My 1on1's at a 100k+ international corporation always went like this:
Manager: so how's it going?
Me: great
Manager: any issues? anything you want to discuss?
Me: everything is fantastic! I'm very happy with my job :D
Manager: cool cool... well let's do this again next month.
Me: yay!
I don't want someone in a similar situation like I was to get inspired by lists like these and go into their next 1on1 wrecking havoc with the status quo. When you, your manager, his manager and the next guy up are just cogs in a machine churning for years through the same kinds of faceless conglomerates - you either shut up and put up or end up on someone's Excel spreadsheet highlighted in yellow. Then during the next round of layoffs (you know they're coming) the yellow cogs will be replaced with fresh green ones and you'll be out on the street cramming algorithm questions all over again and interviewing with A.I. HR filters for the next 6months. Understand where you work before opening your mouth, people ;)
What a strange, helpless way to look at the world.
Employment is not a boss->servant relationship, it's a relationship where both parties gain something. You offer a service, and they pay for that. End of story. They act out? Then you find someone else who needs your services.
As a programmer myself, I'm in this great position where there is a shortage of good developers, and plenty of companies searching for good developers.
When I go to my manager, I'm not going in there with "please don't fire me sir, please.", I'm going in there with "Hey, fix your shit or I'll have a new job next week that pays more from day 1, and you will search the next 6 months for my replacement and train that person another 6 months before (s)he's somewhat productive."
> it's a relationship where both parties gain something.
For the vast majority of employed people, what they gain is the ability to continue to afford food and shelter.
Most jobs do not afford the economic reality necessary to allow the employee a position of being able to afford to bargain as anything approaching an equal.
It is not a strange way to look at the world for anyone who has lived for any significant amount of time as a worker in any average job. It is helpless, yes.
If your boss is taking the time to give you a 1-on-1, then there is an opportunity for both sides to listen to each other.
If you have problems/complaints and you never say anything about them, then don't be surprised if they never change.
If there is a 1-on-1 meeting happening, then a communication channel is open. I suppose you can choose to cynically shut it again, but if you make that choice, then don't be surprised to find that you don't have a voice.
A person could try hard to avoid being the squeaky wheel. They could take no curiosity about themselves, or their surroundings, or their organization's goals, or how their boss sees them, or how others see them, or how their habits affect their work, and basically stay the same for years on end, doing the same job, at basically the minimum quality and execution to stay employed.
And then "at the next round of layoffs" that person will find themselves surprisingly replaceable. Probably by a cheaper, more junior person who can do the exact same work at the exact same minimum quality. No reason to keep the guy who hasn't improved for years, and basically tells you to F-off any time you ask him how you can help him.
Guess what: Being invested in your work can make you more valuable. The cynical route often doesn't pay, and frequently fulfills itself.
It's also often true that 1-on-1's are people doing something they are required to do, targeted at quota fulfillment, where there's not actually an opportunity for either side to influence a situation at all because it's just a big chain of fulfilling requests from higher up a chain.
I had mandatory 1-on-1s at a call center doing outbound cold calls for things like FoP fundraisers, a job that couldn't actually be done cheaper legally, where the organization didn't have goals other than maximizing profit, where no one I interacted with were anything but cynical about the job and where there wasn't value to be found in getting more invested in it. My managers were explicit about them being bullshit mandatory 1-on-1s mostly geared at pressuring employees to close more.
I agree, some of the negativity I'm seeing about 1:1's seems to come from 1:1's not being useful, or even being a negative thing, but the person complaining about it seems to put all the blame on the other person in the 1:1. "My manager doesn't really want me to bring up anything", etc. Which I'm sure is true sometimes. But in my experience, you really can't ever be 100% certain that that's true, but if you just assume that it's true and you act accordingly, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There ars a lot of things in life that are like this, IME. There's a cynical or pessimistic way to look at something (often an interpersonal thing), and if you assume that it's true, then whether or not it was true, it becomes true for you. In those cases, the only rational thing to do is act as if it weren't true.
