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 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.