Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?

Putting on my (thankfully former) manager hat, I'd say that you are bearing the brunt of your boss's poor planning. As others have commented, you getting blamed by a skip-level manager is a bad sign and something is off. But, now that you know that, don't turn around and blame your manager for it or make a big stink. It will not be in your favor to make a big stink, especially if it's to take sides against them in a public way. Your relationship with your manager is important, so you have to find a way to move forward that doesn't inject more bad blood into the situation. Try to keep your conversations about this confidential--don't go blabbing about it and loudly complaining. It can make the environment toxic. As the low person on the totem pole, you might just get shown the door.

Going forward, make sure that expectations are clear. Particularly requirements! Make sure you have requirements spelled out, on paper, over email, in planning documents. Make sure you point out when requirements change, and do it over email or paper, or some durable medium. Don't let situations get murky and rely on faulty memories. In short, try to be the organized, rational, delivering engineer that puts in good work and reliably delivers. If your management doesn't have the attention span or organizational skills to spell out plans and requirements, then it's going to be on them when failure occurs.

Things not being on time is almost always management's fault. They set timelines. They set expectations. They have the power and make the decisions. As long as you are giving them good estimates and delivering, it's definitely their fault if things slip.

edit: I will add that you don't need to keep what you are working on confidential. Talk to your coworkers and friends about your technical challenges all the time. Just don't bad mouth your project or your manager.

I'm getting a suspicion of an "umbrella manager" here, like the boss is a storm and your manager has done a good job keeping you out of it. Either that or he threw you under the bus, but that feels less likely.

I would try and talk with your manager about this. See how he feels about the boss and their method of delivering feedback. If my suspicion is correct, he's getting it even worse than you.

Either way, I'd recommend you start hunting for your next gig. If your manager is dealing with the same type of degrading feedback, bring him too :)

Building relationships with a skip level manager doesn't have to be about direct updates. It's not about going around your manager, either. It's building another channel of communication where you can ask for help on blockers, get updates on issues specific to what you're working on, build visibility for the work you are doing, and create good working relationships. Unless your manager never goes on vacation, you're going to have to work directly and report to your skip level manager at some point in time anyway. In my company, my manager has regular sync-up meetings with his skip level manager, and encourages me to do the same.

Get a new job. Your boss and her boss are bad, not worth it.

It could just be some careless words by other manager and nothing comes of it.

It's very hard to know. Personally I'd write up my thoughts on the project, list the changing requirements and etc, but not share them at this point if you don't feel comfortable doing so.

I will say that I find the idea of any kind of astonishment or frustration about a project given to "new guy + first year out of college" guy is absolutely absurd.

Any "new guy + first year out of college" should have someone assigned to them and monitoring / helping and there should be NO surprises / blame assigned to "new guy + first year out of college" (outside of some very unlikely bonkers level lies or poor performance).