this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Experienced Devs

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what do you folks discuss in your weekly/monthly 1:1 with your engineering managers? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/experienced_devs
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I'm new to this weekly syncup thing with my manager and he already knows the things I work on through daily standups, the issues I've faced or things that have gone great through retros after every sprint.

This gives me little to talk about with my manager except personal goals sometimes, a bit about our lives in general, etc. I was wondering what you guys discuss and how do you make best use of this meeting?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

If you haven't I recommend reading a few books on management even if you have zero interest in going down that path. It will give you more perspective on what you should be expecting from your manager, which in turn should in turn be what you talk about during 1-on-1s. I like The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier, though it could use more focus on the 'why' instead of the 'how'.

The best manager I had used a shared private document, where he would dump important points and expected you to add bullets as things came up during the week. This "you drive the conversation" is a good approach and one I intend to use in the future.

  • What's really going on. A good manager should be aware people are inclined to present things as rosier than they are.

  • Anything you are unhappy with. They should be fighting to keep you around, and how happy you are is a key piece. The sooner they know something is wrong, the easier they can (potentially) deal with it.

    • I'm planning a career shift into an EM role, and plan on simply being upfront about the Gallup 12 points (actually 13+4). They shouldn't confine themselves to them, but if a report is ever unhappy about any of them then I absolutely want to talk about it.

  • What resources you don't have that you need to succeed.

  • What ideas you have for initiatives. New projects, tweaks to reduce pain points, so on.

  • Things from Above that you should be aware of.