Example: incels. Lots of people have rough lives and have a hard time developing socially in all kinds of different ways. It sucks. Sometimes that leads to guys who have a fundamentally hard time interacting with women they are attracted to, which can lead to downward spirals of rejection and misery. Some guys cope with this by becoming incels or redpillers or whatever. "Girls don't like me, I'm so sad" is transformed into "Girls don't like me because girls suck and society sucks and it makes me awesome". It's really depressing, but there's a rationality to it in that it trades pain for anger without changing the situation. But even if someone isn't an actual incel type, once they assume that identity and start to believe it, they'll become one, which is why it never does anyone any good to start thinking of themselves as incels or redpillers. But this isn't just about incels. There are innumerable self-fulfilling, self-destructive viewpoints out there, in which even if they're rooted in elements of truth, it doesn't do anyone any good to accept the viewpoint.
Other examples include the Golden Rule, taking the high road, etc. EDIT: meaning, the notion that the Golden Rule or taking the high road all the time is for suckers, therefore you shouldn't do it. It assumes the worst in people, and if you live your life that way it ensures that you have bad interactions with people that reaffirm your already-cynical viewpoint.
But, uh, I may have gone off on some tangents there. Sorry HN. TL;DR even if your 1:1's with your boss suck, don't give up on trying to make them more constructive.
I will assume the worst in a manager if they haven't gone out of their way to disprove the notion.
They have both the authority and hopefully the management / people skills to be the one to stick their neck out and say "Hey, let's make this team be one that's honest and tries to actually create value for the company, not just keep our heads down and try to look good".
Being the young optimist who insists that everyone in the company tries to do the right thing is not smart unless management is making it clear that this is what they want.
That just makes it sound like your company has terrible recruiting. If it's not true, you're creating your own problems. If it is true, get out, obviously.
> If your boss is taking the time to give you a 1-on-1, then there is an opportunity for both sides to listen to each other.
Naw, there's an opportunity for your boss to divide & conquer, and for you to screw over your coworkers for short-term gain. You might not _think_ you're doing that — the way it's designed it's very easy for both sides to not think that — but that's the actual dynamic of the situation.
This is why the much-maligned "do not negotiate individually" rule many unions have exists. And 1-on-1s are pretty much just that, only wrapped up in some friendly-sounding woo.
> And then "at the next round of layoffs" that person will find themselves surprisingly replaceable.
> Guess what: Being invested in your work can make you more valuable.
Experience having survived lay-offs: lol, no. Nobody puts a rating on your rants.
I gotta agree that I feel the same way. I've survived layoffs where I pretty much saw all the "most valuable" people (plus one or two people who we probably shouldn't have hired in the first place) laid off while us underpaid suckers got to keep our jobs. Layoffs are a cost saving measure and unless you're cheap to retain or have built up too much of a "bus factor" around your skillset, your work is probably not good enough to save you. Someone with 15% less skill and 30% less pay will replace it.
> "Most jobs do not afford the economic reality necessary to allow the employee a position of being able to afford to bargain as anything approaching an equal."
And that is a big problem. This means it's not a free market. Power is unevenly divided, and you only operate on the job market at the mercy of the other party. This is bad.
Something is needed to even the playing field and make employers and employees equals in these negotiations, whether that's unionisation, Basic Income, worker protections of some sort, or something else.
It's a realistic depiction of how this thing works (albeit for different reasons than the opposite of what you imply).
The issue is that employees, in general, are much, much worse at the employment game than their respective employer. This makes a lot of sense: Your employers job, after reaching some level, is to employ the right people (and even beyond that to hire the right people to hire the right people). That's it. That is all they do, all day.
Which leads to them getting good at everything involving the dance, including job negotiations and manipulating the employee/candidate in a way that serves their needs.
As a worker, your entire job is to do your job. No matter how many perks your company offers, getting better at your next salary negotiation will not be one of them. Of course, as a worker participates in this game more often, they gets better at it themselves – but there is no magic involved: It's a skill that you have to learn, in a very unfair and rigged setup.
It’s also, generally, much more harmful for an employee to lose or be passed over for a job than for an employer to fire someone or pass over an applicant. Most employers, if a single position goes unfilled for six months it may be annoying and even costly but they’ll be basically fine. Employee out of work for six months? Very different story.
