How to get the most out of your 1:1s

Honestly, any manager who is against that isn't a good manager.

Instead of "I don't want interesting work", say you want to help support members of the team who are looking for new opportunities, or something like that. There's X work maintaining the codebase and Y work on new and shiny projects and Z employees. Suggest perhaps cross-training in other people's less-stressful work (if there is any).

If you say that, then your manager (in their head), can be thinking, "Okay so we have this new project, and songzme doesn't want it, but her coworker does, so if songzme can pick up some of the maintenance work, the coworker will have time for new project." Obviously, keep your total workload under control, but a manager's job is to get a team to do something. It's fine to play support, just be open to it.

It doesn't have to be permanent. I've had time periods when I've volunteered for projects and others when I'm not interested due to external factors. During those times, I just did more of the team's work that required the least 'brain'. Which is great for the team members who are feeling bored and want to try something new.

At least, I manage people who say this and it is perfectly fine.

Also, this level of ambition has a tendency to change with people’s life circumstances.

The most important thing for me is making sure the work someone is doing is aligned with their goals, whether that is work life balance or expanding their role as fast as is feasible or something in between.

If you have a bad manager just lie, say that the work is hard enough, that its challenging maintaining a codebase up to date, that you are interested in this kind of work, that there is lots of work to be done, documenting, making tests, replacing old parts with newer parts and that you see your future being an expert in that kind of tasks.

Usually there is a kind of trade off between being responsible for a piece of software and the amount of work to be done on that project.

There are only so many L+1 spots, someone who wants to do actual work in the team rather than invest a lot of time getting such a spot and potentially do things that may be risky or end up leaving the firm could be a very valuable part of the team.

If you are doing good work, that sounds like any managers dream: reliability!

I certainly want to help every member of my team to reach their personal goals but all of that means work for me, and work for finding who will replace them at their current position.

I have reports who have told me that they're happy doing what they're doing. I don't see it as a negative at all - they're employees who are quietly getting their job done and I don't have to worry about them leaving for career growth or Peter Principle-ing them into incompetence. It's important that we continue to have 1:1s though. People aren't static, they can change their mind, and I also want to make sure I keep an ear out for little things that are annoying them, and do what I can to make them go away.

But yes, I keep up with the new shiny projects and keep my resume current. The tides are always shifting in tech. Managers change, companies get acquired, go under etc. It’s my responsibility to myself and my family to keep myself competitive in the market.

I’m not going to do that by not staying in sync with the market.

It means, that I will not have to worry about figuring out a good place for you to grow into. It also means that I will not have to worry about finding a replacement for you after you get promoted.

Hell, if you tell me that I'll do everything I can to give you a raise asap.

Tip: Your manager really, really wants to hear what you really honestly think. Even if it's not a positive thing (and just wanting to continue doing what you're doing is very positive!). It's super hard to guess what people are trying to say because most people don't just tell you straight. Of course there are exceptions - that's probably a sign of a crappy manager. If that's the case, sorry, you can probably find a better job.

I find things like 1:1's infantile / patronising / condescending, I'm sure some employees are convinced about their benefit, however I'm unable to come to that conclusion myself when thinking about it.

For me contracting is a more honest exchange of my time and expertise, for money.

However, there are a few points in your post that may be conflating topics.

First, 'maintaining the current codebase' and providing work that is valuable to the team/org are not the same thing. Some engineers will endlessly poke around the internals of a code base, refactoring, tuning, renaming for clarity, but never provide anything of real value. This is a pitfall.

Second, I would separate 'career growth' from promotion. Companies orient promotion ladders around particular dimensions that you may or may not care about, but that doesn't mean you can't be growing. Consider if there are ways you want to grow that are outside of what your company is asking for as a promotable step. I don't mind if engineers don't want to be promoted but I'm concerned if they have no desire to grow.

Finally, your post makes it sound like you believe an engineer's lack of ambition led to their being laid off, however this may conflate ambition for output. Are you sure a lack of ambition was the reason or were they not producing anything of value (as in point 1 above)?

For bonus courage points, consider having a candid discussion with your manager about each of these topics. I would wager that you will be much better aligned afterwards.

the laying someone off for that is silly. But when I was managing a team for the first time I would have found it really helpful if one of them told me that! It was so far from my imagination that there would be an _unambitious engineer_ the thought never occurred to me. I wasn't a lot of my time and theirs working on this erroneous world-view.

