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

Generally, it's not reasonable to have your first round of feedback on your first project at your first job straight out of college come from your skip-level manager. Frankly, that strikes me as fucking insane.

This post isn't enough for anybody to judge your work or your qualities as an employee, but taken at face value it raises major red flags for me. I would ask your direct manager, directly, how she feels you are measuring up to her expectations so far, and what her expectations are going forward wrt. the issues she and your skip-level manager raised.

Don't let them gaslight you. Without experience, you are an easy target to take advantage of. Advocate for yourself, believe in yourself, and if you truly think your employer is being unreasonable then walk away and find something better.

> Copying other work? Amazing. [...] Solving issue without using latest tech that I just learnt? Incredible.

The business goal is usually to have a new product, feature, a/b test deployed to make money/validate an idea. If there's code ready for that, it's not a great idea to write it again.

Also, _latest tech_ is only meaningful for the devs, and usually not even helpful, since the shine new things might have new problems that you (and other people) still don't know and will have a rough time trying to find a solution to.

I will preface my comment by saying I'm a little later in my career, and consider myself a little more cynical than average. The following is only useful in the company of other comments to offer a more balanced perspective...

I would have found it entirely unacceptable, and my notice would have been on the table within the hour. I've handed in my notice for less.

That kind of behaviour from leadership/management is terrible. Depending on the type of person, it can plant a seed of resentment and disillusionment that will make them hate the work, or create/worsen confidence issues. Employees are people. Of course, some people will shrug it off or perhaps even use it as motivation to get better who knows.

I would also be suspicious of the manager who ducked out the meeting.

The fact that you're on HN posting about this shows that it has already had a negative impact on you. You should be enjoying your time off, but you're just thinking about work.

How should you proceed? Depends on the type of person you are, and your ambitions in your career. Both those will change throughout the years to come. My advice - just do the job, enjoy yourself, get paid, and apply for the next role whenever you feel like it. You will not be on your deathbed wishing you'd gotten to the bottom of this incident.

Two common themes stand out throughout your post:

1) Dysfunctional communication

2) Rumination.

Starting with the dysfunctional communication: It seems there are a lot of communications and expectations that aren't making their way to you. It's reasonable for your manager to buffer some communications from above rather than dumping a firehose of everything on to you, but this sounds like you're missing out on important information relevant to your job.

However, you now have some clarity into these communication gaps. Use that to your advantage. Next time there's a question around a deadline being pushed back, ask specifically why it was pushed back and what your skip-level manager thinks about it. Did they push it back because you were originally behind progress? Or did they push it back because it wasn't needed as quickly any more? Don't speculate, ask.

There's another place where you need to ask for clarity, largely because your manager isn't great at it: Performance management:

> After our meeting, my manager and my boss had a meeting with just the two of them to discuss the status of our project. I have no clue what happened in that meeting and I haven't heard anything about it from either of them since.

Don't hesitate to ask your manager for clarification about expectations. You can ask for a quick chat to recap the project. Explain how you were confused about why the project was considered late if the deadline was pushed back and ask for clarification. Ask how you should proceed in the future. Ask what's expected of you (or employees in the company in general) for positive performance reviews. Again, don't speculate. Ask.

The second problem in your post is heavy rumination. It's natural to feel disappointed in this outcome, but you cannot let it eat you up. The more you let this control your thoughts, the more it's going to negatively influence your work, which could lead to more disappointment in an unhelpful spiral. You must avoid this at all costs.

Some examples from your post of what I'm referring to:

> I'm happy, but I can't stop thinking about that meeting. I really did work hard, so it's demotivating that it feels like the result of me working hard is unappreciated.

> I'm not thinking of quitting over this or anything, but it seriously bums me out.

> I don't know if I have a future at this company

> I'm thinking that now they probably feel that they could fire me if they wanted and not lose much.

> I wanted to make them happy to have hired me, and now I feel like they probably aren't.

It's very natural to feel disappointment, uncertainty, and concern. However, how you react to these feelings will dictate your path in the future. If you let this demoralize you or, worse, start bitterly resenting everything about the company, it's not going to end well.

Acknowledge that this is a mere stumbling block, but it doesn't define your job or even your career. It's a learning experience, but it's not the end of the road. If you take it in stride and use what you've learned to iterate on communication and delivery with your next task, things will go much better. This may feel poignant to you, but I guarantee everyone else is going to completely forget about it by this time 6 months from now.

Talk to your co-workers about it. It's impossible for us to give you any good piece of advice. Your boss may be a prick. He may have been screamed at by someone higher or some client. And maybe he was just having a bad day...

All in all, it's not good for a boss to tell their employees that they're fucking up. unless he comes with a plan to fix it and it's actually better than what you guys were doing... So technically, he's the one who's messing up...