Very generic answer IMO. In practice, it gets pretty tiring and boring to talk about it after couple of meetings with manager and bringing it up in every weekly 1:1 will have your manager avoid/cancel meetings with you. I tried following this generic advice and noticed it hurts more than it does good.
Talk about where you want to get to career wise. Develop a plan with them to get you there. Say you want to move from eng 3 to senior eng in the next 2 years. Great! What skills do you need to develop to operate independently at a senior level by then? How can you work with your manager to ensure you're getting right-sized projects to develop then demonstrate those skills?
What's coming down the pipeline next quarter that you can try to claim instead of having it go by default to a more senior member on the team? Can you pair with them on that work if you aren't yet ready to do it on your own? Seniors are often looking for mentorship and teaching opportunities as those are skills they need to develop to make it to Manager or Staff if they're interested in continuing to advance their own careers.
If you're finding that your 1:1's are increasingly useless, consider spacing them out more. Ask to meet every other week or monthly. Set an agenda with things to talk about that are important to the role. Additionally, setting hard time limits will condense it to what matters. Start with 30m every other week, move to 15 or monthly if it still isn't useful.
Lol so talking about (1) what you actually care about (2) deep blockers to performance (3) what your manager most cares about and (4) human connection is "boring". What do you talk about that's more interesting? Compiler warnings?
