[bzzt]

I don't doubt that it's possible. Except from having these creepy "one-on-ones" and review meetings, I have no idea what the engineering manager is even doing all day, never seen any transparency around this. "attending meetings" is what they say, but what meetings and why, I have no idea. Nothing is delivered and nothing comes out of it, I really think it's a bullshit job. "Sets tone, handles career growth, shielding the team" lol, do some coding instead.

[binarytox1n]

One on one meetings are not "creepy" - they are a chance to have an open conversation about your goals; your concerns; and anything else that needs to be discussed about your career, the organization, etc.

Do you know what the sales people in your organization do? What about the legal department? Procurement? HR? Your lack of knowledge is not evidence.

"lol, do some coding instead"? And what should I code? How do you know what _you_ should be coding? Where does that work come from? Who makes sure that you're writing quality code and not some shit spaghetti mess? When the lawyers come knocking who answers the questions about security and compliance? You're just going to write some code for that?

Your myopic complaints do nothing to further your own goals - rather than make baseless accusations, look into the problems yourself and try to solve them. You might get some career growth out of it. At the very least you'll understand that not all problems can be solved with code.

[Viliam1234]

> One on one meetings are not "creepy"

Actually, who decides this, and how?

I mean, I understand why 1:1 are considered necessary, but I still get the creepy vibe. It's probably mostly my introversion speaking, but this is honestly how I feel about it.

> conversation about your goals; your concerns; and anything else that needs to be discussed about your career

What goals exactly? We do sprint planning every spring, plus all that backlog refinement and other stuff.

Long-term goals? Well, they don't change that often (that's what "long-term" means). Neither does my career. So having this kind of debate once or twice a year would be quite enough.

[binarytox1n]

The two people in the meeting decide it. I'm sure if either of them are creepy then you will end up with a creepy meeting. Otherwise it's just a professional meeting with an agenda and a desired outcome, like any other.

If you have no goals that's your failing, not the meeting's. If you lack the imagination to see where you want your career to go or the introspection to see where it's headed then, again, your fault - not the meeting.

Questions I get in my one on one's with people who care and are going places: -Why is the organization failing at x/y/z? How can I make that better? Is it worth fixing? -I am having trouble accomplishing e/f/g goal - I've hit q/r/s roadblock. What do you recommend I do about this? -I want your job, how can I change what I am doing to get me closer to what you do?

I also use them to get information I need from these people: -How is your team doing? Is anyone under/overvalued? -Are your commitments on track? -Is there anything I can do to make you or your team more effective?

I mostly have these meetings monthly. A month is long enough for things to change. 6 months is too long - too many things have changed, too many have been forgotten.

[camjohnson26]

I feel the exact opposite, as a dev I don’t want to have to explain why my team’s work takes time, why we can’t do 50 things at once, and why we have to set priorities to the product teams or external stakeholders, I just want to write code. The engineering manager should enable the engineers to not have to get distracted by all the organizational chaos around them, their entire focus should be on developer productivity.