I'd rather get the manager to be a partner in helping me figure out what I should want.
I will say that there does have to be some "meet in the middle" with this entire exchange. If my directs aren't interested in 1:1s, the meeting won't be effective.
If I was your manager, I’d tell you that while your problem about setting career goals is real, your framing of the problem as something I the manager should tell you what your goal is is backwards. I’m not living your life, you are. The path of least resistance for me is to let you stagnate right where you are and then tell you you’re perfectly happy if I wanted to gaslight you, but then I’d be a shitty manager.
What I should do is tease out shat motivates you and how that aligns to what we need as an org, not just my team. I may not be able to give you want you want, but I can help put you on that path.
Seriously, if you need mentorship, reach out. I’m easy to find.
They don’t know! I didn’t when I was a young dev; still don’t if I’m honest. And for years all I ever really wanted a manager to say was ‘here’s a pathway I could see you going down’.
If there is one thing mentors and managers can usefully do it is to stop asking stuff like ‘what motivates you?’ and start saying ‘you might be good at X’
All very empowering manager buddy stuff.
To a junior developer, sitting across the table, it all sounds like
I can't do anything for you. If you don't know what you want to do, you're a failure. I don't even know what you do here.
What I want to hear from a manager who understands me:
Here are the pathways open to you. Here's where I see you fitting in. Here's what you could be doing in a few years. Here's what I'd like to see you achieve.
Maturity comes through experience, including talking to others about their experience. Some candid or honest appraisals, insights, and anecdotes from bosses are useful for that.
Watching a previous boss lose their mind taking care of boardroom struggles and powerplays convinced me to stay out of management -- for the better. I'd have never built that career path without discussing it with him, extensively.