5 ms·

One on ones can also screw over employees if they say the wrong thing. Ever notice how management usually wants regular one on ones, but employees don't? They d

by xyzzy4 11y ago

One on ones can also screw over employees if they say the wrong thing. Ever notice how management usually wants regular one on ones, but employees don't? They damage the quality of life for the employee because they must have a risky conversation every two weeks. Reputations can take months or years to create, but only minutes to destroy. Many engineers just want to get work done instead of having politically correct conversations to prevent the loss of future bonuses or promotions.

infecto 11y ago
I can only speak from and engineers view but my hope is that I have a good enough relationship with my manager that we can have an open dialogue. You should also have pretty wide berth in what you can say, even if the complaints or comments are unjustified, sometimes people need to vent. If I was scared to vent to my manager I would be looking for a new job.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  Many managers could interpret it as a bad attitude or lack of motivation. As an engineer, I don't like having a financially risky conversation every week or two weeks. There's too many variables and ways to screw up.
  - ogreveins 11y ago
    Being in that kind of environment is stressful. If you can't trust the person above you to have your back you're going it alone. I hate working in places you have to feel unreasonably guarded.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      Isn't this the norm outside of the Silicon Valley bubble? Maybe everyone I know (including myself) all just happen to have worked for shitty companies all our careers, but I don't know of any company where I would be comfortable "venting" to my manager.
      - jevanish 11y ago
        This is probably why: - Only 30% of employees are engaged - 50% of employees have left a job to get away from a manager - 25% of Millennials plan to quit their job in the next year. Unfortunately, HR is who watches over these issues and are totally disconnected from the root problem (bad management issues). They focus on compliance, lawsuits, and stability. Usually their org is small too, so they have no idea what it's like to have 10 direct reports and constant pressure to ship.
  - eropple 11y ago
    I think it depends on where you are and what the market looks like. The only time I felt at all hesitant about shooting straight with my manager was my first job out of college when I didn't know any better. In every subsequent job, I had no fear of unemployment, and without that fear 1:1's became a very enjoyable experience. I could be honest, and that begets honesty in return, and when I was managing people I paid that forward.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      You know what puts the fear of unemployment into you? A sudden bout of unexpected unemployment.
      - eropple 11y ago
        Been there. I was your-services-are-no-longer-required at a job in 2013; that's what precipitated my career pivot into devops/platform infrastructure. I was out of work for about eight weeks, five of which were by choice (and my new company paid me a significant bonus to start that early). That said, yes, the notion of "hey, I could get fired for this" did sometimes enter my head afterwards, but I never feared it, because I knew I had options.
- twoquestions 11y ago
  In all seriousness, what do you do that you're so secure with your manager that you have no fear of getting fired for saying or implying the wrong thing? Every place I've ever worked at groans at the expense of people, and will use every means available to reduce that cost.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    It seems we've had very different professional experiences (not a dig at you, seriously). Most of the places I've worked I have never felt like I needed to bite my tongue, and the couple places where I did, I burned out of quickly because they were such toxic environments. I'm secure with my manager because the culture of the workplace isn't toxic, and we have aligned goals, and so the 1-on-1 meetings are a good place to discuss issues. We all want to ship product, and so bringing up things that might compromise that shared goal is important. That said, I have a particular bit of privilege - I have no children or family to support. My finances are excellent and I can support a very long period of unemployment if needed, and I work in a niche that is in-demand where I'd be able to have a new job in the order of hours or days if I were unceremoniously fired. I also keep my professional networks up to date and I interview well. All of these combine such that I'm basically never stressed about getting fired. If they fire me, shrug. They will likely have a rougher time finding my replacement than I will finding a new job.
    - manyxcxi 11y ago
      To add on to this, if what you are saying is constructive, meant to be meaningful/helpful, and is true- then what fears of getting fired should you have? Even if you're just bitching about some thing/person/policy that gets on your nerves- if what you're saying isn't slanderous and is true, why should you fear repercussion? If being candid with your boss means you have to worry about your job, you would probably be happier elsewhere.
- jevanish 11y ago
  This chart says it all: To be engaged at work you have to have a trusting relationship with your manager... https://getlighthouse.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Gallup-rapport-engagement.png https://getlighthouse.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ga... (Source: Gallup State of the American summary: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/gallup-employee-engagement-survey-managers/ https://getlighthouse.com/blog/gallup-employee-engagement-su...)
eitally 11y ago
Employees often don't want regular 1:1s because their managers suck, not because 1:1s aren't a useful instrument. Even if you consider the primary role of managers (per another active thread today) to be clearing obstacles and empowering doers to get things done, that by itself is an excellent justification for regular, personal meetings. I'm sorry you feel the way you do. You must have been burned in the past, or known people who were. That's too bad, and I hope you voted with your feet and found a better manager to work with.
s3r3nity 11y ago
I may be in the minority here, but I love 1x1's both as a manager AND employee. 1) I think fast, direct, and consistently timed feedback is crucial to developing myself professionally. Rather than waiting until the semi-annual performance review where everything can come at once and possibly surprise me (either in a good way or bad,) I'd rather have regular measurements and course corrections as necessary. 2) I also really appreciate 1x1's with mentors to learn about how to get to the next level and/or understand broader context with an outside perspective vs. my direct manager or reports. 3) I can understand your point on saying the "wrong thing" -- certain cultures might be a bit more politically charged than others. I try to find mentors or other "work friends" that allow me to have free-roam discussions without concerns of judgement. Some might say this should be your significant other / non-work friends, but I think someone with context of your company/industry would provide better feedback and challenge you a bit -- rather than just provide positive validation that what you're saying is always right.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  Mentors are different than managers. Mentors generally do not have direct influence on your career path.