This really depends on where you're living. I'd guess that in very few countries firing an employee has no consequence for the employer. Generally, there's an actual financial cost in firing (compensation), plus the loss generated by the lack of manpower later, and the money lost on-boarding a replacement.
We rig the game when the kids are in school, and brainwash them even further when they get to college. Most of the internships my college promotes are actually illegal, and they keep bringing this recruiter around who keeps trying to tell us that we deserve minimum wage when we get out and that he'll just find someone else if any of us have a problem with that.
I guess I should clarify that all of the anti-worker propaganda I've been fed at college has been in the comp/sci and botany departments. Havent tried other tracks, but those are the ones where they really try to tell us that our education isnt valuable.
Your generation is probably the most highly educated in history - so yes, your education is less valuable than at any other time in history (i.e. supply/demand)
True. Most likely, over-education is less valuable now. An undergraduate engineering degree is still highly valuable while a liberal arts masters degree is arguably less valuable than the loans taken out to procure it.
In some sense, it’s unfair that everyone isn’t automatically expert at everything.
Getting good at managing your career isn’t very hard as things go. You can get substantial results by focusing on it for 1 hour per week over a year. And it’s not mainly that you’ll make more money — work will get more interesting and fun, and you’ll have more impact in thr world.
You are fortunate that the problems with modern software shops happen to align with the types of problems you can deal with.
For example, there aren't plenty of companies with quiet offices searching for developers. When I tell my manager "The noise in this new open floorplan office is killing my productivity", they say "OK, well, that's not going to change", and then we spend the rest of the hour rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. (Or they remind me of how they're spending money on me, in other ways I don't care about at all.) If I said "Hey fix your shit" they'd say "Every other software company in town has open floorplans too now -- good luck with that".
If a company does not have a culture of addressing developers quality of worklife issues (developer: the noises are killing my productivity. manager: well, we aren't changing our office setup to accommodate people who want it to be quiet ) then it is extremely unlikely that the company would allow remote.
Surely there are other options your manager and you can look at that fall between having an open floorplan and not having one. Get them to buy you noise cancelling headphones or something.
Noise canceling headphones don't do a good job of canceling the kinds of noise you hear in an office environment, though (conversations, ringtones, people across the room suddenly erupting in loud laughter).
I work in an open floor plan where managers frequently shout and have long conversations next to me with each other.
I use a mix of brain.fm (or similar white noise) and apple AirPods pro. As a combination, they work surprisingly well at blocking out enough noise to let me remain focused on whatever problem.
Just be conscious of the effect long-term exposure to constant loud noise can have on your hearing, even if you're able to concentrate. Drowning out loud sound with louder sound is not particularly good for your ears.
mynoise.net does a pretty good "busy cafe/restaurant" noise generator with burbling unintelligible voices that drown out conversations. I used it extensively when directing an animation series where the production staff insisted on having Heart FM playing loudly the whole day.
> "Hey, fix your shit or I'll have a new job next week that pays more from day 1, and you will search the next 6 months for my replacement and train that person another 6 months before (s)he's somewhat productive."
Yes, and with that attitude you are absolutely welcome to.
Difficulty of replacing developers depends very much on where you are (I suspect, and amongst a welter of other factors), and where I live it doesn't take 6 months nor anything like it.
It also doesn't take 6 months for people to become "somewhat productive". I've been nigh-on shocked to see all of our devs making useful contributions to our systems and services (many of which are not straightforward to work with) within a couple of weeks, and finding their way around pretty handily after 2 - 3 months.
I agree that you shouldn't go into every 1:1 begging and scraping for your job - that sounds awful - but, at the other end of the spectrum, neither do I think it's wise to go in with a massively inflated sense of entitlement.
Both you and your manager would be best served by acting like reasonable human beings with well-developed social skills.
Only in high end fields: tech, finance, engineering. Even then, it really just depends. I've worked at a lot of companies (I have terrible job loyalty) and I see what's good and healthy and what's not. I've only lost two jobs and both of them were places where people were expected to work 70+ hours a week. I could get let go and be fine, because I'm an in-demand engineer with lots of experience. But I'm in a very unique position; one most people are not in.
