Just chat, if nothing else. We'll also discuss larger company things, upcoming projects, any big "news" that might be relevant.
We'll make sure that we talk about professional development stuff occasionally, and that he's doing what he can to support my career aspirations, and that I understand what his expectations of me are and how they're changing.

The bigger topics aren't every time. It's often pretty skewed towards chat since we get along well.

EM perspective: your 1:1 meetings are your time to ask questions, express concerns, advocate for yourself (e.g., for career advancement or project placement), and generally have a line to what is happening with the org and upper management.

They aren’t a place for me to micromanage my reports, they’re how I figure out to to best serve the people I lead, especially when my responsibilities keep me out of the day to day work.

If you haven't I recommend reading a few books on management even if you have zero interest in going down that path. It will give you more perspective on what you should be expecting from your manager, which in turn should in turn be what you talk about during 1-on-1s. I like The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier, though it could use more focus on the 'why' instead of the 'how'.

The best manager I had used a shared private document, where he would dump important points and expected you to add bullets as things came up during the week. This "you drive the conversation" is a good approach and one I intend to use in the future.

• What's really going on. A good manager should be aware people are inclined to present things as rosier than they are.

• Anything you are unhappy with. They should be fighting to keep you around, and how happy you are is a key piece. The sooner they know something is wrong, the easier they can (potentially) deal with it.

  • I'm planning a career shift into an EM role, and plan on simply being upfront about the Gallup 12 points (actually 13+4). They shouldn't confine themselves to them, but if a report is ever unhappy about any of them then I absolutely want to talk about it.

• What resources you don't have that you need to succeed.

• What ideas you have for initiatives. New projects, tweaks to reduce pain points, so on.

• Things from Above that you should be aware of.

After shooting the shit for the customary 5 min, it's usually

• Talking about efforts to mentor junior devs on the team. How they're doing, etc
• Catching my manager up on convos and meetings they missed recently
• Them explaining some new system or codebase I haven't worked with yet
• some sort of HR thing (Raises, PTO, performance reviews, etc)

I mostly make sure they aren't overworked for long periods, are happy, and aren't running into the same blocker over and over again. I'll let the strong ones know what I'm documenting and how we'll proceed making sure they get compensated. I can't promise anything (I have great input don't get me wrong) so I let them know how I'll advocate for them.

On skip steps I make sure their mentor and manager are keeping them happy and doing this shit (within reason some of you have absurd demands that I just find crazy).

1. Discuss our 1:1 sheet that I use as a brag document.
2. Discuss general issues that I noticed on our team or the project.
3. Discuss my improvement ideas for the project/team. Probably rounded up in #2.
4. Ask for some direct feedbacks. He helped me set up goals for promotional. So, we can see if I'm detracted from the path or moving closer to the goal.