Senior-but-not-staff engineer here. My manager and I keep a Trello board with a list of items to talk about including concerns, goals, projects to check in on, and so forth. It's keeping a pulse on how your relationship with your job is, and whether you are meeting or exceeding expectations.
Our 1-1s are typically 45 minutes but sometimes go longer and we have them every two weeks. OP, I would definitely ask your manager if you could change up the length and cadence if what you have isn't working for you.
We use them as a check-in on basically all aspects of my job: How is everything going, how is the team doing, how is the company doing, feedback in both directions, reviewing past performance + future goals. Put simply, if I have a formal performance review and am surprised by anything in it, especially anything negative, the 1-1s weren't doing their job.
But out of all of that, I think the absolute best way you can use your 1-1s, if you are ambitious, is to explicitly ask your manager: "Where is my performance relative to my current role, and to the role one level more senior than me? What do I need to do to progress in the direction of the latter?"
My manager and I have a spreadsheet where we track all the formal criteria written out for my role and the next role up, and my performance on each of those criteria. When all of the criteria for the role one level above mine read "meets" or "exceeds" expectations, it will be time for me to request a promotion, knowing I have clear evidence I have earned it. Simple as that. (We also keep a brag doc that's less formal but has specific concrete examples of good performance in it. Nothing wrong with "blowing your trumpet" in this context, at all.)
I very much like this system and it's worked for me well so far at my current job.
Our 1-1s are typically 45 minutes but sometimes go longer and we have them every two weeks. OP, I would definitely ask your manager if you could change up the length and cadence if what you have isn't working for you.
We use them as a check-in on basically all aspects of my job: How is everything going, how is the team doing, how is the company doing, feedback in both directions, reviewing past performance + future goals. Put simply, if I have a formal performance review and am surprised by anything in it, especially anything negative, the 1-1s weren't doing their job.
But out of all of that, I think the absolute best way you can use your 1-1s, if you are ambitious, is to explicitly ask your manager: "Where is my performance relative to my current role, and to the role one level more senior than me? What do I need to do to progress in the direction of the latter?"
My manager and I have a spreadsheet where we track all the formal criteria written out for my role and the next role up, and my performance on each of those criteria. When all of the criteria for the role one level above mine read "meets" or "exceeds" expectations, it will be time for me to request a promotion, knowing I have clear evidence I have earned it. Simple as that. (We also keep a brag doc that's less formal but has specific concrete examples of good performance in it. Nothing wrong with "blowing your trumpet" in this context, at all.)
I very much like this system and it's worked for me well so far at my current job.