>> Also no, I'm perfectly happy maintaining our current codebase, not interested in new and shiny projects because my most interesting time is spent at home with my kiddo.

So as a manager my concern here is you're communicating I don't want to grow or add more value. I'm not sure if that's your intent. There are actually very few roles where I've needed someone to "just keep doing exactly what you're doing right now", and they are typically short-term bridges to more important projects or quickly devolve into lowest-cost commodity solutions.

You don't have to get promoted or work on bleeding-edge tech, but you definitely need to grow. If you're not growing, your stagnating, and your time is limited.

The follow-on comments from other managers about how you're a dream IC really scare me; they present a mindset that developers are a problem that needs to be solved as easily as possible. Give me a demanding, passionate and yes, needy, developer over someone who's stopped progressing every time.

>> Any tips on how I can handle my 1:1s?

Don't share that you're perfectly content with the current status-quo and that you don't want any further growth or responsibility.

that's terrible

Maybe you don't see other things they do. Their work isn't only 1:1 with you. For instance, hiring, evaluating employees, redirecting team efforts if new priority arises, fostering collaboration with other teams if needed, unblocking things, reporting to high management about the team whereabout, making sure every IC has what they need for their job, taking the temperature of the team, informing people about opportunities, and so on...

THIS is what the 1:1 is for. That is where you communicate to your manager what you need in order to keep from leaving in a few years. You might not get it and leave anyway, but then again, you might. Nothing lost in the trying.*

* I'm not suggesting you frame it as an ultimatum but let them know what you want.

I basically agree with nearly everything you said. I just wanted to widen the scope a bit on the quoted part. Working in an agency in a client facing role, my main focus is to reduce the stressors for my client and "arm" them with things that make them look good with their managers and leadership.

Else than that I can only agree that when everything is fine - why should I fill 30 - 45 minutes of my managers time (that could be used more efficiently).

Also: If not everything is well I feel it is important to see if this is something your manager can do anything about. Not because you should not tell them if they can't do anything about, but to adjust your expectations and state it as an information/request. Oftentimes I found myself talking to my manager about things that don't work well but they could not do anything about this. But we found ourselves nonetheless creating ideas how to mitigate this in other areas.

Sometimes it may bring to memory something related to work, which we can discuss. Sometimes it will be completely unrelated to work for the whole meeting, but I think there is still value in that. It helps us build a better relationship and reveals more about who we are and how we think and helps just generally "tune" ourselves to each other.

It sounds like you have a good problem to have. Given your described state you have space for relationship building. Many humans enjoy different kinds of chitchat. If one is able to create a positive expected emotional outcome from interactions, it acts as a thumb on the scales in your favor in other areas.

Cialdini's book "Pre-suasion" has good information about different techniques to operationalize. Below is a podcast in which he discusses the ethical use of such.

https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/robert-cialdini/

- You can catch new leaders and senior ICs on their way in the door and make yourself helpful to them, which makes a positive and memorable first impression

- You build relationships that make you more effective in your role

- You accelerate the dissemination of knowledge across silos

- You exercise control over the flow of information to help the organization meet its goals

- You learn how power flows through the organization

- You discover other teams that you may want to work more closely with, or take steps to avoid working with

- You become better able to empathize with other teams because you have a human connection

Obviously, this effect is much easier when you are not in a management position. Because of that I was usually borderline paranoid about these changes in 1:1s with my directs.

In small teams I found the way to have informal, spontaneous 1:1s very effective. The basis, so, always was regularly scheduled ones unless you just forget to have them.

EDIT: For sure every 1:1 is different, and every 1:1 with different people need to be run differently. Some people like to discuss private stuff, others want in-depth tech discussions. Sometimes 1:1s are over in 5 minutes, sometimes they take an hour. Be flexible, and never use anything said in a 1:1 "against" the other person.

This was many years ago so apologies if some details are a bit off, but the gist of the story has stuck with me over the years.

power dynamics vary. some developers can always easily get another job, so they have a lot of power. in a case like that, asking the developer to rate their satisfaction seems normal & good, like a customer satisfaction survey.

I think the best is to personalize things as best you can (depending on your team size). Some personalities are less interested in talking, which is fine―I just try to make sure nothing is blocking them or they're not dissatisfied. Some people love to talk about their life, and I usually have to time-box that.

I genuinely care about how my team is doing and want to help them grow, so 1:1s are my main opportunity to figure out how I can help them... especially in the era of remote work.