pjc50 11y ago
I think if you're that terrified of having a conversation then something is disastrously wrong in your company culture anyway.
- dbcurtis 11y ago
  I have to second that. If you don't get value out of the 1:1 with your boss, and your boss doesn't get value from you during a 1:1, you need a different boss. I always viewed one of the biggest values of 1:1's is that people on my team could educate me about things I was too distracted/busy to notice or keep up with. It's wickedly hard for a technical manager to both manage and to keep up with the technology the team is using. I always tried to use a part of the 1:1 time to play student and learn whatever my team member thought was important for me to know. Likewise, when managing up during my 1:1 with my higher-level manager, I tried to make sure the most exciting new ideas bubbled up. One of the best way to weed out bad managers once a company reaches a certain scale is a simple two part system: 1) Make it easier to get an internal hiring req than an external one, and oversubscribe the total headcount budget by a few percent purely with internal hiring reqs. (Guarantee hole flow.) 2) Establish an immutable policy that a losing manager can never block a transfer, ever, for more than a couple of weeks of clean-up/hand-off. Bad managers are then easy to spot by the vacuum that surrounds them.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  That may be true, but it doesn't really change anything. Not everyone has the ability to switch jobs on a whim.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  That's hyperbole on both sides, both the "terrified" part (implying an employee shaking in fear before their 1-1) and "disastrously wrong" (a sweeping write-off of this multidimensional thing called "culture"). Simple truth is a lot of people don't like them, they induce stress for a number of reasons (such as employees' natural instinct to want to "look good" in front of their bosses), and bad 1-1s are often just another annoyance at work -- not a disaster, just not too useful.
rifung 11y ago
I disagree but I don't feel like you deserve to be downvoted for having an opinion that's based off your own experience and also sympathize with you for not having had a chance to work with a manager you feel you can trust. As an employee, I will say I actually really enjoy one on ones! In fact I think I enjoy them much more than my manager does. I feel like it's a time when I, even as a low level employee, can let the manager know about things that he/she isn't able to see because he/she isn't in the trenches anymore. Frankly I'm very lucky because I really like my manager; he's the main reason I joined this company. I feel like if I have personal issues that may interfere with work I can talk to him and he'd understand. Personally I find getting and providing direct feedback is much better than constantly living in fear you're doing something wrong. Plus, sometimes having one on ones can be motivating when your manager tells you about how someone else in the company appreciated your work.
BurningFrog 11y ago
One reason employees don't want these conversations is that they have a shitty manager. But it can also be that they're a shitty employee. The chance of "saying the wrong thing" is much bigger if you are in fact the wrong person for the job and/or team.
- jevanish 11y ago
  This is probably why Netflix gives a "generous severance package" to people that don't work out. Make it easy to remove bad fits, whether it's the manager or employee.
cookiecaper 11y ago
I'm disappointed that you're getting downvoted because I think you're touching on something really important, which is that 1:1s, like everything else in corporate life, have an inherently heavy atmosphere to them. The fact that you're cognizant of this shows that you have some experience under your belt. A good manager will do what he can to ease the situation, but the arrangement of the meeting is substantial and can certainly be risky. However, while recognizing some flaws that are basically inherent in contemporary corporate structure, I believe 1:1s are extremely important. I think one of the single biggest problems organizations have is that they don't regularly check-in and explicitly solicit feedback. You get so much valuable intelligence this way, even if you're aware of the atmosphere and the incentives that loom over these meetings. The isolation and lack of data really hurt managerial efforts. This is compounded as you go up the chain. I think that upper management should perform 1:1s all the way down every 3-6 months. This is basically checking middle management's work, something which rarely happens, and it provides the essential pieces of data that get obscured as information travels up the ladder.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  I'm also disappointed to see the downvotes the parent poster is getting. It certainly adds to the conversation. Most places I've worked, a 1:1 with your boss appearing on your calendar meant you screwed something up, and you need to be very careful to make sure you don't say anything career-limiting.
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    If one on ones aren't normally scheduled, then seeing one popup is definitely cause for anxiety. If the company or manager sets a regular schedule for them, then it shouldn't be cause for pants shitting- unless of course you royally screwed up at some point in recent history. A long time ago I royally effed up on a project I was working on. It was a Sharepoint project, a deployment went sideways, and I frankly wasn't very good with Sharepoint yet. It lead to some temporary data loss and downtime but I was able to rollback and restore. Anyway, the problems were my fault but my good habits prevented it from being a complete disaster. It was a highly visible fuck up though. I came in to my one on one, for the first time ever, scared that I was at least going to get an ass chewing. My boss took the time straight out of the gate to praise my good habits for saving the day, and trying to figure out how we could've avoided the issues I caused. The way he approached the meeting completely re-sold me on him as a manager and the company I was working for.
sportanova 11y ago
Totally agree. Even if you like your manager, there's still a huge risk of saying the wrong thing and being labeled a problem child. I'm worried that 1-1s are becoming the next Agile - just another process used to increase control under the guise of empowerment
- jevanish 11y ago
  This is why it's important to talk about what to do in them. Bad managers make them status updates and talk about projects. Good ones get into feedback, coaching, fixing problems, growth and development, etc. Coincidentally, this is why I started a company, GetLighthouse.com to tackle this and the general problem of bad people management practices. It's amazing what a little structure, best practices, and automating can do to improve things for a manager and their team.
  - sportanova 11y ago
    Sounds terrible, but good luck! "feedback, coaching, fixing problems, growth and development" are the kinds of things that I definitely don't trust with 90% of companies, so if it becomes standard, we're all be worse off

