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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?

#491

Post by JamesBarney »

pdonis wrote: post #468
JamesBarney wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair. But I haven't seen that communication style very often in engineering managers. I've only seen it once in an engineering manager in the last 12 years of professional development. (I saw it all the time when I worked service industry or sales jobs though.)

> I haven't seen that communication style very often in engineering managers. It might depend on whether "engineering manager" means "an engineer who has risen to management" or "a manager who happens to manage engineers even though they have no engineering experience themselves". The communication style I described is indeed very rare in my experience for the first type of engineering manager. But in my experience i…

I assumed the first because OP mentions

> He looks at the code and criticizes design decisions

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

#492

Post by kmonsen »

milesvp wrote: post #243
kmonsen wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) I don't think you can reliably say after the first suck project. Some people are a bit slow at picking up new things, but become very productive after a while. (2) Others pick things up super quickly, but never become super productive as the first group. And of course lots of variations of people that don't fit neatly into either group. I am in group (2) I think, but in my experience you really want people that b…

Salman Khan talks about this a little. He said one of the things they learned from the Khan Academy is that you can sort of group everyone into either "convex" or "concave" learners and they all basically get to the same level of competence by time T, and it's more a matter of do they plateau at the beginning or at the end. He seems to be very careful about placing value judgements on which is "better", and he's also…

Yes, agree with all that :-)

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

#493

Post by sylphaenos »

thegrimmest wrote: post #444
ljm wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not wanting to help juniors so they're left to struggle the way you did seems incredibly devoid of empathy. I could describe my career the same way you have, but mentoring juniors is now my favorite part of the job. When you were a junior, would you have been satisfied regurgitating a senior's answer without understanding it, or would you have wanted to learn? If you were into learning, why assume nobody else will be?

When pairing with juniors, I avoid directly solving problems for them as much as possible–lessons tend to stick better when you ask leading questions and let them discover solutions for themselves. Perhaps this technique would also work to filter out "lazy" questions.

Working with a mix of super competent developers at all levels has really driven home for me that everyone is better at something, and worse at something, than you are. I've learned lots of new things from developers with less experience than me. I've also worked with many devs with senior titles who were worse off than most juniors.

Ultimately it's okay to find mentoring unenjoyable, but if this describes you, please stick to teams with most/all seniors and don't agree to mentor even if pressured. Attitudes like this can really exacerbate imposter syndrome for juniors, and I've seen it damage several careers.

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

#494

Post by imwillofficial »

rsj_hn wrote: post #77
imwillofficial wrote: post #66

Be humble. Try to take his (possibly unfair) criticisms in stride. Work harder, do better. Be open to correction, take this as a growth opportunity.

That's good short term advice, but long term if you are still not getting recognition you should think about leaving or transferring to another team.

^this

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

#495

Post by zacmps »

allenu wrote: post #267
nlh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this sentiment. And in fact, I’ll take it further: I’m not sure any “you should have” phrase is ever beneficial UNLESS it’s in the context of giving guidance about the future. And even then, it’s better to phrase it as “next time, I would suggest…” This has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time. “You should have” phrases are often used to berate or make the recipient feel bad while acting as a vent fo…

This reminds me of a case of a director asking a "tough question" of a dev team as a way of providing feedback. I don't think the feedback was taken the right way in this case. I was in a meeting where a group of devs were presenting a technical solution to our director, who was overseeing the product as a whole. At one point the director asks, "Did you look into other companies doing this and potentially licensing t…

I think the question is fine, and a good one, but the motivation should have been made explicit, certainly no later than the end of the meeting.

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

#496

Post by flippinburgers »

Unfortunately once you have more experience you will probably agree with your boss: the project should have been finished sooner. This however is not just your fault. The "blame" needs to be shared with your direct manager who should have been keeping more in touch with you and pushing for more immediate results. In terms of the way you were criticized your boss should have approached this with a "you are still learning" attitude in the way they spoke.

