The power differential is often not nearly as pronounced as you think (this definitely becomes much more noticeable as you become more senior). Also, when I sa

The power differential is often not nearly as pronounced as you think (this definitely becomes much more noticeable as you become more senior). Also, when I say that you should be talking about your concerns and being proactive, I mean that, with my manager, 1:1s revolve around topics like me expressing concern that, as upper management pushes for senior ICs to spend more time working on company-level (as opposed to team-level) work, the more junior members of the team are getting less support from me than they should, and we talk about how to manage that, by reprioritising hiring or by pushing back on some less-important initiatives. We talk about how much babysitting our intern will require over the next few weeks and who'll handle it, and about him asking for my opinion/advice on technical topics his other teams are dealing with that smell weird and he wants a second opinion, or me asking his opinion/advice on whether I'm striking the right balance between individual contributions and supporting others. That sort of thing.