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Comment by jdcarter | Hacker News Reader

My company seems to think that Scrum stand-ups are a replacement for one-on-one meetings. They're very, very wrong. Coordinating work and keeping the project moving forward is one thing, but like Alex points out here, there's far more to management.

Agile methodologies/slack channels/etc. are simply not a replacement for people management. In many companies, the people manager and project manager are the same person, and they generally default to managing the project first. (Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? And what's squeakier than an executive breathing down your neck?) But when your culture starts dissolving and employees start leaving... well by then it might be too late to get interested in people management.

In my group, morale is a big issue, and retention is about to become one--I know of several people with one foot out the door already. I'm not sure management is even aware.

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> My company seems to think that Scrum stand-ups are a replacement for one-on-one meetings. They're very, very wrong.

You're totally correct. I run our Scrum stand-up and I set the timer for 15 minutes- at 15 minutes I used to literally shut down the conference bridge and we're done. I did this to get us in the habit that we needed our morning stand up to be formal, precise, and expedient. We needed to get in the habit of quickly realizing that something needed to be shelved and that the necessary people would follow up with each other later to get into the weeds. I don't hang up any more, and sometimes we go a tad over 15 minutes, but we've gotten our standup to become a well oiled, no bullshit machine.

I feel like this is the complete opposite of a one on one. They should be a meandering, personal, meaningful conversation of depth. They should feel unrushed and the employee should feel that they are listened to.

It could be a sign that your company feels that way about employees that a Scrum standup is a replacement for one on ones, ie: they don't give a shit. More realistically, they probably just don't get that there's no room for the meaningful relationship building that a one on one meeting confers from a time boxed group standup.

That sucks they think that's the case. You definitely don't want your "1 on 1s" to be project and status updates. It's a total waste.

Coincidentally, this problem generally contributes to turnover issues, which tend to happen in waves as groups leave. It's a pretty logical process on why it happens and while it's easy to fix, most don't: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/employee-turnover-why-employe...

If you can, start passing around links to Manager Tools or just drop references to it. It's a podcast where they absolutely hammer leaders on issues like doing one-on-ones (this problem often goes right up to CEO), running meetings well, etc. With any luck management will pick up on it and change while you're still there, but if not--these people will probably be managing other people for the rest of their lives so someone somewhere will probably be grateful.

Thanks for the tip, I wasn't aware of Manager Tools before. Found the site, will take some of their podcasts for a spin!

Product manager here, seconding Manager Tools as invaluable.

Make sure that if a lot of other people are starting to leave, that you're not last out the door. What usually happens in that case is that everyone else gets pushed to "make up for those that left". Deadlines don't change, but with fewer people, that just means longer hours with no bump in pay.

Sometimes though you can manage to switch teams by staying if the company is open to that. Happened to me and I'm really glad that I stuck it out.

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