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Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

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Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#31

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

gaius wrote: post #20
melonbar wrote: post #12

One of my buddies on the dev team I am on has been going through a very similar situation. He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins. He has on occasion asked me how I managed to get all the fun stuff despite being so new. My advice to him was as fo…

He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins Your friend’s mistake is that he is too professional, doing the work that needs doing and pays everyone else’s salaries, while other more selfish people prioritise getting some more buzzwords on their CV. I…

> Your friend’s mistake is that he is too professional, doing the work that needs doing and pays everyone else’s salaries, while other more selfish people prioritise getting some more buzzwords on their CV.

Seconded - I've had this experience myself. I tried to be the "grownup in the room", ensuring that boring-but-important aspects of software development got taken care of. This was also my first experience on a "self-organizing" team.

The end result was that coworkers just kept doing whatever parts of the work they found personally gratifying, and at annual-review time their list of accomplishments was a lot glitzier than mine.

I continue to struggle with the anger and resentment I feel for how that all went down, and it's hard to objectively assess what I could/should have done differently without having behaved in the same (IMO) unprofessional manner as my then-teammates.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#32

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

qetuo13579 wrote: post #24
jstanier wrote: post #4

Have you had a conversation with your manager about this? If so, how did it go?

The engineering manager has been on leave while all this has been happening. I'll be bringing up my concerns when he's back next week. I'm sure he'll be quite understanding. He did reply to one email to point out that there isn't a lot he can do because the new PM reports directly to the CEO, not to him. Basically the engineers will have multiple bosses. The engineering manager for technical direction and the project…

> Basically the engineers will have multiple bosses.

That's a huge red flag. Unless you have hope of that getting fixed, I'd start looking around.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#33

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

maxxxxx wrote: post #15
rvn1045 wrote: post #9

How does this work from the other side? are there people discussing they should collectively exclude someone? what are the conversations that are taking place. I have never been on the other side, so would like to see a perspective from there.

It's often a matter of convenience. Dealing with overseas people is hard especially if there is a time difference. They probably don't explicitly decide to exclude someone but instead it's too much work to include the person.

Having lived through that, it matches my experience. It's one of the reasons that I now fully buy into the recommendation of not being the only remote worker on a team.

One needs a truly exceptional team and manager to avoid being miserable in that situation.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#36

Post by Itaxpica »

goldcd wrote: post #21
MartinCron wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think in my case that it was necessarily about me and my performance. Just like I don’t think that the OP’s story is necessarily about him and his performance. When teams grow, they change. There is an all-too-often unspoken assumption that roles will get more and more specialized as the team expands. You can go from being a dev/pm/architect/analyst to being “just a dev” or “just an architect” so slowly that…

That's a metaphor that I know is now stuck permanently. My only addition would be that this is your broccoli and ice-cream. I'm eternally mystified as to what some of my colleagues like. Maybe the greatest benefit of agile I found is I can just shove my needs/rankings into it - and can then just let people pull out whatever they fancy from it. Running the other way there seemed to be surprise when a dev found some ma…

One of my old managers used to say that time and time again he would fret about which of his people would wind up stuck having to work on the shitty, boring parts of a project, only to find that someone else on the team was really excited to work on what he had thought were the shitty, boring parts; and on the flip side they would have seen as shitty and boring the stuff he thought was most interesting. The lesson for him was that as tempting as it can be as a manager to try to puppeteer everything, you can often get better results by just stepping back and letting a team figure out how they want to divide the work.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#37

Post by qetuo13579 »

rdiddly wrote: post #29

Well, how did you end up "acting as the local manager?" Were you formally assigned to a named job role? Or were you a dev who stepped up to take on management duties? It sounds (mainly because of the word "acting" with all its connotations of being temporary and ad-hoc) like the latter. (Already I'm doing guesswork and reading tea leaves, just like you seem to be in your post. Can anybody talk to each other over ther…

Originally both the engineering manager and project manager were based in our office. The engineering manager moved to the overseas office a few years ago. This year the project manager moved to the same overseas office. I was asked to step up and supervise the other engineers.

I'm not a proper PM, just the senior dev who keeps an eye on the others to make sure they aren't falling down any rabbit holes.

I would much rather be a developer than a manager but I guess I thought I could still be involved in all projects from a technical standpoint.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#38

Post by qetuo13579 »

MartinCron wrote: post #10

It is possible that you are not being intentionally sidelined. This has happened to me, where a company hired a new PM to help us scale, but just took over the parts of my job that I most loved, leaving me with just the drudge work. I was livid. “We have a new guy... who doesn’t understand the product or our customers or our process... and I am supposed to answer to HIM now‽” Some advice I wish I could go back 10 yea…

Thanks for your support.

My boss has always been happy with my performance as an engineer. He likes people to take ownership of their projects and always thanks me whenever I step outside of my direct area of responsibility to solve problems that would otherwise fester if left alone.

The main problems at work can really be boiled down to a lack of communication and collaboration between employees. Engineers and managers alike. I'm hopeful that the new PM will be able to help improve things where the other managers have failed.

As for me, I'm hopeful that I can communicate my desire to continue to have a role in technical leadership.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#39

Post by twoquestions »

melonbar wrote: post #12

One of my buddies on the dev team I am on has been going through a very similar situation. He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins. He has on occasion asked me how I managed to get all the fun stuff despite being so new. My advice to him was as fo…

How I was brought up, your wants and needs are utterly irrelevant to the company, and voicing personal preferences of any kind would have negative career consequences.

How would you recommend communicating these things to your manager without breaking this rule?

Re: Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully?

#40

Post by MartinCron »

Itaxpica wrote: post #36
goldcd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a metaphor that I know is now stuck permanently. My only addition would be that this is your broccoli and ice-cream. I'm eternally mystified as to what some of my colleagues like. Maybe the greatest benefit of agile I found is I can just shove my needs/rankings into it - and can then just let people pull out whatever they fancy from it. Running the other way there seemed to be surprise when a dev found some ma…

One of my old managers used to say that time and time again he would fret about which of his people would wind up stuck having to work on the shitty, boring parts of a project, only to find that someone else on the team was really excited to work on what he had thought were the shitty, boring parts; and on the flip side they would have seen as shitty and boring the stuff he thought was most interesting. The lesson fo…

As a dev manager (small team) I am trying to never “assign” work. I just prioritize and describe, and let fellow coders pull the items that are most appealing to them.

Sometimes it means that I wind up doing work I would rather delegate if I were being selfish, but for the most part, everyone benefits.

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