Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 506 posts

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

#131

Post by JamesBarney »

prima-facie wrote: post #40

Your boss is gaslighting & intimidating you. - Do not be intimidated into thinking you did your work poorly. I've seen this happen many times with employees being guilt tripped, especially the younger more junior employees. You are a professional and the work you do is important for the company, you do it with pride and to the best of your ability. - Beware of gaslighting. Some bosses can be incredibly manipulative a…

> - Stop caring too much about company problems, and focus on your own work. You should not care if the manager does his job poorly or if the company is not doing so well. It not your fault. They are running the business poorly.

This entirely depends on whether you care about promotions. Understanding the company problems, and your manager's problems will directly impact your ability to get promoted in the future.

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

#132

Post by water8 »

dazeandconfuse wrote: post #73
myowz wrote: post #7

This boss telling you that they felt the project should have been done a long time ago: I wonder who that comment benefits? Feels like no one. You get bummed, they give late feedback without a lot of constructive aspects to it. I am trying to think of one way it was useful to tell you that, but I can’t. Seems like you should feel justified in not being a fan of working under this person. What you do with that is hard…

I'm not sure. I'm glad he told me, otherwise I wouldn't have known I was undershooting his expectations. I did make mistakes that made the project taking longer than it had to. I guess if I want to keep working here I'll need to find a way to make fewer mistakes like that in the future.

I think just about every new developer makes mistakes that make a project take longer than it had to but this is how you learn and improve for next time.

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

#133

Post by fdr »

Don't sweat it too much, but it sounds to me like this organization has communication problems, and it's not really realistic to expect a fresh face to industry to identify them consistently and act proactively. I personally think your skip-level was having a bad day (in which case they may feel bad about how they said what they did) or an abrasive personality (in which case they may not). In the latter case, they may or may not hold a grudge. Ideally, it's the "not." Some people are brusque but really do not overweight it in ongoing evaluation.

Now that you know the communication problems are there, regardless of the accuracy of fault finding, you may have an inkling on how to compensate for it now.

If they start dogging you with bad projects or bad work conditions, I'd start looking for the door. If not, write it off, hold no grudges, and focus on learning.

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

#134

Post by tikhonj »

Strikes me that the person not doing good work here is your boss and, probably, your manager.

What did the meeting you have actually accomplish? How will it help you or the rest of the team improve?

If the project or the timeline are so important, how does any of this help you get there? If I have a real deadline that I need somebody to hit, I'm going to explain the context of the deadline to them—how else are they going to make good decisions to actually hit the deadline?—and I'm going to continue talking with them throughout the whole process so that both of us understand how the project is progressing compared to expectations. If something is slowing the work down, what should we do about that? If there really is some mismatch in skills, what can we do to help you improve, and how should we adjust the rest of our plans?

Feedback like this should never come as a surprise. I don't like absolute rules in any complex scenario, but this is about as close to an absolute rule for leading a team as I can imagine. Even if the overall assessment of your work is "fair"—how likely is that?—the fact that it came out of nowhere for you and that you are not sure what will happen next is straight-up bad leadership.

It sounds like you're feeling guilty about the feedback, or that it means you are not an effective programmer. The one upside about this situation is that there are specific reasons to believe it really is them, not you. The downside is that there probably isn't much you can realistically do to change the situation—after all, if your leaders aren't effective, how much do you expect working "harder" to change anything? The main thing that I've found helpful in these situations is to remember that your "performance" is very context-specific, and the context here sucks. I've often found it hard to feel this viscerally, but even just thinking this rationally and recognizing my feelings for what they are has helped.

Recognizing this also helped me get in the right state of mind to decide what to do next. I've had situations like this a couple of times; the first time I ended up switching companies and the second time I switched teams within the same company—both times, it made a larger difference than I expected.

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

#135

Post by rmk »

I doubt if your manager really had to miss the meeting to put out a fire. It feels like things were set up so that your skip-level manager could upbraid you about your work. One possibility that does explain it satisfactorily is that your manager was promoted recently into people-management, and your skip-level manager is still handling some of the performance management conversations. If this is not the case, this is something of a red flag.

In the same vein, it's very unusual for your skip level to have a meeting about this and talk about design, code etc. People at that level typically do not get involved in things at this level: in fact, your manager is the one who will have a lower-level involvement.

Alternately, your immediate manager is leaving or being fired and your skip-level manager is taking stock of what he's going to have to deal with in the near future.