by xyzzy4 11y ago

infecto 11y ago

I can only speak from and engineers view but my hope is that I have a good enough relationship with my manager that we can have an open dialogue. You should also have pretty wide berth in what you can say, even if the complaints or comments are unjustified, sometimes people need to vent. If I was scared to vent to my manager I would be looking for a new job.

xyzzy4 11y ago
Many managers could interpret it as a bad attitude or lack of motivation. As an engineer, I don't like having a financially risky conversation every week or two weeks. There's too many variables and ways to screw up.
- ogreveins 11y ago
  Being in that kind of environment is stressful. If you can't trust the person above you to have your back you're going it alone. I hate working in places you have to feel unreasonably guarded.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    Isn't this the norm outside of the Silicon Valley bubble? Maybe everyone I know (including myself) all just happen to have worked for shitty companies all our careers, but I don't know of any company where I would be comfortable "venting" to my manager.
    - jevanish 11y ago
      This is probably why: - Only 30% of employees are engaged - 50% of employees have left a job to get away from a manager - 25% of Millennials plan to quit their job in the next year. Unfortunately, HR is who watches over these issues and are totally disconnected from the root problem (bad management issues). They focus on compliance, lawsuits, and stability. Usually their org is small too, so they have no idea what it's like to have 10 direct reports and constant pressure to ship.
- eropple 11y ago
  I think it depends on where you are and what the market looks like. The only time I felt at all hesitant about shooting straight with my manager was my first job out of college when I didn't know any better. In every subsequent job, I had no fear of unemployment, and without that fear 1:1's became a very enjoyable experience. I could be honest, and that begets honesty in return, and when I was managing people I paid that forward.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    You know what puts the fear of unemployment into you? A sudden bout of unexpected unemployment.
    - eropple 11y ago
      Been there. I was your-services-are-no-longer-required at a job in 2013; that's what precipitated my career pivot into devops/platform infrastructure. I was out of work for about eight weeks, five of which were by choice (and my new company paid me a significant bonus to start that early). That said, yes, the notion of "hey, I could get fired for this" did sometimes enter my head afterwards, but I never feared it, because I knew I had options.
twoquestions 11y ago
In all seriousness, what do you do that you're so secure with your manager that you have no fear of getting fired for saying or implying the wrong thing? Every place I've ever worked at groans at the expense of people, and will use every means available to reduce that cost.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  It seems we've had very different professional experiences (not a dig at you, seriously). Most of the places I've worked I have never felt like I needed to bite my tongue, and the couple places where I did, I burned out of quickly because they were such toxic environments. I'm secure with my manager because the culture of the workplace isn't toxic, and we have aligned goals, and so the 1-on-1 meetings are a good place to discuss issues. We all want to ship product, and so bringing up things that might compromise that shared goal is important. That said, I have a particular bit of privilege - I have no children or family to support. My finances are excellent and I can support a very long period of unemployment if needed, and I work in a niche that is in-demand where I'd be able to have a new job in the order of hours or days if I were unceremoniously fired. I also keep my professional networks up to date and I interview well. All of these combine such that I'm basically never stressed about getting fired. If they fire me, shrug. They will likely have a rougher time finding my replacement than I will finding a new job.
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    To add on to this, if what you are saying is constructive, meant to be meaningful/helpful, and is true- then what fears of getting fired should you have? Even if you're just bitching about some thing/person/policy that gets on your nerves- if what you're saying isn't slanderous and is true, why should you fear repercussion? If being candid with your boss means you have to worry about your job, you would probably be happier elsewhere.
