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

There's also a an art to getting together a good MVP efficiently. You can treat lots of added requirements as shiny feature requests, and prioritize them below getting the MVP working. Having an MVP that people can try out and see it working at all goes a long way towards building belief in your work. At the same time, you want to build flexibly enough that the MVP can expand rationally to take on those added feature requests... without writing in SO MUCH generality that nothing ever gets done. Doing this well is a skill learned on the back of many failures and tedious refactors... But efficiently getting a demo+MVP is golden, even if you build up some tech debt to get it.

For example: You have kids, you should have life insurance.

The issues with the project that you were chewed out for were actually issues between the boss and your manager.

I'm guessing that planning of this task went on between your boss and your manager. Your manager made some promises about delivery that were unrealistic. Possibly, there had been an earlier (totally unrealistic) deadline for the project that you don't even know about that your manager initially promised, and that the boss still has engraved in his mind as something that should have been stuck to.

Your manager possibly bailed out of this meeting on purpose, using the fire fighting as an excuse, to expose you to the proverbial shit she has to deal with at the management level.

> I have no clue what happened in that meeting and I haven't heard anything about it from either of them since.

But you can probably guess. The boss likely reiterated all the same stuff, and your manager realized that you heard all of it, and that it was unfair, since some of the problems were her fault: everything from the code suggestions that you followed, to unrealistic promises that didn't even have anything to do with you.

Maybe your manager didn't do anything on purpose, but as a general rule, never discount that. It happens that managers will take credit for everything that goes right, and use the people under them as scapegoats to blame when things don't go right. Plus do other things like make adjustments to information they think you don't know. They might promise to the higher boss that something get done by end of December, but tell you that the deadline is end of November. That sort of thing.

For that reason, it would behoove you to establish rapport with your manager's manager. Do not allow your manager to be an entirely opaque proxy between you and the rest of the organization, and your only source of information.

I've never successfully managed upwards, never have been able to turn situations like yours around. I've had jobs that I really liked, so tried really hard to make things work.

It was never worthwhile. I always regretted the effort.

The good bosses I've had made all the difference. And why I happily stayed in gigs, despite other offers, despite red hot job markets, despite more interesting work.

Life's too short. Don't stress the losers any longer than it takes to get away.