Steve Jobs school of management by emotional manipulation. You can read about similar conversations on https://www.folklore.org
Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
441–450 of 506 posts
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#442Congratulations, you now have a personal experience that is required to increase your future effectiveness. It will continue to inform you on a visceral level when you are heading down a meaningless road.
It sounds like you spent your time and attention on an aspect that is not of value to the customer (user) that is paying the salaries of yourself and your managers.
There are various reasons for this, but keep in mind that you only have control over your own familiarity with the customer's needs and what you then prioritize. If you rely on the guidance and understanding of your manager and boss, you will only get resentful whenever they make a mistake and treat you unfairly.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. This is in my opinion actually quite easy to explain to managers: asking for time estimates in software development is like asking for time estimates in proving a deep conjecture in mathematics. Since every e…
Having never had a manager with any clue about maths, I found the golf analogy works better: "Why can't you hit a hole in one with every golf shot? You know exactly where the hole is, you know how much the ball weighs, you know the length of the club, you know how hard you need to hit it and in what direction. So why isn't every golf shot a hole in one? Because, obviously, you may have miscalculated how hard and at w…
> Having never had a manager with any clue about maths,
This is exactly my point: at least in Germany, the compulsory "mathematics for economists" courses are there to weed out student and are thus feared among the respective students.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I'm not sure I see mentoring as leadership as much as I see it as passing the experience along to someone less senior than you. Or did you become a capable IC in a vacuum, without the guidance of more senior engineers? Beyond that, you could go into contracting. Do the work, point to your contract whenever someone asks something else of you, move on after 3-6 months, rinse and repeat.
I mean, actually, mostly yes. I've usually been the last stop for technical help since school. There hasn't been anyone I can go to, so I've had to figure everything out on my own. I guess I'm wanting to work with senior peers more so than constantly dealing with juniors who seem to get lazy because they know I can solve their problems for them, often trivially.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
Employment is a negotiation, always has been. Senior technical staff often negotiate from a position of strength.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great example - thank you. Rephrasing as a "you should have", it would read: "You should have been able to finish this in 2-4 weeks, but it took you 6 months. What went wrong?" That's actually useful feedback, I think. It highlights that the giver believes the recipient has abilities that exceed the demonstrated result.
My one quibble with this example -I sincerely hope there was feedback given the entire duration of those six months. Being told far after the fact that you are doing X thing poorly is a kick to the self-esteem.
Oh absolutely, it was pretty clear that this person wasn’t on track 4 weeks in. And after that you have to keep communicating that we were expecting more progress… what are the issues will you make the deadline etc.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#447Doesn't sound like a great place for you to grow and succeed. I am sure you're a smart engineer and you're doing good work, but a junior dev straight out of college should absolutely not be the solo dev on an important project.
The structure of the dev team seems all wrong. Who created the tickets for this project? Who did QA? Who was supposed to be reviewing your code as you went? Who is writing the documentation? How often do you and your manager meet to discuss the project and your role/growth at the company?
From your message it sounds like you were left alone to do a waterfall style project from beginning to end with little to no supervision or direction. If that is even partially true, you should consider polishing your resume and looking for a different job.
You can give your direct manager feedback about how you were set up to fail, but it doesn't sound as if this engineering department has even the basic structures in place to help you grow and succeed. A junior dev fresh out of college really should not ever be left alone on a project.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's like, the whole point of my job as a teacher is to help people learn. Many professors see teaching as a distraction from their real job, research, not an adjunct to it.
This resonates with me, I had a real mixed bag when I was doing my undegrad degree. There were some incredible professors who wanted to teach, were very approachable, and would always make time and reply to emails with good detail. Then there were other professors who clearly only had their open office hours because they had to, would rarely reply to emails, and the moment you stepped into their office it was clear t…
This is getting off topic, but I'd love to see a fundamental rethink in how 'teachers' for undergrad courses are hired. Certainly for year 1 and 2 courses the 'teachers' should be selected and hired ~100% based on their pedagogical skills and passion and ~0% based on the impact of their publications. Universities also need to start recognizing, valuing and rewarding teaching ability.
The best first year math lecturer I had at university (and the person that is the reason I ended up majoring in math) didn't get tenure and ended up taking a job a smaller 'unprestigious' local college. The by far the worst lecturer I had is now at MIT.
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#449One thing I’ve learned running various teams including many very talented new college associates is this.
Young new college graduates are not any good at work until they either learn how to be or are coached how to be. It appears to be a tautology. Honestly, it’s totally ok, what’s not ok is for them to have expectations of young new college grads to be experienced hires instead of associate level employees. This is poor leadership not representative of your failings (which I expect are plenty given youth and first job).
Re: Ask HN: My boss doesn't think I'm doing good work, how to proceed?
#450> 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…
> In business, it's much better to 'bother the professor' regularly and check in affirmatively on whether the assignment has changed This is definitely management's responsibility. If they assign a task and let it continue after it has become obsolete, what kind of management is that? > As a junior employee, you're not going to know the full business context of what makes sense Agreed. I would add that explaining eno…
This is definitely management's responsibility.
Ideally yes. But the truth is that you will often find yourself in situations where management is less than ideal, and no matter how unfair you will end up looking bad if you fail to navigate that.