Getting the most out of your 1-on-1s with engineers
When I started on the management track I realised early on that one of the secrets to keeping a high bar in engineering and retaining talent can be found in the ways you (as their manager) conduct 1-on-1s.
Firstly, let’s discuss the what and the why before we get to the how. 1–on-1s, as the wording explains, are conversations that happen between you (as the manager) and your direct report. You’d also expect to have these with your manager as well. These sessions are important as it helps with building rapport, and they provide uninterrupted time to give feedback to each other and discuss any topic with your manager.
The what and why were always pretty clear to me, but I struggled with the how. I remember in my early days, googling how to conduct 1-on-1s with your engineers; let’s face it engineers aren't always the most talkative bunch. I had instances where the engineers would cancel this session, or where we’d only have a 10-minute awkward chat, which is not great. I tried different options to switch it up a bit:
- Started using agendas where either myself or my direct report could add topics to discuss. At times, I felt like it was only me adding topics, and if I didn’t add any, it would get canceled.
- Played around with the cadence, started off with weekly, switched to bi-weekly and then I started giving the option as to what cadence my direct report would prefer. Some said monthly and some even preferred to not have them at all.
From a manager’s point of view, you can look at these signs and think, this engineer is totally disengaged. If we can’t get this going, how successful are they with other meetings/conversations they’re involved in?
After that first year, which to me was a learning curve, I started seeing common themes that would affect engineers' retention with the company, and over time I started building a tool in google sheets to help me see trends and track changes. I believe 1-on-1s are two-way conversations, yes, we want to see that the engineer is giving value to the company but the engineer also wants to feel acknowledged, motivated and engaged. One-way conversations will result in either a disgruntled engineer or an over-pleasing manager and both are unproductive.
These are the main themes covered in the tool:
😀 Happiness
How happy is the engineer right now at the company? What factors contribute to this number? It’s a very generic indicator, that immediately lets you know if something is wrong or not. Normally the factors mentioned here tend to go into the other themes below.
🔥 Pressure
How much pressure does the engineer feel right now? It’s healthy that the engineer feels a good amount of pressure, it keeps them motivated and challenged, I’d worry if pressure is really high month after month (as it leads to burnout) or if there is completely no pressure at all month after month (means the engineer is not challenged enough). It’s normal to go through a short period of each, but seeing really high or very low scores here month after month might mean there is an underlying issue.
🧑🏻💻 Career Clarity
There are two different angles to this theme, it really depends on how the engineer wants to go with it and it also depends on what they’re going through at the time:
1. Actual career progression — do you know where you want to grow? Do you have the right tools/plans to get there?
2. Productivity — do you know what you need to do in your role? Do you have the right tools to do what’s expected?
👌 Clarity from Management
Management could be me, could be other managers within the engineering organisation, could also be other management from other teams and it could also be the leadership/exec team. Do you have enough visibility on what’s happening and the context of why? Do you feel confused?
Instructions on how to use the tool
Firstly, you can download the tool from here. The questions are mainly conversation starters, but in reality, the conversation can go anywhere, ultimately I would still need a number to reflect how they’re feeling about each theme. This will help me identify trends and quickly identify when something is wrong. They would need to give a number from 1 to 10 without choosing the number 7, it’s a technique that helps with eliminating ambiguity (some light reading about this). I also take down comments for really high or low scores or just some general comments on the score itself using Google Sheet’s comments feature.
I would use one sheet for each team and create different tabs for each engineer. For the first time doing this with a direct report, I would share my screen so they can understand the purpose of this, and then for future sessions, I do this without screen sharing so they don’t get biased from their previous answers.
1-on-1s cadence
I now think doing bi-weekly 1-on-1s is the best cadence for engineers who do not have direct reports. One session would be ad-hoc and informal and the next session would use this tool. Since I’ve also held roles where I’m a manager of managers, I do weekly syncs with some (as we have a lot to cover) and try to use the tool at least once a month.
Conclusion
Through this tool, engagement got better over time:
- The engineers know what they’re getting into with this tool, they can give the questions some prior thought
- It’s a visual tool that is data-driven, which is a win-win as engineers enjoy having conversations based on data and the manager can have more concrete discussions with upper management through the use of this data.
Resources
I hope this was helpful to you, go ahead and make use of the tool however you want to, you might want to add/remove themes to adapt this to your liking. Let me know which themes you find most important to track in the comments section.
