Comment by dahart
2 months ago
I do check, of course. As you can see from the comment you replied to, progress updates aren’t the only reason for 1:1s. But as far as updates go, questions are almost always needed, and face-to-face conversations are faster & easier for both parties, which is why we do a little bit of it each week. We cancel 1:1s when they’re not needed, and cut them short when we’re out of topics.
Why do you assume not talking by default is better? Have you considered the downsides of your instinct to save yourself a few minutes a week? One thing a lot of devs don’t seem to realize when they push back on communication is the opportunities they’re missing to affect change in the group, to convince the managers to invest in things they need or want to work on in the future, to make changes to team communication practices, and to brag about what they’ve done, how hard they’ve worked, and what they really care about.
what you are describing is a team meeting.
Yes, have them. Once a week.
I will again say that most 1:1s are BigTech cargocult rituals where you talk about your path to the "next level" or "how are you feeling this week" but it's also a lot of project management and busywork that mainly exists because the manager is in the picture. Without so many managers most of those self-sustained meetings would go away.
What I’m describing is my 1:1s. I’m describing my experience, from a management perspective. You’re describing your experience from a non-management perspective, and I’m not arguing with your experience, but your claims about other people’s experience, speculation about how many, and assumptions about why, are problematic. Some management isn’t good, that is true. Sometimes there are too many meetings. That is also true, those things sometimes happen. I’m at a ‘BigTech’ company, and the meeting rate and quality of management is not consistent or uniform company wide, it’s something you’d have to evaluate on a case by case basis; One problem with your argument is that right level of meetings is more than a lot of devs want, and just because you don’t know what management does does not mean that meetings aren’t effective. With several decades of experience, I have seen lots and lots of programmers who writhe against budgets and oversight and communication, arguing fiercely that it’s all useless and would people just leave them alone to write code. And my experience is watching some of those people go off the rails when left to their own devices. Once you start managing, or try to run your own company, you might start to see more value in communication. My own views on management absolutely changed over time; when I was young, I was speaking about it similar to how you are.