Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "I discourage 1-on-1s"

[cjk]

For me, one-on-ones are a super mixed bag. Personally, I get very little out of them. If I have feedback for my manager or vice-versa, I see zero reason to wait until a scheduled meeting to bring that up.

That said, I’ve managed people that absolutely needed regularly-scheduled one-on-ones, because they needed the dedicated time and space to bring things up that they otherwise wouldn’t in the normal course of business.

It really depends on the employee in question. I don’t think a one-size-fits-all approach works here.

[BenFranklin100]

This is the right answer. Where possible, tailor management practices to the needs of the individual employee.

[bigyikes]

I dread 1:1s with my manager. I simply do not have that much to say that I do not already say in group meetings or other channels. I find myself racking my brain to come up with agenda items to fill the time and save face.

Sometimes private conversations are necessary, but as a once in a while sort of thing, not on a biweekly cadence.

[anthony_d]

I can definitely relate to that but I also appreciate having a set time on the calendar where I know my manager is available. Where I work a manager’s calendar is always full, literally meetings back to back from 8a to 5p.

I’ve always scheduled 1 on 1’s with my team and I know it’s appreciated by some and I suspect dreaded by others. Are you not comfortable messaging your manager in advance to say you don’t have anything?

I’m being selfish here… how do I make people comfortable saying they don’t need to meet?

[rrr_oh_man]

This is a perspective I have honestly never heard before.

Would you care to elaborate? I‘d really love to understand your POV better. Maybe I have a blind spot somewhere.

Background: I’ve always done them weekly (as biweekly seems to be worse than monthly — which in turn is arguably much worse than weekly). And they seemed to work quite well.. Basically 10-30min of chit-chat and catchup for relationship building.

[nikolay]

I am in the same boat and often discuss work that shouldn't be done in a one-on-one meeting. Minimal babysitting is needed in an organization of mature people. Sometimes, sensitive topics need to be discussed, and an ad-hoc one-on-one could be arranged, but anything else is wasteful.

[paulddraper]

A. hopefully your meetings (1:1) included are no longer than necessary.

B. discuss your work, your projects, progress, possible threats

[ToucanLoucan]

> I dread 1:1s with my manager. I simply do not have that much to say that I do not already say in group meetings or other channels. I find myself racking my brain to come up with agenda items to fill the time and save face.

.... why? My 1-on-1's very rarely go beyond 10 minutes or so specifically because there usually isn't much to discuss, and even then we mostly just jump over some answers to simple questions, then end up bullshitting about whatever else is going on with life at the moment.

[seatac76]

It probably makes sense for a CEO who is direction setting and probably has other defined methods of feedback collections.

For normals ICs 1:1s are crucial for career development. You absolutely need a space to talk candidly with your manager.

[strken]

Depends on your relationship with your manager. I get a coffee with mine at least once a day if we're in the office together, usually lunch too, and also sit next to him, so if we did 1:1s they'd just be redundant.

Grabbing coffee is of course an informal 1:1 anyway, but you don't need to formalise it unless your manager struggles to make time for you.

[stack_framer]

> You absolutely need a space to talk candidly with your manager.

It's not so easy when you feel like you can't trust the people to whom you report. I'm in this situation after attempting to be candid about what I felt were missteps on the part of my manager and a director of engineering. After a scolding from one of them, and a veiled threat about my employment ending, I now feel like I just shouldn't rock the boat. I mostly dread my 1:1s with them, and I don't feel like those meetings are time well spent.

I could maybe understand if I had offered unsolicited feedback, but they asked for my opinion and I gave it honestly.

[moralestapia]

>You absolutely need a space to talk candidly with your manager.

Yeah sure, and HR is your friend. /s

[NotGMan]

>> if the CEO’s direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you’ve removed in a company is probably something like seven.”

This is a great insight since so much gets lost in the management layer which causes frustration for devs while the CEO doesn't have a clue what's actually going on in the trenches.

[lupire]

But doesn't also much get lost when the manager can't keep up with 60 reports?

Mathematics teaches us that the distance in a tree, from root to leaf, where each node is a linked list, is minimized when the branching factor is e, the base of the natural logarithm. For example, e is the most efficient base for writing integers.

Management isn't quite the same, but branch size is are relevant.

Management isn't

[barbariangrunge]

Sounds nice until you put yourself in the employees shoes. All your mistakes become public case studies, you’re cut off from proper mentoring, and you can no longer say anything in private to your boss without the whole team hearing it

[tmottabr]

bear in mind he is a CEO.. His subordinates are most likely SVPs, so his relation with his subordinates is not the same as employees down at the bottom of the hierarchy with their managers..

so i hardly thing he is discussing personal mistakes in those meetings, he is more likely discussing policies that affect entire departments or even the whole company..

