<story><title>Ask HN: My boss doesn&apos;t think I&apos;m doing good work, how to proceed?</title><text>Dear HN,&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m working my first job out of college and I really enjoy it. I get to do fun computer vision stuff, write Rust, great pay, great benefits, short commute, etc. And my manager and her boss are both super smart.&lt;p&gt;However I&amp;#x27;m a bit frustrated. I thought I was doing well - I&amp;#x27;m working hard on the project I was assigned to, and it&amp;#x27;s coming along nicely. The deadline was pushed back once (which that seems to be very common at this company), and the new deadline is still in the future.&lt;p&gt;Two weeks ago, my manager&amp;#x27;s boss schedules a meeting with me and my manager. My manager is busy putting out a fire so it&amp;#x27;s just me and the boss, and the boss made a some of criticisms of me. I&amp;#x27;ve been thinking about them and I can&amp;#x27;t shake the feeling that some of them were kind of unfair. (To be clear, I absolutely did make some mistakes on this project that contributed to it taking longer than it had to.)&lt;p&gt;First, he basically tells me this project should have been finished a long time ago and he can&amp;#x27;t believe it&amp;#x27;s taken this long etc. I had no idea that he felt this way before the meeting - I&amp;#x27;ve mostly just been working to get it done before the revised deadline my manager gave me.&lt;p&gt;He looks at the code and criticizes design decisions, some of which were made largely on my manager&amp;#x27;s explicit suggestions. (When I bring this up, he says I probably just misinterpreted an offhand comment of hers as a hard requirement.)&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s no longer necessary due to changing requirements, which I don&amp;#x27;t think I could have forseen. I don&amp;#x27;t think the boss appreciates that and just sees that the amount of usable output is low for the amount of time I&amp;#x27;d been working.&lt;p&gt;He did also make some criticisms that I thought were fair. For instance he said I should have looked at other projects to see how they accomplished what I&amp;#x27;m trying to do. That definitely would have been a good idea.&lt;p&gt;After our meeting, my manager and my boss had a meeting with just the two of them to discuss the status of our project. I have no clue what happened in that meeting and I haven&amp;#x27;t heard anything about it from either of them since.&lt;p&gt;As of today the project is pretty much done (save for some procedural details). I&amp;#x27;m happy, but I can&amp;#x27;t stop thinking about that meeting. I really did work hard, so it&amp;#x27;s demotivating that it feels like the result of me working hard is unappreciated.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not thinking of quitting over this or anything, but it seriously bums me out. I don&amp;#x27;t know if I have a future at this company if the boss thinks I&amp;#x27;m not a good dev, and I really like it here. A month or so ago they added someone else to my project and I trained him on my code, and he&amp;#x27;s super smart and capable, and I&amp;#x27;m thinking that now they probably feel that they could fire me if they wanted and not lose much.&lt;p&gt;But the saddest part is that I really admire my manager and my boss, and I wanted to make them happy to have hired me, and now I feel like they probably aren&amp;#x27;t. I guess I can try to learn from my mistakes and get over it, but at the very least it feels like an inauspicious start.&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nbox9</author><text>&amp;gt; I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC&amp;#x27;s to make the jump to being a great manager&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item><item><author>dbcurtis</author><text>I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC&amp;#x27;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 interruptable, so that you can get those answers back to your juniors quickly, and also, you must protect your juniors from as many interruptions as you can.  AND THIS IS IMPORTANT: Make sure you are not that interruption.  If you want to ask your junior a question, HOLD IT and batch your questions, if at all possible, so that you are not a source of interruptions.&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, have clear goals, and communicate them clearly.  Most people want to do the right thing.  The better they understand the goals, the better able they will be to make decisions on their own that don&amp;#x27;t need adjustment later.&lt;p&gt;You need to encourage your juniors to ask questions as soon as they need to get clarification or unblocked.  