jevanish 11y ago
This chart says it all: To be engaged at work you have to have a trusting relationship with your manager... https://getlighthouse.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Gallup-rapport-engagement.png https://getlighthouse.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ga... (Source: Gallup State of the American summary: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/gallup-employee-engagement-survey-managers/ https://getlighthouse.com/blog/gallup-employee-engagement-su...)

eitally 11y ago

Employees often don't want regular 1:1s because their managers suck, not because 1:1s aren't a useful instrument. Even if you consider the primary role of managers (per another active thread today) to be clearing obstacles and empowering doers to get things done, that by itself is an excellent justification for regular, personal meetings. I'm sorry you feel the way you do. You must have been burned in the past, or known people who were. That's too bad, and I hope you voted with your feet and found a better manager to work with.

s3r3nity 11y ago

I may be in the minority here, but I love 1x1's both as a manager AND employee. 1) I think fast, direct, and consistently timed feedback is crucial to developing myself professionally. Rather than waiting until the semi-annual performance review where everything can come at once and possibly surprise me (either in a good way or bad,) I'd rather have regular measurements and course corrections as necessary. 2) I also really appreciate 1x1's with mentors to learn about how to get to the next level and/or understand broader context with an outside perspective vs. my direct manager or reports. 3) I can understand your point on saying the "wrong thing" -- certain cultures might be a bit more politically charged than others. I try to find mentors or other "work friends" that allow me to have free-roam discussions without concerns of judgement. Some might say this should be your significant other / non-work friends, but I think someone with context of your company/industry would provide better feedback and challenge you a bit -- rather than just provide positive validation that what you're saying is always right.

st3v3r 11y ago
Mentors are different than managers. Mentors generally do not have direct influence on your career path.

pjc50 11y ago

I think if you're that terrified of having a conversation then something is disastrously wrong in your company culture anyway.

dbcurtis 11y ago
I have to second that. If you don't get value out of the 1:1 with your boss, and your boss doesn't get value from you during a 1:1, you need a different boss. I always viewed one of the biggest values of 1:1's is that people on my team could educate me about things I was too distracted/busy to notice or keep up with. It's wickedly hard for a technical manager to both manage and to keep up with the technology the team is using. I always tried to use a part of the 1:1 time to play student and learn whatever my team member thought was important for me to know. Likewise, when managing up during my 1:1 with my higher-level manager, I tried to make sure the most exciting new ideas bubbled up. One of the best way to weed out bad managers once a company reaches a certain scale is a simple two part system: 1) Make it easier to get an internal hiring req than an external one, and oversubscribe the total headcount budget by a few percent purely with internal hiring reqs. (Guarantee hole flow.) 2) Establish an immutable policy that a losing manager can never block a transfer, ever, for more than a couple of weeks of clean-up/hand-off. Bad managers are then easy to spot by the vacuum that surrounds them.
st3v3r 11y ago
That may be true, but it doesn't really change anything. Not everyone has the ability to switch jobs on a whim.
kzhahou 11y ago
That's hyperbole on both sides, both the "terrified" part (implying an employee shaking in fear before their 1-1) and "disastrously wrong" (a sweeping write-off of this multidimensional thing called "culture"). Simple truth is a lot of people don't like them, they induce stress for a number of reasons (such as employees' natural instinct to want to "look good" in front of their bosses), and bad 1-1s are often just another annoyance at work -- not a disaster, just not too useful.

