Apologies for the rant, but boy do I hate 1:1s -- maybe even more than daily stand-ups. It's the epitome of cargo-cult corporate Kool-aid†. If this article does

Apologies for the rant, but boy do I hate 1:1s -- maybe even more than daily stand-ups. It's the epitome of cargo-cult corporate Kool-aid†. If this article doesn't convince you that one-on-ones are nonsense, I don't know what will. Let's see what the author, a proponent of 1:1s, uses them on: 1) Personal habits and self-improvements Personal habits and self-improvement are (at best) tangentially related to your professional life. Are you seriously saying I should be talking to my manager about my struggles trying to go to the gym more often? About my passion for painting? Or that side-project I'm trying to get off the ground? More often than not, this seems like professional suicide. Your manager is not your friend. 2) Project management Unfortunately, this is basically status quo. Yes, most one-on-ones will devolve into PM discussions -- what's getting done, when's it getting done, what's the progress of X or Y, etc. Why one-on-ones aren't really the place to talk about these things is because I already have weekly status meetings with my team, daily stand-ups, and monthly roadmap check-ins, also with my team. So if you talk about project management in a 1:1, it's a complete waste of time. 3) Communication Author writes: "In addition to improving the form of my communication, I also learned a lot about how to improve my communication habits..." Most people learn this by high school. I mean, if you're a functioning adult at a grown-up job, some decorum, emotional intelligence, and context come with the territory. But then again, point taken: most of us do work in tech. I don't know about you, but I don't need a weekly 30-minute lesson in communication. My parents already did a pretty good job: I'm polite, responsive, and professional. 4) Alignment I'm not sure how conflict resolution does anyone any good unless all conflicting parties are present. If I've got a disagreement with X, it seems we should probably hash it out in a meeting with X (sure, maybe with a manager present), but what do I know. And wait.. you need a regular one-on-one meeting on the books for this? How often do you get in conflicts at work? 5) Uncertainties Author writes: "for instance, occasionally I’d get worried about some strategically important project elsewhere in the company because they’d forgotten to announce progress reports on it..." Why? Why are you worried about things you can't control in a company you don't own? Besides, I'm not sure how your manager -- who also might have no idea -- could ease your worries. Either way, this also seems like a waste of time for one-on-ones (and, to be frank, a non-issue altogether). †The fact that the author believes corporate-style one-on-ones are part of the key to a healthy relationship is, in my opinion, doubly offensive. A relationship is about empathy, love, care, and longevity. Besides, a one-on-one is defined by being run by your supervisor. What he was doing with his girlfriend wasn't even technically a one-on-one: there's no power asymmetry there.