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

Your boss's boss didn't do a good job communicating. Your boss didn't do a good job communicating. You didn't do a good job communicating.

The nice thing about it is that if you focus on really good communication, you can almost entirely solve the problem yourself. You can give status updates, you can ask questions, you can set up 1-1's to go through what you are working on and get advice. You can control a lot more than you think by being a really great communicator and being organized. It does take work and organization, but you can do it.

I would consider looking for a new job on the side and start interviewing. Your boss's boss showed you disrespect and personally I would have a hard time trusting that person if I were in your shoes. Don't start any drama at work on anything... just keep working doing what is expected but don't go above and beyond killing yourself, and start practicing for interviews and start applying at other places if you can.

A lot of good points have already been made. The feedback isn't actionable. What's your right of reply? This is especially difficult since you're a junior and don't know the protocols. Perhaps you should be more comfortable interrupting your manager/other stakeholders with progress updates/regular questions (again, difficult for a junior).

What strikes me the most is the absence of your direct/immediate manager. While the praise in public, criticize in private principle isn't being directly violated here, something like it is. Your immediate manager's responsibility is managing you, and to a degree this includes protecting you. This kind of criticism should be passed through the chain of command and only be delivered by your direct manager. Their job is made harder by the introduction of ambiguity by being excluded from this conversation. (Healthier work places can operate differently but you've already demonstrated it's not a high trust environment where you are allowed to jump the chain of command in the interest of getting things done. I've only seen this work in a few teams.)

I think the gaslighting comments may have more merit than others. I'll be clear: this is about someone in authority telling you how things are and this directly contradicts with your knowledge of the situation. There is at least a modicum of this in your description of events, but it's probably not the most important issue here.

A few things to consider before making any decision: 1. How long have you been at this job? 2. How long was this project estimated to take? How long has it taken? 3. Were you part of the estimation process? 4. How hands on was your manager when it came to the execution of this project? 5. How comfortable/safe do you feel having difficult conversations with your manager? 6. How large is the company and how much mobility do you have within it? (Could you switch to a different team if you wanted to?) 7. How many months of runway would you have if you didn't have this job anymore?

Pending answers to the first set of questions, I see two possible scenarios here:

Scenario I: Your manager was in the loop about this meeting.

If she knew that her boss was going to have this conversation with you, she should have been in the room with you. If she had a fire to put out, she should have rescheduled this meeting so that she could be there. She should have, in fact, had a conversation with you about her boss's displeasure (and perhaps her own displeasure) before you walked into this meeting.

Scenario II: Your manager had no idea what this meeting was about.

This would mean that perhaps the project/product you are working on is at risk of getting deprioritized, and both you and your manager are about to get shuffled around to work on something else.

If you are very early in your career, I would recommend valuing mentorship above anything else (even compensation). In both scenario I and scenario II, it does not seem that you are receiving an adequate level of mentorship within this organization. If you are comfortable putting your job at risk, this is something you should definitely bring up very directly with your manager and maybe even with her boss or her boss's boss.

If you need a job right now, just keep your head down and start looking for positions either within this company or somewhere else, where you can get mentorship from excellent engineers who are also excellent mentors.