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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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