As you mentioned, booking 60 mins every other (or third) week even if you don't use all the time seems like the obvious quick improvement. One thing to keep to

As you mentioned, booking 60 mins every other (or third) week even if you don't use all the time seems like the obvious quick improvement. One thing to keep to a minimum is current work status, unless there's a particular large blocker that no one has a good way through/around. Normally this would be in your team's stand-ups with the project manager who is usually not your manager in larger companies. Usually it starts with the manager asking what items I have to talk about. Time you take to collect and share these determines what you can cover that the manager didn't already have planned. One part should be uncomfortable discussions. Occasionally there will be some interaction with a team member (or usually other team) that didn't go very smoothly and the manager gets notified of it. They'll mention it to me and get both sides. Try to find a way to avoid these poor communication cases. It's natural to be defensive, but better if you can think of it as puzzle to solve without blame. Do what works. The normal feedback I get is insensitivity--I put the problem/solution first in discussions and could be blind/brutal to others' feelings (but have greatly improved through these discussions). Career development. It could be support (financial, expenses, time) to continue learning and doing things outside of your day-to-day work. Attending conferences (is that still a thing?), writing public engineering posts, books, etc. Also leveling-up. Frank open discussions of what position you're working toward, whether management or individual-contributor is the track you're interested in. Gaps in your strengths to work on and concrete things you can try to fill them. Planning. I try to get a sense of what is known in management circles in terms of company/product directions and timings. Of projects that are being considered provide feedback as to which ones you think are important long-term or urgent. Also state your preferences but don't expect them to always be assigned. Autonomy. It's amazing what you can get if you simply ask. I asked one manager about 20% time and they right away said "OK". I only really wanted 10% and even then it was still hard for me to take time off the team's work to do that much, but it's great to have it for those times where you have an idea you want to explore. The last year, I asked to be more of a technical advisor on more than one project rather than being a full member on a project team. This year I'll be an advisor first and foremost and choose how much time I spend working with various project teams. A bonus was being asked to draft up an engineering roadmap for the part of the system that I'm the most knowledgeable with. I'd been asking for autonomy to run "bottom-up" engineering originated mini-projects for a couple years and I did do some of them during Hackdays or 10% time but now it's more formalized than ad-hoc. Processes. If there's stuff that's not working well and you have some ideas for ways it could be improved. Also developer culture, if you have ideas mention them or just try starting some and see if it gets traction and mention them.