Whoa at the work hours, if you don't mind me asking, just curious to know what kind of work entails such long hours? Also I'm assuming it paid equally well for the time devoted to it, frankly the hours itself is a big turn off regardless of the quality of work.
A lot of tech startups and game dev companies work at this pace. People really need their jobs, or are sure they will be millionaires. Long ago I worked at a game company where one of the perks was free burritos at midnight.
How would your response change if the shortage of "good" developers stops? Or when they decide 2 "bad" but cheap developers cost less than 1 "good" one?
Or when your constraints change as you age and develop your private life. Programming jobs are plenty until e.g. you have a spouse and a kid to provide for, making your salary demands higher and relocation more difficult.
I hope it would not. I'd rather spend my time becoming better and still have ability to choose good place, then learn how to act 'right' just to keep my job.
First of all, if your manager is any good, (s)he will already have replacements in the pipeline, given the musical chairs nature of the industry.
Second, why aren't you already at a different job that pays you more instead of hanging that over your manager's head?
Third, don't underestimate how many other good developers that are out there, looking for the next job. It might not require 6 months of training for the next person, who could be as competent, or even more than the person that's being replaced.
I'm not sure what kind of company you work for, but 6 months of training is ridiculously long, unless there is a lot of institutional knowledge that's siloed amongst a small subset of employees - which should never happen in the first place, if your manager was any good.
> Second, why aren't you already at a different job that pays you more instead of hanging that over your manager's head?
There's also value in being able to work on the same project over time and see it evolve, feel like you own features, etc.
There's value in staying at the same company because you don't have to move, change your commute, switch healthcare providers / doctors, etc.
I think the attitude of "well, just quit, don't make any attempt to see if you can improve the current place" is toxic. Yes, there are some places you really should quit. No, the fact that you could quit and make another $10k, but having to switch doctors and find a new daycare along the new commute, and potentially work on things less aligned with your interests... Those things have value too.
Most developers aren't mercenaries trying to find the most money. We're looking for a balance of a lot of money and a good work environment and work/projects we like.
Depends on the company. Some still want to grow at a faster pace than they can hire.
> instead of hanging that over your manager's head
You are correct that this in not actually something you say to your manager. This is the thought that should be in your head. The real conversation needs to be constructive.
> 6 months of training is ridiculously long
I didn't mean training, I meant "to become as productive as you". My point is that the employee has the advantage on new hires: you instantly get full pay, but still need to ramp up your productivity.
> This is the thought that should be in your head. The real conversation needs to be constructive.
Agreed on that. If your manager isn't doing his/her job, or just wants quick outs of 1:1s, that conversation needs to be had instead of the status quo
On training, I have seen companies where it just takes a few months for a new hire to get anything done. Silo-ed institutional knowledge, spaghetti codebases, too much emphasis on processes and meetings, no proper new-hire onboarding, etc. Those are usually red flags. But yes, I wouldn't expect a new hire to be completely as productive as a seasoned employee even after a few months, but should be enough to get going.
> I'm not sure what kind of company you work for, but 6 months of training is ridiculously long, unless there is a lot of institutional knowledge that's siloed amongst a small subset of employees - which should never happen in the first place, if your manager was any good.
At Google there's an expectation that you won't be 'productive' for 6 months after joining, though that's not surprising considering how different everything is.
That really means 6 months till you are completely ramped up, at full productivity. If you are actually not productive, not producing anything of value, for 6 months...
>As a programmer myself, I'm in this great position where there is a shortage of good developers, and plenty of companies searching for good developers.
That's why you/we can afford to view the world that way. For many positions, especially those that don't require specific technical skills or other aspects where demand outstrips supply, servility is the only important trait.
I agree. But in that case you still have the option to re-educate and move into a more lucrative job market. As long as you are either smart or handy, there are very good jobs out there.
For example plumbers here in Belgium make a lot of money because of the high demand.
I think the approach you take comes down to your individual characteristics - personality and circumstances - how meek you are, how much you voice your opinion, whether you can risk speaking out or conversely can’t/won’t risk losing or disrupting the steady income stream. In the past i’ve been both of these enployees at different times mostly due to different levels of self confidence and frustration with the company.
But the point about “know where you work before you open your mouth” is wise I think.
