One-on-Ones

Recurring one-on-one meetings are your opportunity to receive direct feedback from your manager about how you can be better as a software engineer. A common misconception among junior software engineers is that one-on-ones are meant to give status updates on their current workload. The conversations with your manager during your one-on-ones should be about career growth, not your day-to-day work. Don’t waste your opportunity by giving a status update about what you’re currently working on. You should be talking about higher level things than individual tasks.

These meetings are just between you and your boss, no one else. It’s precious time for you to be honest and talk about personal things. Try to avoid talking about things that can be discussed in the open with the rest of your team, because that’s not a good use of your time during these meetings. Your one-on-one is a chance to talk about the difficult things that you wouldn’t want to discuss in front of your teammates.

​important​ This can be awkward and uncomfortable at first, but the more open and honest you are about your feelings, the easier it gets.

Just be honest. This is your opportunity to get things off your chest. You have a direct and uninterrupted line of communication with your boss for a short period of time, so make the most of it.

While it’s your manager’s job to complete their team’s long-term goals, they also need to fix processes and protocols that are broken or are not working for their team and their direct reports. They can’t fix what they don’t know is broken, however, so it’s your job to be honest with them when something isn’t working.

So, how do you make the most of your time during your one-on-one?

Come Prepared

Set a meeting agenda ahead of time and make a point to discuss everything on the agenda. Add any topics you’d like to discuss or questions you may have for your manager. Setting an agenda ahead of time gives your manager time to prepare and get you the answers you’re looking for. They may not always have an answer themself and may need to reach out to someone else for it.

Additionally, if you know ahead of time that they are going to ask you about a specific topic or task, make sure you have all the information you need in order to give them a sufficient answer. Your boss may set their own items on the agenda, so be sure to check it to see if there’s anything that you need to prepare for.

Take Notes

You should be looking for both positive and constructive feedback during these meetings, which means you should leave the meeting with concrete things you should be working on. Be sure to write these down during the meeting so you’re able to reference them in the future. You have hundreds of decisions to make daily and multiple projects you’re responsible for, so it’s easy to forget specific things your manager asked you to do during your one-on-one conversations.

Plus, when you can look back on your notes, you can remind yourself of the things you need to work on. When your boss provides feedback, they expect you to listen and apply the feedback to your day-to-day work. Remember what you talked about, since they may bring up these areas of improvement during the next one-on-one. You want to be able to demonstrate you heard and reflected on the feedback.

Ask Specific Questions

This is your opportunity to ask for answers to specific questions you may have. “Specific” is the key word here. The goal here is to look for ways in which you can receive constructive feedback from your manager. This will help identify key areas you should focus on that will help you become a better software engineer, or things your boss is looking for in order to help you grow as an engineer.

Just doing these few things will help you get more out of your one-on-one meetings with your manager and provide you with plenty of concrete things for you to work on in order to grow as a software engineer. As long as you remember that your one-on-one time is meant to discuss personal and career growth opportunities and not status updates, you’ll be able to make the most of the personal time you have with your manager.

The more you can demonstrate to them that you listen to their feedback and apply it in your day-to-day work, the more you will show them that they can trust you and that you deserve their respect.