The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones

Re:The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones by codingdave on Monday January 31, 2022 @04:27PM (#30154674)

I've had both good and bad 1:1s, yet I still find them to be quite effective. Because even when they feel like a waste, they serve a purpose - to maintain the habit of talking to your boss. That way, when something does come up worth talking about, you just do.

I have little to say to my current boss most weeks. I just keep my platform running independently, so he gets to trust me to do so and ignore it. It is a good working relationship. Our weekly calls are 5 minutes long, just a quick check in and move on. Until they are not - and then we raise concerns, talk them through, fix them, and go back to the regularly scheduled program.

Each individual 1:1 is fairly worthless. But the habit makes all the difference in the long run.

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Re:The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones by ozim on Monday January 31, 2022 @04:39PM (#30154854)

I think that is what a lot of people miss also on other things.

Daily stand-ups are mostly also not really that useful - but getting team together so they are used to at least 15-20 mins talking to each other I believe has benefits anyway.

The same with writing unit tests, I see my team is writing too many useless unit tests. But then if we have habit of writing tests - important tests will get written as well. If we would skip tests and say that we write only "important ones" then I saw that no tests were written in period where we had such an approach.

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Re:The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones by jraph on Monday January 31, 2022 @05:05PM (#30155251)

> Daily stand-ups are mostly also not really that useful

This is my feeling. Wouldn't a weekly meeting where we don't need to stand up be sufficient for this?

I guess it depends on the people and how they function. And how the team communicates throughout the day or the week.

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Re:The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones by Wiseacre on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @01:53AM (#30159412)

My team's daily stand up is incredibly useful. If we didn't find them useful we would have no problem moving them to 2 or 3 times a week. YMMV but as a team lead I hate taking up more of people's time than necessary.

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Re:The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones by ozim on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @03:10AM (#30159845)

I think nowadays when we have video call everyone is sitting anyway. So you know maybe you can cheat :) no one will notice if you add background.

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