> “I'm going in there with "Hey, fix your shit or I'll have a new job next week that pays more from day 1, and you will search the next 6 months for my replacement and train that person another 6 months before (s)he's somewhat productive."”
What a strange, toxic way to look at the world.
We’re just people! People who are hopefully working at a company that has a mission they believe in, who are trying to do the best work they can.
Sometimes a manager sucks, sometimes the employee sucks, but there’s never a single person to blame, nor is it up to a single person to “figure shit out.”
The more people realize that we’re all in this together, the better.
And if you’re jaded about thinking in that way, you’re just not at the right company.
A friend of mine once told his manager: "you are not my boss, you are my employer. My boss is at home" (referring to his wife). I guess he has the same mentality as me :)
I'm self-employed, and as such, my work relationship is legally required not to be a boss -> servant relationship. My client is my customer, not my boss.
I call these “waiter questions” and only once I became a manager, discovered how poorly they invite feedback. And as with, “how’s the meal?”, it is basically an invitation to lie, unless there is something so totally egregious that it probably should’ve been raised by interrupt not polling.
My 1:1s became much more fruitful with directed, goal-seeking questions, or even a retro format.
As others have touched on, frequency matters. Monthly contact isn’t just a little bit distant, it’s enough time for serious issues to fester.
Newbie managers would be wise to recognise that they are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. Enable the talent, don’t boss it,
>>My 1:1s became much more fruitful with directed, goal-seeking questions, or even a retro format.
This is why every role in a company is an individual contributor role to some extent.
You must be direct in asking what should you do to go from X to Y, than just merely talking in abstract terms like 'Performance' or 'Hard Work'.
The biggest lie ever told in all this is that management must recognize work and talent. If the world of marketing and advertisements has taught us anything at all. No one appreciates, or recognizes anything. A case must be built actively to ensure your case is high up the stack for the bosses to consider.
As a current cog in a 100k+ international corp, I could not disagree more with this post.
Firstly, did you read the actual list? They're not radical, boat-shaking questions. They're just honest, targeted, practically useful queries. They benefit your manager, and they benefit the machine.
I'll frame one of the Qs in the context you've described (cynical cog in faceless machine) to show what I mean:
- How can I make your days more fulfilling?
Translation:
- As you're unlikely to get fulfilment from the product of your work or from thinking about our "corporate values", what other aspects of corporate life can we work on to make working here more palatable? (and maybe reduce attrition)
I may be going full depressed dystopian cynic here, but surely it's not hard to see the potential for mutual benefit in targetted questions?
I mean, the alternative is to quit and find something fulfilling. If that's not an option, the above seems reasonable.
I think OP is merely pointing out that in the majority of corporate environments upper management isn't really looking for feedback or how to improve etc. Any thoughts or suggestions for improvements will oftentimes not be shared upward, because of the risk it will be viewed as a criticism and make your manager appear weak.
That doesn't mean it's right. It's just what happens in the wild
Agreed with parent to take 1 on 1’s lightly as just an avenue of conversation. If there is an adjustment you’d like to see, try to suggest it constructively and you don’t have to wait for a 1 on 1 to do so.
That said, the “big list” here is directed towards managers and, for a manager, picking out one of these questions now and then as a conversation starter could uncover issues or opportunities that you could address early and make someone just a little happier at work.
If my manager asked me all these questions every 1-on-1, I would be always feel unprepared and would shun future 1-1s. Sure one or two, to get the conversation going is ok.
The last thing I'd want is for 1-on-1's to start feeling like open-ended CS interviews where you know the question they just asked is one they pulled from a list verbatim and they just want a good enough answer from you.
I'd rather have the meeting feel like a conversation with direction and not a questionnaire.
I find myself doing those exact kind of 1:1s with my reports and I HATE it. This at least provides, I think, maybe some inspiration on some better questions to ask.
It's perfectly fine to have nothing much to discuss in a monthly 1-to-1. Those meetings are just to set time aside to discuss and to give the opportunity to raise issues or give feedback.
The key, though, is to build trust first. If team members do not feel that they can trust their managers then they won't be open.