1:1s between me and my manager are usually very productive. Our project had non existent tests and through 1:1s I was able to advocate for tests and TDD to my manager. 6 months later our entire team is all-in on TDD. There were other gaps that I noticed on my team too that I would bring up in our 1:1 and we have a discussion about it. Are all my suggestions going to be implemented? No, but it's still worth having a discussion.

No, it is not.

Too much formalization brings the power dynamic imbalance front-and-center and leads to people telling you what they think you want to hear.

I hate unscheduled phone calls; I've asked recruiters to make an appointment first, so I can be mentally ready for a phone call. Else I'll be interrupted during focus time (headphones on, balancing seven things in my head simultaneously, you know the drill).

> Talk to your manager? Schedule a one-on-one.

For random day to day stuff, sure, scheduling something might be overboard. But for more serious business, you should put aside some time for both. This is also about respecting each other's time and schedule; you are not the center of your manager's attention.

> Want to raise a technical comment? Issue a Jira ticket.

I think this is an important step to take so that you sit down and think about the issue; it's like rubber ducking, if you can't explain it in e.g. a ticket, you don't understand the problem well enough. Second, task tracking software is documentation; in ten years' time you will thank yourself for making a ticket. (That said, I don't believe storing it in 3rd party software is good, ideally all documentation, including tickets, would be in your git repository. Commit volume and churn is a bit of an issue though).

I used to just ping my direct reports for 1:1s each week when it suited me, and then realised that that's pretty disrespectful of other people's time. I switched to asking people to schedule time with me in my calendar out of respect for their schedule.

If you're scheduling because you've seen over time that predictable schedules is what other co-workers prefer, then you're using the tools to improve everyone's lives.

If you're scheduling because you're supposed to schedule and you never gave it second thought - you're in good company, you're simply among the 99%.

Because we're past a point where if you don't have that shipping label on it, you can just ignore it and say you never got it.

It was inevitable.

An agenda, either shared with the other person or not, is fine. I'd rather have a meeting with agenda / talking points rather than one without. It doesn't prevent people from being able to contribute, as long as you don't monopolize your part.

This is true in an ideal world, but not everyone is comfortable being direct with superiors. Regular 1-1s establish a baseline and a foundation that can be built on. Plenty of people will delay raising concern until damage has already been done. Regular, private communication lets the manager get ahead of these issues and handle morale problems before they surface.

A couple years ago, I asked him to meet weekly and he obliged. It felt like he wasn't willing to actually engage in the discussion. I walked back that request to two weeks and then monthly.

I've been trying to talk less as well, since I realize that it's a one-sided conversation. It's difficult for me though, since I feel like we should be talking more.

i would say every other week should be perfect.

One of my previous managers would just drop by my office on Friday afternoon to check in. This was shorter and shallower, more of a status update. My 1:1s tend to have a longer term focus: handing off responsibility for a project, and discussing which upcoming projects sound interesting.

As a soon-to-be manager myself, I will probably start with weekly 1:1s until I get to know the team well enough, then drop back to biweekly.

One week its an "Alignment" meeting between me and my manager. This is a time where the manager can talk to me about my current tasks and if I need any assistance from him. We also go over our yearly goals on a regular basis here, just so we can make sure that I am on the right track.

The next week we have our 1:1 meeting. These are lead by me and gives me dedicated time to discuss anything I would like.

What I described above is the only structure to the meetings. If manager doesn't have much to discuss in our alignment meetings he opens the floor for any 1:1 type of discussion and on the flip side, if I wanted to talk about my current blockers during my 1:1 meeting that is also fine.

So to answer your question, our 1:1 are biweekly.

However... why do they feel like turning it into a status update? Is it because the manager isn't sufficiently looped in to what's happening on a daily basis?

Now one to one implies an equal relationship and especially in our field it feels weird imo to call them one to ones. Typical, you aren't equal levels in a 1:1 meeting. So maybe the one on one caught on because of the subtlety of one being on top of or above the other.

Face to face sounds too literal and agressive.

1:1 is an easy clear way to represent one on one. Although, we are forcing a double meaning on it. But hey that's the great thing about language. It's ever evolving.

Personally, in meeting titles I write PersonA/PersonB but I do type 1:1 over one on one when referring to the meeting type.

Also what you are describing on your second sentence is not a 1:1 meeting.

He's the one with the power, he's deciding the raises, he's in the room his HR when they're discussing promotions.