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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?

#381

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

commandlinefan wrote: post #149
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…

> Your boss is gaslighting & intimidating you. Yep. And it won't be the last time. There are a lot of people who deliberately manage this way - in fact, a lot of times they're promoted to management because they act this way. For the most part, it's bluster and you can ignore it. It's really, really hard to find programmers and, no matter how good a programmer they found, the next one won't be as capable as you becau…

I don’t think someone slacking off would post on hn as emotionally agnostic as op. It does sound like there’s a fair amount of gaslighting though, if you associate ‘the performance of the project’ with yourself as a junior, that’s on your manager - if you screw up, it’s their fault for not providing top cover.

I employ one full timer and another junior, most screwup’s are my miscommunications or me not setting expectations.

@op, Mind if I ask, are you part of any minorities which may result in you being bullied? Obviously you don’t have to answer, and I don’t want to gaslight you, but a lot of *ist behaviour I see is smart enough to be camouflaged.

To be clear though, junior’s screwing up is par for the course, if you’re a net zero (bring in as much income/productivity as you burn in screwups, but with the ability to learn), I’d consider you a win.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

thegrimmest wrote: post #310
pc86 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 absolu…

What if you just want to write software and not be responsible for mentorship? Why do capable individual contributors always have to be roped into leadership?

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by indigochill »

thegrimmest wrote: post #310
pc86 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 absolu…

What if you just want to write software and not be responsible for mentorship? Why do capable individual contributors always have to be roped into leadership?

> What if you just want to write software and not be responsible for mentorship?

At a certain point, you probably know considerably more about the work than the people working around you. You might say you develop "seniority". At that point, the balance of value between your individual contributions and the knowledge you can share with others reaches a tipping point.

If you're limiting the value you're bringing to the company to only individual contributions, you're capping the value you can bring the company and by correlation the compensation you're due.

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

#384

Post by marcus_holmes »

sangnoir wrote: post #370
Nbox9 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC's to make the jump to being a great manager I find it very odd that most ICs take the path of management. This seems like an unnatural transition, like going from being a minister to playing in a death metal band.

There really isn't a pipeline for for entry-level managers in tech: I've never heard of anyone interning for, or graduating from college and managing ICs as an entry-level job. However, those managers are needed, and have got to come from somewhere, so here we are, looking to start a death metal band at a seminary.

As someone who's done both (dev and dev management), it's more that it's very hard to manage dev teams unless you've been a dev. We have all experienced the clueless non-technical manager who doesn't understand why any of this has to be this way and keeps pushing for "common sense" things like accurate estimates for project development.

There's also nothing stopping a good dev from being a great manager, or vice versa. A good dev learns to listen well, which is also a key skill as a manager. A dev creates working systems out of conceptual components, a manager creates working teams out of actual people. The biggest difference is that there's no Stack Overflow for management - every situation has to be treated as unique and you can't just copy-paste the solution.

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

#385

Post by stef25 »

onphonenow wrote: post #245
mushufasa wrote: post #24

> Part of the reason it had taken so long is because I put a substantial amount of work into a part of the project that's no longer necessary due to changing requirements, which I don't think I could have forseen. One of the things that I've experienced with new grad junior devs is that there's an adjustment needed to change from academic working to business working. In academia, usually the professor gives an assign…

Wow - this is the best advice on HN (top comment to while I write) in a while. For junior folks I REPEATEDLY say, if you find yourself getting stuck / slowing down touch base. Or keep me in the loop, let's check in regularly when you have a good moment to chat, I'd love to hear how its going. Here's the other thing I noticed. I work with someone who is is my peer. Ie, 15 years+ experience etc. THEY check in with me p…

> For junior folks I REPEATEDLY say, if you find yourself getting stuck / slowing down touch base. Or keep me in the loop, let's check in regularly when you have a good moment to chat, I'd love to hear how its going.

Sometimes work goes in such small incremental steps, full of unknown unknowns that there's so many occasions you can get bogged down. Even if you apply the rule of "touch base if you get stuck for more than an hour", you can still end up interrupting the senior guy 5x / day.

And when they're obviously annoyed and provide too short an explanation it becomes very uncomfortable to interrupt them again. Often it's not even their fault, they have a high workload and supporting the new guy isn't foreseen. Or, they're good devs but just incapable of explaining things.

I had this experience at a fintech company that didn't have a single page of internal documentation and you'd have 8 point Jira tickets that consisted of one bullet point - figure out the rest (everyone remote).

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

#386

Post by pjerem »

thegrimmest wrote: post #310
pc86 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 absolu…

What if you just want to write software and not be responsible for mentorship? Why do capable individual contributors always have to be roped into leadership?

As long as you are not your own boss (and even in this case, tbf), you are likely to not do only what you "want", because you are not the one defining what is your job.

Honestly, it's a weird remark. Pretty much all jobs on this planet have aspects you wish you don't have to do. You work for your employer and your employer needs you to train the juniors. If you don't want to do that, change for an employer who only recruit senior engineers, if you can.

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

#387

Post by 1_player »

Nbox9 wrote: post #350
dbcurtis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC's to make the jump to being a great manager. As an individual contributor, you need two things most of all: 1. quiet uninterrupted time to focus your mind and get into flow, and 2. quick responses to any blockers or questions that you have so that you can get back into the work. As a manager, a key part of your job now requires you to be infinitely interruptab…

> I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC's to make the jump to being a great manager I find it very odd that most ICs take the path of management. This seems like an unnatural transition, like going from being a minister to playing in a death metal band.

Indeed, I got promoted to a managerial position, which seemed a nice career opportunity for me, but my productivity and happiness tanked so much that when I had the opportunity two years later to go back to just being an engineer with no one waiting for my input, I just took it. This is how I learned that while I think I can be a decent manager, the skillset of managing people are totally different than being an engineer and it's very hard, at least for me, to context switch effectively between the two. And in that case I'd rather be an engineer.

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

#388

Post by arka2147483647 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #344
rendall wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cross-cultural programmer here, and I can help. In Europe, calling in sick when you're not actually, recognizably ill is a pretty serious breach of trust. No cutesy "mental health break" exceptions. That said, you likely have at least 20 days of paid vacation, plus holidays. In the US, where 10 days paid vacation is the norm and you're often punished in some way for actually taking it, the occasional "mental health b…

So far the companies I've worked at don't have "vacation" or "sick" days, they have "paid time off" (which is really great if you're healthy and really shitty if you're not).

Atleast in Finland there is a clear, legal, distiction between vacation and sick days. They are not exchangeable in any way.

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

#390

Post by Veen »

rendall wrote: post #332
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228

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. 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…

Cross-cultural programmer here, and I can help. In Europe, calling in sick when you're not actually, recognizably ill is a pretty serious breach of trust. No cutesy "mental health break" exceptions. That said, you likely have at least 20 days of paid vacation, plus holidays. In the US, where 10 days paid vacation is the norm and you're often punished in some way for actually taking it, the occasional "mental health b…

A company I work with was recently acquired by a US company (I'm British). I was quite confused when, in a meeting, all of the Americans suggested that the company should implement mental health days several times a month. My thought was: isn't that what the weekends and holidays are for? It would be quite unusual for British employees to demand mental health days. Perhaps the lack of paid vacation explains the difference (Although, I haven't had a full week off since 2014 because I'm a freelancer, so maybe they have a point).
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