about your directs's feelings, and the relationship between the two of you.

1-1's are a cargo cult thing that someone decided was a Good Management Idea.

1-1s have been the basis of most human relationships for millions of years.

Real ones, though, which makes the checkbox corporate ones feel that much more fake, because we all know what the real thing is like.

Well, let's put it like this: the wrong reason for a manager to cut a 1:1 to biweekly is because they don't have enough time in their calendar to support their directs. A better reason would be because there isn't enough time between 1:1s to fill out the weekly meetings.

But the manager isn't the person who can easily make that judgement call. IMO, the correct person to judge that is the direct -- they can't just show up at their managers desk and demand a 30 minute meeting when something important shows up, whereas a manager can (and often does!)

1 on 1's did not use to be 'a thing', and we still got plenty done in those days, which were not that long ago.

Generally ideas like this seem to spread because it was part of some successful company and so it got written up and now a lot of people copy it because it's easy to copy and they think it will help make their own company successful.

As a result, the thing that actually occurs in a lot of places is a manager reading from a script that they've been trained on a little bit from someone else.

It does not feel useful to me.

Take it into your own hands. It's your time. Bring stuff to it. You won't always have an amazing manager, but you can get a lot out of it if you are proactive IMO.

Also, I think all managers should be asking what cadence and length of time their directs want for 1:1.

The least would be 30 minutes bi-weekly IMO.

The most would be 1 hour weekly.

Depends on the person, the projects, where they are in their career, etc.

If it were up to me, I would not bother with it.

I have 20 years of experience in this field, and a vital part of the job is communicating well with other people. I do not need someone's "Management Best Practices Checklist" in order to do that. And I do not think I'm exceptional: most of us got by just fine without all this.

People have differing opinions on this, so maybe learn to respect that. Seems like 20 years of experience has not done that.

These things are mostly not based on opinions where teams get to pick and choose, but some kind of received wisdom that checks a box on someone's list of Best Management Practices and everyone is forced to go through the script, like it or not.

That's why I'm suggesting you take control and turn the meeting into what you want it to be. It doesn't have to be a checklist but it sounds like you -have- to have this meeting at the company you are at. So instead of suffering through it, you can turn it into something beneficial for you. Ya know?

1:1's are a good way to make room for reports to voice concerns, uncertainties, mistakes, backlogs, blockers and unknowns with their manager. If you're the kind of person who feels completely comfortable promptly voicing that sort of thing in front of your team, then good for you, but you're in the minority. If your manager is excellent at consistenrtly handling that in a way that feels good to the whole team, then good for your manager, but they're in the minority.

For one example, a manager who has regular 1:1s with their reports probably won't be blindsided when they quit or miss a deadline.

That's the theory. In practice it's a checkbox with an accompanying script in a lot of places. Most places that I've been that worked well, you could send an email or walk over and ask a manager if you could schedule a bit of time to talk, if you needed something.

And if you're proactive, and don't feel like you're wasting your manager's time, again, good for you.

For reports who need a bit of a support in raising issues, this is an effective way to make that space. People new to lecturing are often taught to count out 30 seconds after asking questions, for a good reason: silence is awkward, and questions are the salve that even shy students will reluctantly reach for.

Not only I find the fakeness of 1:1s appalling, I also think that putting your weekly fix of human-relationship in a timebox is great to make me want to go through the meeting like a robot and avoid any other contact with the person outside of it.

I have a personal relationship with my manager, and we often chat outside of our 1:1s. We spend our 1:1s talking about work stuff, and end the meeting early if there isn't enough work stuff to talk about. When we're in the mood to chat person-to-person, that happens organically. When we need to talk business outside of the 1:1, that's more structured. I consider this distinction to be a healthy boundary; you may benefit from the same.

I second. To add, I work on a pretty busy team. It’s hard to catch time to just talk to my manager and having that time carved out every week to talk is valuable.

Also, there is stuff that needs to be discussed that shouldn’t be in an email or be discussed out in the open. You know, things meetings are actually good for.

> there is stuff that needs to be discussed that shouldn’t be in an email or be discussed out in the open

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds unhealthy to have that much of that kind of stuff that you'd need to discuss it with no record of it on a regular basis.

I work on a team that’s tasked with a lot of future corporate development stuff. Lots of off-the-record planning involved.

My 1on1s are useful. It's like any other meeting. Have an agenda or cancel it. The people I work with are good about canceling meetings. The standing spot is nice to have.

It's a fair point that their input on the matter is more important than mine. I like to reiterate that 1-1s are for them, not me. But my feelings are not formed in a vacuum independent of theirs. Plus if it's about the relationship, both sides should have some input and opinion.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer here. It’s certainly fine to do them less often if you aren’t finding enough value in doing it weekly.

Most of these rules of thumb came about before tools like slack, which for better or worse, let you communicate more directly more frequently.

Many companies had instant messaging systems before regular 1 on 1 meetings. Email too.

A lot of the ideas and heuristics for one-on-ones came from “high output management” which was published in 1983.

I’ve been doing this tech stuff a long time. Companies I worked at started doing regular 1 on 1s before regular use of instant messaging. More importantly, the heuristics most use for 1 on 1s clearly came before use of instant messaging and digital collaboration tools.

I do biweekly. It's my job to keep myself appraised of what reports are working on and make sure they are unblocked. A 1:1 should be focused on long-term career goals and relationship building which can be done biweekly.

The obvious exceptions are new hires and very junior engineers who need more handholding while they ramp up.

Yeah this is what struck me, the fact that the 1:1s were so out of sync with the standups. Realistically this manager is probably making the same mistake most managers initially make, which is failing to manage up, and failing to take a role strategically shaping the company. Mostly, the 30 minutes "So what are all the things you've stored up to talk to me about" conversations aren't that valuable, the more free-form broader conversations are. Especially in covid.

I have minions who want it to be every two weeks. I have minions who are happier if it is weekly. I have minions who do not want them regularly, but want the option on occasion.

These are all simultaneously fine. When I miss one with a weekly regular, nobody frets. When I miss one with a biweekly, I make sure to reschedule if it makes sense. And I always make time ASAP for someone who doesn't usually want that meeting, when they ask for it.

Probably avoid calling people minions if you can. Do you want to come across as someone who manages unimportant simpletons, or do you want to be perceived as someone who manages smart and interesting people? Build up those below you, don't knock them down - everyone wins.

I found it refreshingly honest. Most of us aren't landing people on Mars or working on a cure for cancer here. Most of us are, infact, relatively unimportant (including the guy managing minions.)

The people who speak like this in my experience typically use that kind of terminology to highlight their own superiority, not realising that it has the opposite effect.

I condensed "people who see me as their boss and/or mentor and/or intermediator with the company" into the humorous and highly inaccurate "minions".

Feel free to continue to evaluate my performance on the basis of my word-choice here rather than the actual management process I was describing.

I have no idea about your performance, I'm sure you're a great manager. I only noted your word choice because I've seen people talking this way about their reports and it doesn't reflect well on them.

Have you seen people talking about themselves like that? Because that's how "minion" is frequently used humorously, and I was assuming that OP was channeling that.

I think weekly is great! They don't have to go for the full time, but when I was an EM, it was the one time of the week where my attention was fully on the other person. That's great for the employee because they can bring things up and it's great for the EM because if there are any subtle issues (dissatisfaction) it's a chance to catch them early.

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