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

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

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

It probably makes sense for a CEO who is direction setting and probably has other defined methods of feedback collections.<p>For normals ICs 1:1s are crucial for career development. You absolutely need a space to talk candidly with your manager.

&gt;&gt; if the CEO’s direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you’ve removed in a company is probably something like seven.”<p>This is a great insight since so much gets lost in the management layer which causes frustration for devs while the CEO doesn&#x27;t have a clue what&#x27;s actually going on in the trenches.

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

(Via Paul Smith from Civitas)<p>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:<p>&quot;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…<p>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.&quot;<p>Given how often sports team analogies are used in leadership speak, perhaps this fits.

This feels overblow and taken out of context. When he says he discourages 1-on-1s it doesn&#x27;t mean there aren&#x27;t any private conversations.<p>This is the equivalent of I discourage weekly meetings. (hint: they should be done as required)

It&#x27;s probably a good way to do management, because sometimes we&#x27;d good people with us and do 1-on-1s is only to take a conversation and that you can take another way! I&#x27;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.

“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.”

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

An AI that could listen to what is happening in a company and tell people what they need to know would be very useful.<p>An AI that learned the state if things and could point out contradictions would also be very useful.

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.

politics happen in 1:1s<p>gossip etc<p>I think part of his motivation is to expose it all and avoid all that

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.

I don&#x27;t see the point in one-on-ones with someone who produces less for the organization than I do.<p>I also don&#x27;t see the point of managers for that matter.<p>I will work to eliminate all managers from my organization until it&#x27;s just me, the clients, and the revenues going in my pocket. That&#x27;s fair and square business.<p>Managers are excess to any requirement other than someone rich pocketing the revenue who did not do the work.

Since he is a founder and CEO, I&#x27;m not sure his opinion on 1:1 meetings is relevant. He&#x27;s not a people manager.

I will place more value on Huang&#x27;s leadership insights if he is managing people in a &quot;normal&quot; 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.