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

As a manager, I have learned that when projects are delayed, 9/10 it is due to bad management (of either the direct manager or the project manager).

Conditional of course that the developer has a sufficient amount of skills and is motivated, which you seem to be.

In my early experiences as a manager, I was frustrated when projects where not delivered on time, and below the expectations. After several iterations on self-evaluation and attempts to do things differently, I eventually found out that structure on the planning, and having a common understanding of the requirements are the key to a successful delivery. As a consequence, I spend now more time on the actual planning (up to 15% is allocated to this), and ensure that everyone has understood the expectations fully.

Those people that I was complaining about before, turned out to become extremely valuable to the company.

If it were me that got talked to like that I'd be furious.

It's totally unprofessional to tell someone they expected the project to be done earlier and criticize your code when it's in a completed state.

Especially if that someone DOESN'T EVEN WORK DIRECTLY WITH YOU #wtf.

You're a junior dev... It's the company's responsibility to provide the adequate processes and mentoring to enable you to grow, and to provide real-time feedback (pair programming / code reviews / presentations / whiteboarding etc).

Also, it's totally unprofessional not to have all the people present in the meeting that are responsible for the delivery of the project. If the manager wasn't there it should have been rescheduled.

In my weathered state as a developer, I'd probably have the balls to write all these points down, and to ask for a meeting with the boss. If they reacted with further gas lighting I'd immediately take my resignation out of my back pocket and hand it to them.

There are a few old consulting tricks to doing this effectively:

Phrase the points as follows:

* Start your point with what you observed or something that is non-subjective

* Avoid saying "you" in a sentence (this is to avoid confrontation and getting someone on the defensive).

* Also, use "we" to make it seem like "we're all in this together as a team" - even if it's just you you're talking about.

* Start how the action made you _feel_. People cannot disagree with your feelings.

* Hear the other person out

* State what you think would be the appropriate approach for next time.

e.g. "In the meeting the other day, a point was made that the project wasn't completed in the time it was expected.

When this point was made, to be honest, it made me feel resentful, as I always put a great deal of care into my work. It also made me feel like I wasn't valued as a team member. I also felt dismissed and not heard out when I explained why things had been done the way that had been.

# wait for reaction

I was thinking about how to improve this situation in the future. First of all, if we find ourselves in this situation again could we make sure that everyone is in the meeting that needs to be? Secondly, I appreciate receiving feedback, however I feel that to do it at the end of a project is much too late. If that's important to you, could we do this more regularly? ... "

This way, if the boss ever tries to hit you up again at the end of a project, you can bring up the conversation that you had in the past. Apply the same methodology to your discussion and you'll end up on top and make them look like the ass they are.

I’ll go out on a limb here and just guess that this boss lives to bash the self-confidence of subordinates.

I realise there’s not a lot of evidence in what you said, but:

1) This is your first job, you’re not expected to know better. Your boss has clearly been in this career for a while to be in charge, so already knew this before criticising you.

2) Your boss telling you that you misunderstood a comment made by your manager is nonsense - he wasn’t there so he has no way of knowing. Not a fan of this word because it’s thrown around for everything, but that to me is transparent gaslighting.

3) You’re more-or-less solo, on a project that they clearly care about enough for it to be a problem - as a first job out of college. That’s just bad management, and no-one competent would expect that to work out - and yet from what you’ve said it has. Good job!

tldr; the problem is very likely not you, but watch out for this dude as there’s a lot of red flags here.

I have this junior engineer DM'ing me right now and I've been ignoring it because I don't want to deal with him and I have my own work to do. I'm reading through your comment here thinking "hey, I'm pretty good at walking that line, bothering the professor when appropriate, not waiting too long and not asking him for help too soon"... and then it occurred to me this guy is probably bothering the professor where I'm the professor. Oops. Need to work on being more charitable with my time.

It can be used in the context of explaining what changes that need to be made to someone's work for it to be acceptable. "You should have used established crypto library calls here instead of rolling your own SHA-256 implementation with probable bugs. Please fix it"

I also think it works well, better than "next time I would", for giving someone permission to do things. "You should have called me when the client asked for XYZ" sounds more forgiving and less venting than "Next time call me when the client asks you for XYZ". Or "you should have felt free to take a mental health day". It's more empowering.