In either case, it does not look like a good situation. You should interview aggressively and take a new position, even if you really are at fault. Impressions of someone as a bad performer almost never go away, and it is rarely worth the effort to stay to fix that impression. You are better off being able to get a reasonable reference while things have not escalated.

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

#136

Post by tqi »

Sorry that happened, sounds like it was a very difficult experience. Talking this through with your manager or a trusted coworker is definitely going to yield better advice than what people can offer without context. However a few thoughts:

1. Treat individual bits of feedback as one of many inputs to career growth: Feedback isn't infallible, even if it comes from smart / experienced people. It is tinged by personal quicks and biases, and often comes from a place of incomplete context. There are valuable things to be learned from it, but you should use each bit of feedback to update your existing priors rather than throwing out everything you previously believed.

2. Perception and reality are not the same: A dirty secret about "work" is that the perception of your work is often more important to advancement than the objective quality. I think it's helpful to keep that in mind when reflecting on this person's feedback, and think about what are the actions you can take to ensure that perception of your work is improved (not just here but in future roles).

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

#138

Post by throwawayboise »

jdavis703 wrote: post #70

First, make sure you’re not over reacting to negative criticism. Remember, you paid your university and rated your professors. As a result, they probably coddled you to an extent. Now you’re in the real world, people are going to be brutally honest. Second, ask for constant feedback. I try to ask my boss what I should keep doing and what I should start doing and if there’s anything I should change. This serves two pu…

This is my take. To the OP, ask yourself, how accustomed are you to being critiqued? If you're smart and did well in school work, you may never have heard someone frankly point out where you can do better. Remember your manager is also accountable to his boss and his boss is accountable on up the chain. Your tenured professor in school is accountable to nobody; he's not managing a project that's behind schedule and having to explain why to his boss.

It's not uncommon for a new employee on your first job to get your work torn to shreds in the beginning until you figure out all the unwritten rules on how work gets done. It's normal.

And yes, do try to stay more "in touch" with your mananger and peers on work you are doing, your progress, state of the overall project, questions or blockers you may be facing. It's not school (those assignments are toy problems for the most part, now you are in the real world where things are not as cleanly defined and requirements can change midstream); it's not a test; it is about getting work done with all the resources you can utilize.

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

#139

Post by ineedasername »

1) we have your side of the story. It may be completely accurate. But try to step outside yourself an imagine you were looking at an employee doing what you're doing. Would the impression of productivity be the same?

2) Have a frank, blunt conversation with your direct manager about precisely what was said by the boss and determine if they agree with the boss's impression. If their impression is the same, you really need a deeper conversation about the specific criticisms. Make sure your explanations do not sound like excuses: preferably it would include a fairly accurate accounting of time spent on each aspect of the project and why it was necessary at the time. Ask for feedback on how you might have done something different.

3) If your direct manager is on your side, do what you can to encourage them to explain things to your boss. That may be difficult because there could be aspects of it that would make your boss look bad-- things that were your fault, not theirs. That could even be why the manager bailed on the meeting. That happened to me once, with the CEO no less. The VP that was supposed to be in the meeting with me was a no-show, and the issue was their responsibility not mine. If the manager didn't deliberately leave you out to dry, they may still be able to mitigate the damage a bit.

4) it's possible the boss just doesn't like you. Personality clash, something else, I don't know. I've seen that: a relative of mine had to fight to keep their job when their manager loved them but the boss higher up had an unreasonable dislike of them and thought they didn't work very hard. Luckily it was a good manager who fought for the relative.

5) if none of the above help and things continue on this path, prepare your resume and actively seek another job before they have a chance to fire you. Especially in tech, it's a shoppers market for people shopping for a new job. If you live near a tech hub or really any metropolitan area then it shouldn't be hard to find another job. You might not like it as much as your current job, but if not then you can bide your time there, learn what you can, do some good work to add to your resume, and then find a more satisfying position somewhere else.

Good luck!

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

#140

Post by martiya »

Think on the feedback received in a constructuve manner for what it might contain of value but do not let it undermine your confidence. Use it to get better.

Many of us will receive undeserved negative feedback at some point in our career. Receiving at the start of it, it is just harder to take it but use it to grow. This is one more thing to learn.

I must say that your managers seems pretty rubbish for many things: conducting this meeting wihtout your manager in the room, unloading his fustrations on you and apparent lack of steering.

Whether to leave or not: do not fight it as they are part and judge so you will not win. But have an open conversation what this means. Do not overreact but do not ignore it neither. And be cool, your present job have great things on it but there are many others.

Post reply on HN