I am not a fan of the 1-1 meeting.<p>I had one boss (who claimed to had previously supervised both David Cutler and Linus Torvalds) who used 1-1 meetings as a weapon against us, regularly told one person one thing and told another person another thing, etc.<p>It wasn't the only warning sign, but when you compare notes with your co-workers and they don't match up that is a sign to "run don't walk".<p>I had another boss who used regular 1-1's and I wouldn't say he was a liar like the other boss, but there were always mysterious things happening that we didn't hear the whole story on and given that the company didn't have a story that made sense (... it's a startup ...) people made up their own answers for these things which were usually much worse than the truth.<p>I wouldn't say that was decisive to the outcome of that company, rather it was just one of many problems that sapped the teamwork and effectiveness there. They sold out to one of the world's greatest consumer brands (thought it was an April Fool's joke when I found out but it was real!)