Your manager might be more used to working with people who need little guidance. Having worked with juniors who excel out of the gate and those who think they are doing ok but are moving slowly, your situation sounds like the latter. The only way to overcome this is through getting more experience and being much, much more communicative.

Case in point: you say you haven't heard anything from your manager? This manager might lack the proper communication skills, but that doesn't mean that you also have to lack those skills. As scary as it might be, you need to kindly ask them what they think. Talk about what could have gone better. Establish a rapport. Once you have more experience, you might want to look for another job. That is, if you have a successful project under your belt at this company and you still don't feel appreciated the company might not be for you. Be warned: generally speaking companies are not very good at making one feel appreciated in my experience.

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

#497

Post by thegrimmest »

sylphaenos wrote: post #493
thegrimmest wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not wanting to help juniors so they're left to struggle the way you did seems incredibly devoid of empathy. I could describe my career the same way you have, but mentoring juniors is now my favorite part of the job. When you were a junior, would you have been satisfied regurgitating a senior's answer without understanding it, or would you have wanted to learn? If you were into learning, why assume nobody else will be…

I'm not sure how not wanting to deal with juniors is devoid of empathy, much like not wanting to look after children isn't either. In either case, I don't see how a high degree of empathy is a prerequisite for technical excellence at any level. Leave the feelings at home.

When I was a junior, I would have been greatly satisfied by more time and attention from seniors, as I would be today grateful for more time and attention from people in differing specialities, where I am quite junior. We do however live in the real world, where these people's time is extremely valuable, and I wouldn't dare disrespect it by asking them trivial questions. I would value 10mins of their time and the context switch they pay to help me on the order of days of my own. And if I do resort to bothering them, I do so with an attitude of utmost humility, akin to digital dogeza.

I get frustrated when folks fail to do any of this. I regard is a breach of professional etiquette that unfortunately seems all too common. I've found myself responding "Try harder" or "LMGTFY" to these sorts of inquiries, which is about as polite as I can muster.

> everyone is better at something

It seems that this would be trivially easy to prove false, and very difficult to prove true. I've certainly met developers with nothing uniquely useful to contribute, in spite of best attempts at coaching them.

> imposter syndrome

I'd like to note that I'm actually extremely forgiving of mistakes, even very expensive ones, so long as they're honest. We all make them, and it's really on me to ensure that processes are in place and enforced to prevent the most critical sorts of them. But you don't know what you don't know. It's more the "I'm a baby, please hold my hand" attitude that I'm frankly somewhat disgusted by. If that describes (hypothetical) you, then perhaps some imposter syndrome is in good order.

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

#499

Post by jokethrowaway »

Communitivity wrote: post #454
OnlyMortal wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's say you are the cryptid 10x engineer/tech lead, supervising a team of 8 junior engineers. You can spend 4 hours, the equivalent of a 40hr week of lesser mortals (this math is almost never true in my experience), or spend a half hour of time on each of your junior engineers. The problem you help each of them solve is solved in 30m as opposed to the 3-4h they might have tried solving it themselves, and they've le…

This requires an environment where long term productivity is more important than short term productivity, it doesn't account for juniors who won't get it, no matter how hard they try, it doesn't account for juniors who will leave the company after becoming more proficient because they can't get an adequate payrise.

10x engineers can be a good match for startups where shipping now is essential and for big businesses who need something done quickly (for a change, the bigger the company, the slower everything else).

The only cons of 10x engineers is that they will burn out and that they're incredibly rare. Advising 10x engineers to help out other and collaborate is also nice to give them a bit of down time so they don't burn out and leave for the next startup with a 50% raise.

That said, it's not like HR managers are able to distinguish between senior low productivity engineers and 10x engineers, so it doesn't matter. No company will have a strategy around employees productivity.

I disagree the 10x engineer is a myth, as an hiring manager, I can easily tell you who is a 10x engineer after working with them for a year or so.

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

#500

Post by quantified »

xanaxagoras wrote: post #227
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…

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…

You may well be right. +1 karma for the adjustment. Mentoring/helping the juniors is part of the un-tracked/unplanned workload of the seniors.
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