I'm a manager for two dev teams (~10 people) my breakdown per week is: * 2.5h for 30 minute 1:1s for people that want them once a week * 1.25h for 30 minutes

I'm a manager for two dev teams (~10 people) my breakdown per week is: * 2.5h for 30 minute 1:1s for people that want them once a week * 1.25h for 30 minutes 1:1s for people that want them every other week * 2.5h for team standup (15 mins/day * 2 teams) * 4h for project meetings (status or technical discussions) (4 projects at 1h a day, but might be two 30m) * 2h ceremonies a week (could be refinement/planning/retro) * 1h compliance meeting (internal or external as my department is heavily regulated) * 1h manager sync with my peer managers + director * 30m 1:1 with my boss (director) * 30m 1:1 with product * 30m 1:1 with project manager * 2h "what's next" meetings with product + staff engineers + mgmt for our rough sizing and product pipeline (not every week, but if we're in the midst of a BIG project, swap this with syncs with other parts of the org working on the same thing) That's 18h of meetings a week. Add on some recruiting/hiring meetings, ad hoc "let's get in a room and talk about it" risk discussions, random all hands, and some bursty higher level stuff (OKRs/goal setting/etc). That's >20h a week, and I do feel like people need all of those to be productive. If I cut the 1:1s, attrition rises. If I cut the status meetings, stuff gets off track and fingers start being pointed. I'm pretty aggressive when it comes to cancelling 1:1 or status meetings. We'll do a lot of "we don't need this cross team sync meeting unless someone has something they want to talk about or ask questions on". Any time I spend on people or making sure we know what we're trying to accomplish has huge ROI, IMO. FWIW: Was a former lead developer with decade plus experience hands on coding, so I believe I can bring at least some developer perspective. I have a CS degree, not a management one.