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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you that if the worker wants to turn it into a status update, they should be allowed to.

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?

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because we have nothing else to say. we don't need any help from you, the manager. the project is going fine, but you're our least helpful resource. I'll go to the subject matter expert if i need specific things answered. I'm not fighting with any teammates. I'm not blocked. i was perfectly productive before this meeting, but now I'm interrupted. we already talked about career development. we don't need to go over that every week. really, I've got nothing. maybe once in awhile I'll get miffed at a teammate that doesn't see my point of view but even then i don't expect a manager to do much. they're not keen on taking sides. that's not to say i think my manager is useless. they're great, and i was much happier once i realized they basically work for me than i do for them. they're here to help and that's lovely, but aside from escalating cross team requests here and there, i really don't need much.

Pretty much this!

Bingo! This is the best i have read all week.

You will love this HBR article : https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers

Great article, the intro captures the core reasons why I recently quit as an engineering manager at a multi-national aerospace company. It also rather succinctly underlines how Boeing end up with the 737 Max situation.

The author of the article Gary Hamel, has written a book elaborating on the theme named, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them which you may find useful.

Also see Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson.

If I were your manager, I'd then be using the time to try to get to know you on a personal level. Hobbies, weekends, family, etc. I'm sure this comes off as prying in an internet comment, but that's because I don't know you. It's completely natural to want to get to know the people around you in person. Sometimes that might mean I need to start telling you about myself to signal that it's ok to get personal.

If you don't do this, it becomes a transactional relationship, which is OK, but to me holds less potential than one based on mutual trust and understanding.

I have 30 minute 1:1’s every week with my team (8 engineers). I’m in weekly backlog grooming sessions, semi-weekly demos, retros and sprint planning and of course daily standups. I’m in weekly status calls with two separate customers and weekly prioritization calls with product. I’m in constant dozer mode trying to clear a path for my team to eliminate blockers, execute bullshit corp process and help them resolve issues hands-on. I have a team member in my ear 80% of the week and half of them still prefer to regurgitate status than have any kind of other conversation.

At times I’ll interrupt them and say ’this isnt a status call, this is your time to complain, vent, suggest, ask whatever you like and find a way for me to help you’. I always try to keep them upbeat and ask about the weekend, hobbies, etc. Not everybody wants that conversation i think.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In 1:1s with my managers I was always happy to get the undivided attention of my manager to discuss status updates.

That’s 100% perfectly fine for me as well if we’re starting from a baseline of you talking about what’s important to you. It’s unfortunate that we have to ration time like this but it ensures that folks who normally wouldn’t initiate a conversation have one initiated for them.

Have you tried building trust? The tone of your comment here makes me think you haven’t. If you build trust with people, they’ll just tell you things. If you just say they can tell you things, no rational employee will believe that. And pushing people to talk about their weekend or other aspects of their personal life is downright toxic IMO. Again, if you build trust and rapport, you won’t have to ask these rote, off-the-shelf questions that can put people into a wary state of mind.

+1. I'm certainly not keen on sharing anything personal with a manager. we're not friends. I'm not going to tell you how i got drunk and puked or whatever, that's not appropriate and it's not doing me any favors career wise.

Trust is the centerpiece of my job, I’m certain that I’m not perfect but it’s something I can use to contextualize every decision and steer towards the best answer.

I’m sure my words could evoke a notion of some bully creeping on employees but I am just trying to break habits. I don’t force anything and as others have mentioned sometimes a status update is exactly what folks want to discuss.

I would venture to suggest that they give you status updates instead of what you're really looking for because you have these meetings every week - how much is happening in the space of four and a half days since the last 1:1 that they can't deal with themselves or raise in the stand ups? Probably not a lot. And if you're looking for complaints, suggestions, etc., in 1:1s, then what are the retrospectives for? A former manager once asked me how frequently I wanted to have 1:1s with him, and my reply was never, but he insisted so I offered once a month and we ended up doing it fortnightly. I never felt like it was helpful.

Not to mention that as engineers, they probably value extended blocks of uninterrupted time to focus on being productive;

> 30 minute 1:1’s every week with my team (8 engineers). I’m in weekly backlog grooming sessions, semi-weekly demos, retros and sprint planning and of course daily standups

With respect, this sounds like hell to me. The only thing I would be complaining about is that you were tying me up in meetings so much that I couldn't get any actual work done.

And however friendly you are with your team members, you're still their manager and they probably don't feel close enough to freely share much of their personal lives with you - that's generally the nature of the relationship and there's nothing wrong with that.

A significant fraction of engineers, often the ones who are most deep into their work, have a tendency to just do a brain dump of what they're working on, just because that's what they've currently assembled in their heads. It isn't necessarily useful in a 1:1 but it seems almost involuntary, so I'm not sure it's good to stop them before they've gone through it. May just have to allocate more time to allow them to get through it to any other issues they might have.

ya.. if i was productive until 10 seconds before this meeting, then that's whats on my mind. im still solving things in my head and now im being pulled away from that.. for what? i feel like managers are in a different world, jumping from meeting to meeting they don't get deep into things. as a SWE.. I'm balancing 100 little things in my head, deep in thought, solving away.

Honestly, I never know what to talk about on 1:1, so that's mostly what I do. I'm not having any particular issues and I'm communicating with the other team members if there is anything I need from them to do my work.

So what am I supposed to do in a situation like that? Nothing is really broken, so I don't have much of constructive points to bring up.

Right. Set a time limit but not an agenda. Let them be free to tell you anything even if you think it is unnecessary. They key is to build psychological rapport so that gradually he/she feels more comfortable to open up and start Trusting you.

This is often the case. Gotta get credit and feedback on your work.

Sometimes, because a status update is less awkward than sitting there in silence.

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