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

Can be motivitating words for some people. Coaches will say stuff like this to a talented athlete who is underachieving, if they think it will light a fire.

A good manager would not say stuff like that unless he really felt the person would take it the right way. A bad manager will say stuff like that to stroke his own ego.

My work is only tangential to the software engineering industry. Therefore, my view may not be as applicable as others.

I think it’s inappropriate for this senior manager to have given any feedback about the status or requirements of this project directly to you. As a recent graduate, I would hardly consider you to be responsible for any project management duties. It’s up to the project manager to set expectations and make decisions regarding things like meeting a deadline. In this case, I would assume the project manager is your direct manager.

There is a direct correlation between the output of a project and its inputs: the deadline, any specific requirements, and resources provided to the individual contributors assigned to the project (e.g. a senior resource providing code review). The project manager’s duty is to be the “neck to wring” when there are issues with the project. That is why they are responsible for communicating and setting expectations.

Perhaps your manager did not handle these duties well in this instance. In fact, it sounds to me like this is the case based on your story. Because your manager was not present in this meeting, the senior manager apparently chose to wring YOUR neck instead, which is inappropriate, especially given your tenure.

This is going to happen to you a lot in your career. You can protect yourself or prevent it by keeping good records of your actions. For example, your commit messages could contain a copy of whatever specifications you received, or you can make a habit of confirming your assumptions via email with the appropriate contacts in copy.

Either way, don’t take this too hard. You are unfortunately bearing the brunt of unprofessional behavior that is happening well above your head. The fact that you completed the project and feel proud of the output is what you should remember from this experience.

This sounds like an internal political game between your boss and the skip level and has really nothing to do with your performance.

The non-asshole way of your skip-level to ensure a critical project gets delivered in time is to discuss the deadlines and priorities with your boss and KEEP HANDS OFF THE TECHNICAL DETAILS! Then your boss should break it down to milestones, answer your technical questions, and keep politely bugging you if they believe you are going to miss the deadline.

If the skip-level is not happy with the progress, they should express it to your boss, and the boss should get back with some compromises (hiring more people, simplifying requirements). The golden rule of management is that all praise should be public, and all criticism should be private and candid.

Setting up a meeting with 2 bosses and 1 employee where the skip-level is blowing steam at the employee, forcing the employee to point fingers to the boss is a sign of GROSS managerial incompetence. Skip-level looking through technical decisions (rather than user-impacting perf metrics) is another sign of GROSS incompetence. Having 2 managers and 1 junior programmer work on a feature is yet another red flag.

The key takeaway is that your skip-level is either an incompetent asshole blowing steam off, or trying to get rid of your boss, using this as an excuse. You can find out by checking their previous history (how long they worked together, who hired whom, how big is the company, whos idea was the project) and asking some questions (suggest adding some features to the project to both bosses in separate conversations, and ask about their overall project opinion in between).

If the skip-level is trying to kick out your boss, they may keep you nonetheless, or may try to kick you both off the boat. Your boss may also want to scapegoat you to keep their job (and it may work if the company is shitty). If the skip-level is just an emotional asshole, your boss should give you some hints about not taking it too seriously, so then it's up to you on how much shit you want to put up with.

Either way, most software companies these days are an absurd theater fueled by gossip and human emotion, while the actual product is secondary. You need to either account for it and be cynical, or just ignore that part and be ready to sometimes get fired or blamed without any reasonable explanation.

Well, depends on the specifics: I was embedded in an operational unit so neither my manager or their boss were techies. It was often necessary for urgent issues for the upper boss to talk/meet with me directly to hash something out and translate from operational needs to technical capabilities and logic.

But both of them always filled each other in, and it was never about any performance issues on my part.

I would add in this context, there may be a difference of opinion between the direct manager and the upper manager on a) how much OP is capable of and b) whether OP will get flustered if they're expected to perform near the higher of the two estimates of their capability. The direct manager may have been shielding OP from the higher standards of the upper manager out of concern for their emotional wellbeing, even if they think they're capable of the higher standard of performance once brought to it gradually.