The 1:1 Scramble

Engineering managers, including me, are lying when we say we are fully prepared for the 1:1s. The reality is that we are pressed for focus time, and it’s most likely that the EM skimmed over the 1:1 doc and hoped something would stick out to discuss.

The alternative, and I’m guilty for having used that, is — “how was your week?”. And the worst of all — “These 1:1s are yours to surface anything you want” — just reads like lack of respect for the other person’s time.

It is not intentional, but that’s what ends up happening when EMs are juggling context and running behind on their meetings.

Great 1:1s require a substantial amount of preparation — reviewing the direct and ambient signals since the past 1:1, identifying the high impact items, discussing them and coming out with a clear set of next steps.

That version is genuinely hard to reach at scale. The problem isn’t time management or EM focus. There’s not enough time to review all the direct and ambient signals, which have multiplied because of AI, to be able to lead a great 1:1.

Human focus is still bottlenecked by the human brain, even if the productivity signals have multiplied by the AI’s second/third/tertiary brain.