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

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

#281

Post by pc86 »

OnlyMortal wrote: post #261
xanaxagoras wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

If your a senior dev it’s part of your role to help the junior ones out. You should cultivate that behaviour as it brings up the quality of your colleagues and builds work relationships.

I draw a corollary to how graduate medical education works. You go into residency a fresh doctor with zero applicable skills. You may not even be CPR certified, but you're an MD/DO, and you've matched into a residency. You know less about actually helping people than a nurse who's been on the job for a month. You spend the next 3-7 years working 80-100 hours a week learning your chosen specialty. You become an absolute expert at your specific field. If you're in a surgical field you spend thousands of hours practicing and performing the surgeries you'll be responsible for. You may or may not specialize even further with a fellowship for another 1-4 years.

Then, when you graduate and can start making real money (probably), if you work at a hospital that does resident education, you're almost immediately expected to let the residents do as much as they can safely do, so they can learn. You go from working 80 hours a week performing surgery after surgery at a senior resident to working 30 hours a week watching the senior resident perform surgery.

Similarly (and admittedly it isn't a perfect analogy) as a junior and mid-level you're spending all this time learning how to write real software. Most of it's bad and especially at the junior level you're going to spend a couple years being more trouble than you're worth in terms of productivity. But by the time you're a senior, when you theoretically know what you're doing, you're going to have to spend most or a large portion of your time helping out the juniors in your org.

If you don't want to do that, you shouldn't be accepting senior positions. Or at least, go work somewhere where they don't hire juniors.

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

#282

Post by pc86 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You called in sick yesterday and went to the beach with your buddies? I'm glad you did! We all need a mental health day once in a while. Being happy actually makes you more productive in the long term.

> You called in sick yesterday and went to the beach with your buddies? I'm glad you did! We all need a mental health day once in a while. Being happy actually makes you more productive in the long term. Not quite. It's great when employees take care of themselves and make a point to enjoy their time outside of the office. However, it's not really cool if you commit to be somewhere on a certain day, no-show, and then…

"No showing" and "calling in sick" are two very different things.

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

#283

Post by codingdave »

> I don't know if I have a future at this company if the boss thinks I'm not a good dev

I have no idea what the tone was when these critiques were given, but is it possible that this was not a case of "You're a bad dev, look at these problems" as much as "You're a young dev, let me help show you some mistakes so we can do better in the future and make you a good dev."?

Critique is part of learning. And it can bum you out. But it sounds like you already know some of it is valid, and you have rebuttals for other stuff you can hash out. To me, this sounds like a terrific opportunity to improve communication and start making this a productive mentoring relationship.

I could be totally off base - but I'd just consider the possibilities before you assume negative intent.

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

#284

Post by busterarm »

lmeyerov wrote: post #211
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…

A project being late involving a junior dev due to architectural and scoping issues is probably not because of the junior dev but the tech lead and product/project manager. The junior dev is still at risk in practice because the team is at risk and their manager can use them for the blame game. In this scenario, I'd work through a 5-whys for figuring out why the multiple reasons why the "you're effectively on warning…

I wanted to post in this thread saying all of these above things but you put everything I was feeling into words perfectly.

I think this is the most accurate and actionable advice in the thread.

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

#285

Post by riffic »

I-Robot wrote: post #256

Haha! Gotta LOVE this forum: Ok, after reading 242 comments, I have summarized them for you: Your Boss is Good -> Your Boss is bad You should keep your head down -> You should keep your head Up You should quit -> You should NOT quit This is really good advice -> this is really BAD advice Go to HR and record this -> DON'T go to HR because [bad] Tell your boss FU and leave -> Be humble and learn from this Your boss wil…

HN is telling them what to do. The answer:

https://imgur.com/aHYEEOm

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

#286

Post by btown »

sdenton4 wrote: post #101
dazeandconfuse wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I definitely will take that into consideration in the future. I'm not sure if it would have helped in this specific case but I can definitely think of other situations at work where taking your advice would have helped me.

Pushing back on changing requirements is also a good skill to pick up. Part of it is getting a really clear agreement on what you're actually doing - what's the real scope of work - and actively changing the agreed plan when requirements change. I also find it helpful to highlight that changing requirements will have a cost in time, etc. There's also a an art to getting together a good MVP efficiently. You can treat…

I'll add here that there's a ton of nuance to "pushing back on changing requirements." My rule of thumb is this: program managers should understand the expected and worst-case consequences (including baseline time, switching costs, stepping on other team members' toes, etc.) of any proposals to expand scope, and as an individual contributor it is vitally important to be vocal to ensure they understand the full dynamics.

But if and once they do understand and acknowledge the consequences, and still say a scope increase is justified, it's highly highly likely that they have more business context than you. Document the decision, of course, but fundamentally trust your team.

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

#288

Post by mruniverse »

Your manager's boss shouldn't have given you criticism without your manager being there. You and your manager are the most informed about your work and it should have been a discussion among the three of you.

I think you're going to get more of the same. If not directly from your manager's boss, it will be passed down to you. And again you will be puzzled. It won't quite add up and will feel like you and your bosses are on a different page.

I would make sure to stay at least a year, then find something else.

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

#289

Post by titzer »

pmarreck wrote: post #201
titzer wrote: post #91

Putting on my (thankfully former) manager hat, I'd say that you are bearing the brunt of your boss's poor planning. As others have commented, you getting blamed by a skip-level manager is a bad sign and something is off. But, now that you know that, don't turn around and blame your manager for it or make a big stink. It will not be in your favor to make a big stink, especially if it's to take sides against them in a…

> (thankfully former) manager hat Care to elaborate? (I'm considering starting a small thoughtbot-like company that focuses on elixir/functional languages primarily, where I'd mostly play dev-shepherd)

I want to do research and be more hands on. The manager part had me spending a lot of time not doing that, but doing things that benefit the organization rather than the technology.

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

#290

Post by mmcnl »

First thing: communicate. Whatever you wrote down here, sit down and go over it with your boss. Also ask him what's worrying him. Obviously what's keeping him up at night (maybe even literally) isn't matching what you're doing.

Second, some small tips that will probably help any junior:

- It's not college anymore. We don't do assignments. You don't work for your boss, you work with your boss. You both have the some goal, albeit some difference in roles and responsibilities. Therefore treat your boss like a co-student and not the professor. That means: get frequent feedback, make sure there is a common understand of the goal that is in sight and the steps you (both) have taken to reach that goal. Essentially treat your boss like a peer, but with a different role. In a healthy organization this is appreciated.

- The next thing that is different from college is that in the working life no one cares how you got where you are. You are not getting graded. That means cut to the case. Basically there's a three step approach you need to take every day that will help you get to seniority pretty quickly if you master it: 1. Explain the current situation ("so we want to build this feature for customer X because blabla ..."). 2. Explain the problem in the current situation ("... but our platform isn't ready for it yet and we want it to ship it next month ...") 3. Then the magic part: give your boss options and avoid open-ended questions. Don't ask him what to do, but rather present him with a few options on how we can proceed, and ask for his input (" ... I think we can solve this in the following 3 ways: . I think we should go for A given XYZ, what do you think?")

- The third thing you need to remember is that need to be visible. Transparency is key. That means sharing your current('s team) status, even if nothing's changed. Never go underground for longer than 2 days without anyone knowing what you're doing. You might think you're doing something amazing but it's a huge red flag you're wandering off in the wrong direction if no one's what amazing stuff you're working in and why it's important. You can easily achieve this by scheduling a short recurring meeting (maybe there is one already, then use it).

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