Other then that i believe that any person in any position and at any level, should praise in public and criticize in private, always..

But note that he never said he does not have private meetings with his subordinates when needed, he only said he does not think he should have a scheduled time every week to have this kind of discussions..

and honestly i agree with him.. 90% of what i discuss with my manager in our 1:1s could be discussed in front of the whole team.. the other 10% is not something i need to discuss ever other week it is usually stuff about my personal career that i need to discuss just a few times per year.. so for those when the need arise i just reach out to my manager and discuss with him..

also a managers is not always the best person to be coaching someone.. where i work we have managers and we have mentors and those are separated roles that may be taken by different people..

[devonsolomon]

(Via Paul Smith from Civitas)

In the recently released book Rassie: Stories of Life and Rugby by Rassie Erasmus (two time World Cup winning South African rugby coach), Rassie mentions that he doesn’t do one-on-ones. To quote from the book:

"Everything was done in front of everybody. I’ve never had a one-on-one with a player, except when he came to me with a deeply personal issue. I told them not to come to me individually with questions about why they were not in the team, or why they thought they deserved an opportunity…

Some of the newer players weren’t used to me not having one-on-one discussions. I told them I preferred to talk to everyone together so everyone understood what was going on, and no rumours started about what might have happened between me and a player behind closed doors."

Given how often sports team analogies are used in leadership speak, perhaps this fits.

[re-thc]

This feels overblow and taken out of context. When he says he discourages 1-on-1s it doesn't mean there aren't any private conversations.

This is the equivalent of I discourage weekly meetings. (hint: they should be done as required)

[brunoarueira]

It's probably a good way to do management, because sometimes we'd good people with us and do 1-on-1s is only to take a conversation and that you can take another way! I'd led a coworker which multiple times we reschedule our 1-on-1s because we already keep feedbacks when things happen or after discuss about tasks, so this works for us and we optimize our time.

[djhope99]

“I don’t do 1-on-1s, and almost everything I say, I say to everybody all the time. I don’t really believe there’s any information that I operate on that only one or two people should hear about… I believe that when you give everybody equal access to information, that empowers people. And so that’s number one… Number two, if the CEO’s direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you’ve removed in a company is probably something like seven.”

[starky]

I think this statement is really missing the point of 1-on-1's. They should be time set aside for the employee to talk about whatever is on their mind. It is ideally an opportunity for them to bring up any issues or concerns they might be having but is either unsuitable to or they are uncomfortable bringing it up with the larger group. Often the response is indeed, "Thanks for letting me know, I'll communicate that to the team." but it would have never been brought up if that time wasn't set aside to chat.

Sure, when you are directly reporting into the CEO you are probably in a position where you are expected to lead it out yourself unless it affects the entire company strategy, so it is less useful, but if you are working with ICs then they are still very useful.

[Icy0]

I tend to agree with this on discord, as I really dislike dms about not-directly-personal things when they can just share it in the server.

In real life though, my severe congenital hearing impairment means communication ability is stunted for all but one-on-one meetings. Cursed...

[RecycledEle]

An AI that could listen to what is happening in a company and tell people what they need to know would be very useful.

An AI that learned the state if things and could point out contradictions would also be very useful.

[interbased]

I talk to my manager everyday anyway, so a dedicated meeting to “catch up” isn’t really necessary. If there was a goal and we need to set up a check in meeting for that specific goal, that would make sense.

[thr0way120]

politics happen in 1:1s

gossip etc

I think part of his motivation is to expose it all and avoid all that

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Most companies become big despite of bad practices not because of them. So remember that when the next hype CEO talks about their management styles.

[barfbagginus]

I don't see the point in one-on-ones with someone who produces less for the organization than I do.

I also don't see the point of managers for that matter.

I will work to eliminate all managers from my organization until it's just me, the clients, and the revenues going in my pocket. That's fair and square business.

Managers are excess to any requirement other than someone rich pocketing the revenue who did not do the work.

[lupire]

Since he is a founder and CEO, I'm not sure his opinion on 1:1 meetings is relevant. He's not a people manager.

[BenFranklin100]

Founders and CEOs are first and foremost people managers, at least the vast majority of the successful ones.

[bjt1997]

I will place more value on Huang's leadership insights if he is managing people in a "normal" business (i.e. competition, not driven by a single hi-tech monopoly product, etc). It is easy to provide leadership insights when the whole world is dumping cash on your company for a product only you make.

[docandrew]

Nvidia didn’t start there - they took down a lot of established competitors in the GPU space, and a lot of other big companies are gunning for their position. I’d say their business operations and leadership are definitely worth studying.