rifung 11y ago

I disagree but I don't feel like you deserve to be downvoted for having an opinion that's based off your own experience and also sympathize with you for not having had a chance to work with a manager you feel you can trust. As an employee, I will say I actually really enjoy one on ones! In fact I think I enjoy them much more than my manager does. I feel like it's a time when I, even as a low level employee, can let the manager know about things that he/she isn't able to see because he/she isn't in the trenches anymore. Frankly I'm very lucky because I really like my manager; he's the main reason I joined this company. I feel like if I have personal issues that may interfere with work I can talk to him and he'd understand. Personally I find getting and providing direct feedback is much better than constantly living in fear you're doing something wrong. Plus, sometimes having one on ones can be motivating when your manager tells you about how someone else in the company appreciated your work.

BurningFrog 11y ago

One reason employees don't want these conversations is that they have a shitty manager. But it can also be that they're a shitty employee. The chance of "saying the wrong thing" is much bigger if you are in fact the wrong person for the job and/or team.

jevanish 11y ago
This is probably why Netflix gives a "generous severance package" to people that don't work out. Make it easy to remove bad fits, whether it's the manager or employee.

cookiecaper 11y ago

I'm disappointed that you're getting downvoted because I think you're touching on something really important, which is that 1:1s, like everything else in corporate life, have an inherently heavy atmosphere to them. The fact that you're cognizant of this shows that you have some experience under your belt. A good manager will do what he can to ease the situation, but the arrangement of the meeting is substantial and can certainly be risky. However, while recognizing some flaws that are basically inherent in contemporary corporate structure, I believe 1:1s are extremely important. I think one of the single biggest problems organizations have is that they don't regularly check-in and explicitly solicit feedback. You get so much valuable intelligence this way, even if you're aware of the atmosphere and the incentives that loom over these meetings. The isolation and lack of data really hurt managerial efforts. This is compounded as you go up the chain. I think that upper management should perform 1:1s all the way down every 3-6 months. This is basically checking middle management's work, something which rarely happens, and it provides the essential pieces of data that get obscured as information travels up the ladder.

ryandrake 11y ago
I'm also disappointed to see the downvotes the parent poster is getting. It certainly adds to the conversation. Most places I've worked, a 1:1 with your boss appearing on your calendar meant you screwed something up, and you need to be very careful to make sure you don't say anything career-limiting.
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  If one on ones aren't normally scheduled, then seeing one popup is definitely cause for anxiety. If the company or manager sets a regular schedule for them, then it shouldn't be cause for pants shitting- unless of course you royally screwed up at some point in recent history. A long time ago I royally effed up on a project I was working on. It was a Sharepoint project, a deployment went sideways, and I frankly wasn't very good with Sharepoint yet. It lead to some temporary data loss and downtime but I was able to rollback and restore. Anyway, the problems were my fault but my good habits prevented it from being a complete disaster. It was a highly visible fuck up though. I came in to my one on one, for the first time ever, scared that I was at least going to get an ass chewing. My boss took the time straight out of the gate to praise my good habits for saving the day, and trying to figure out how we could've avoided the issues I caused. The way he approached the meeting completely re-sold me on him as a manager and the company I was working for.

sportanova 11y ago

Totally agree. Even if you like your manager, there's still a huge risk of saying the wrong thing and being labeled a problem child. I'm worried that 1-1s are becoming the next Agile - just another process used to increase control under the guise of empowerment

jevanish 11y ago
This is why it's important to talk about what to do in them. Bad managers make them status updates and talk about projects. Good ones get into feedback, coaching, fixing problems, growth and development, etc. Coincidentally, this is why I started a company, GetLighthouse.com to tackle this and the general problem of bad people management practices. It's amazing what a little structure, best practices, and automating can do to improve things for a manager and their team.
- sportanova 11y ago
  Sounds terrible, but good luck! "feedback, coaching, fixing problems, growth and development" are the kinds of things that I definitely don't trust with 90% of companies, so if it becomes standard, we're all be worse off