What’s The Story With 1–1 Meetings?
Dammit Jim, I’m a software engineer I have no need of social contact!
Alternative tagline: A tale of 1–1 meetings in software engineering, the Good, the Bad, and the Ones That Should Be Avoided.
Heartbeat, Increasing Heartbeat
As a progressive and classically trained computer scientist I’m continually thrown off guard and into a kind of what must be an emotional turmoil when I get a request for a 1–1 meeting via my company calendar.
You see, during my unexpectedly long internment in the grand game of software engineering the only times I’ve been alone with someone at the workplace was either during an initial interview or whilst trying to find a clean, unchipped¹, cup in the kitchen whilst simultaneously attempting to make awkward smalltalk.
Us software types² are notoriously averse to 1–1 meetings on the basis that due to our inherent variable imposter syndrome and general tendency to introversion we often naturally assume that when booked for one we’ve done something terribly wrong and are going to immediately get the sack.
Fear and Loathing in the Meeting Room
The fear of the impending 1–1 can sometimes be allayed if it comes from anyone who’s not ‘in management’. Often, we engineers…