I've found that chatting about random, non-work related, things also helps building trust and rapport. Try to make the 1-to-1 an informal chat, not a formal 'interview'.
My one on one conversations with my boss became significantly more productive when we started just going and grabbing a cup of coffee for them.
It's a more social setting, which puts you on footing to actually have a conversation.
The previous six years to that, my boss would ask the same canned questions and I would give the same canned answers. The whole process would take about three minutes and nothing would be gained by anyone.
It's the same with my manager. People don't tell him what they really think, because by experience we know it's not going to have a positive impact, and might negatively impact our raises.
Did you even read those 1 0n 1 questions? They couldn't be used to identify under performers, they're "geared" towards ensuring your manager is being helpful and that you have what you need.
I habitually complain in my 1 on 1s because it gets me what I need. Nobody has ever given me a hard time, and while doing this I went from just another cog, to irreplaceable and pivotal to the companies strategy. I've also been promoted twice in a year while doing this.
I use my weekly 1:1 to brainstorm, sometimes to vent, and to discuss anything on the near horizon that affects my job, my pay, or life in MegaCorp generally.
I do not use it to rock the boat. Advice to younger employees: if you want to rock the boat, do it when your manager is not taking notes. :-)
(And I have a really good manager, so not assuming any malice anywhere.)
I'm not a people person. For me doing 1-on-1's when I have teams reporting to me are helpful because it's very easy for me to just forget to ask questions about how people are doing. At times I've varied sets of questions to prevent people who'd otherwise not speak up from letting me know what was really happening. Sometimes that has been the difference between losing valuable people and keeping them happy.
I don't think anyone should turn it into some sort of lengthy interrogation, but turning it into something that people can't just give the same non-answers to every week or month unless there genuinely is nothing that can be improved on can be useful.
I'd see this as a list you can pick from if you're the kind of person who find it hard to just organically elicit genuine feedback from people. A lot of technical managers in particular get very little support in how to grow into management roles; even worse in startups where there often aren't anyone to turn to for support at early stages. Add on some social awkwardness for some of us, and it can be tough. The irony is that for me at least, having a few prepared questions makes me feel less need for them - they're a useful fallback option if I run out of things to talk about, but knowing I have them makes it easier to just talk.
I really see that big list as just ideas to think about. I don't think just because it's there, the person is going to wreak havoc. (But it is a good point to say "hey, there's these questions here. Don't go nuts thinking you SHOULD ask all these questions")
In my case, everything could be good with the manager but I just bring up interesting topics for me to learn more from the manager.
Sounds like a horrible way to do a 1-on-1. I understand that you may not care and that may work, but the problem with a lot of companies is the lack of communication perpetrated by this. Sometimes this is the only opportunity to really inquire and ask questions about what's going on. And unless you've been solving the same problems and doing the same job for years, you're not really taking advantage of the time and neither is the manager.
I see it as part of my job to do my part to improve the work environment. That includes identifying and addressing problems when I see them.
The people who should be laid off are the people who create the problems, not the ones who identify the problems and want to fix them. A good employer knows this, and will appreciate people who want to improve the company. If they fire me for speaking up, then good riddance. I'm probably better off somewhere else.
If you have grievousness with your work environment, as a good employee you should make yourself heard. How you deliver that grievousness to your boss or upper management is on you. If you end up getting fired or let go for doing it in the right manner, maybe it's for the best anyways.
Sounds like a sad place to work at. I always find 1:1 as great chances to push for things that are convenient both for ourselves and for the company as a whole.
This is basically learned helplessness - the idea that you're powerless to change your own situation for the better. I suspect it happens to most of us, but yes, it's holding humanity back in many ways.
I don't want someone in a similar situation like I was to get inspired by lists like these and go into their next 1on1 wrecking havoc with the status quo. When you, your manager, his manager and the next guy up are just cogs in a machine churning for years through the same kinds of faceless conglomerates - you either shut up and put up or end up on someone's Excel spreadsheet highlighted in yellow. Then during the next round of layoffs (you know they're coming) the yellow cogs will be replaced with fresh green ones and you'll be out on the street cramming algorithm questions all over again and interviewing with A.I. HR filters for the next 6months. Understand where you work before opening your mouth, people ;)