To do that, you need to embrace the interruptions, that is your job now.  Both the interruptions from your juniors so that they get unblocked, and the interruptions from pesky people that will distract your crew must be short-circuited by you before they get to your team.</text></item><item><author>xanaxagoras</author><text>I have this junior engineer DM&amp;#x27;ing me right now and I&amp;#x27;ve been ignoring it because I don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with him and I have my own work to do. I&amp;#x27;m reading through your comment here thinking &amp;quot;hey, I&amp;#x27;m pretty good at walking that line, bothering the professor when appropriate, not waiting too long and not asking him for help too soon&amp;quot;... and then it occurred to me this guy is probably bothering the professor where I&amp;#x27;m the professor. Oops. Need to work on being more charitable with my time.</text></item><item><author>mushufasa</author><text>&amp;gt; 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&amp;#x27;s no longer necessary due to changing requirements, which I don&amp;#x27;t think I could have forseen.&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I&amp;#x27;ve experienced with new grad junior devs is that there&amp;#x27;s an adjustment needed to change from academic working to business working. In academia, usually the professor gives an assignment and you have to go off and figure it out, without bothering the professor, no matter what. In business, it&amp;#x27;s much better to &amp;#x27;bother the professor&amp;#x27; regularly and check in affirmatively on whether the assignment has changed, or to tell the manager about challenges that arise to re-plan together. As a junior employee, you&amp;#x27;re not going to know the full business context of what makes sense, and checking in can save weeks of time that would otherwise be spent off on your own.&lt;p&gt;Not sure if that&amp;#x27;s the case here, but certainly something you could consider going forwards to prevent similar situations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sangnoir</author><text>There really isn&amp;#x27;t a pipeline for for entry-level managers in tech: I&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: My boss doesn&apos;t think I&apos;m doing good work, how to proceed?</title><text>Dear HN,&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m working my first job out of college and I really enjoy it. I get to do fun computer vision stuff, write Rust, great pay, great benefits, short commute, etc. And my manager and her boss are both super smart.&lt;p&gt;However I&amp;#x27;m a bit frustrated. I thought I was doing well - I&amp;#x27;m working hard on the project I was assigned to, and it&amp;#x27;s coming along nicely. The deadline was pushed back once (which that seems to be very common at this company), and the new deadline is still in the future.&lt;p&gt;Two weeks ago, my manager&amp;#x27;s boss schedules a meeting with me and my manager. My manager is busy putting out a fire so it&amp;#x27;s just me and the boss, and the boss made a some of criticisms of me. I&amp;#x27;ve been thinking about them and I can&amp;#x27;t shake the feeling that some of them were kind of unfair. (To be clear, I absolutely did make some mistakes on this project that contributed to it taking longer than it had to.)&lt;p&gt;First, he basically tells me this project should have been finished a long time ago and he can&amp;#x27;t believe it&amp;#x27;s taken this long etc. I had no idea that he felt this way before the meeting - I&amp;#x27;ve mostly just been working to get it done before the revised deadline my manager gave me.&lt;p&gt;He looks at the code and criticizes design decisions, some of which were made largely on my manager&amp;#x27;s explicit suggestions. (When I bring this up, he says I probably just misinterpreted an offhand comment of hers as a hard requirement.)&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s no longer necessary due to changing requirements, which I don&amp;#x27;t think I could have forseen. I don&amp;#x27;t think the boss appreciates that and just sees that the amount of usable output is low for the amount of time I&amp;#x27;d been working.&lt;p&gt;He did also make some criticisms that I thought were fair. For instance he said I should have looked at other projects to see how they accomplished what I&amp;#x27;m trying to do. That definitely would have been a good idea.&lt;p&gt;After our meeting, my manager and my boss had a meeting with just the two of them to discuss the status of our project. I have no clue what happened in that meeting and I haven&amp;#x27;t heard anything about it from either of them since.&lt;p&gt;As of today the project is pretty much done (save for some procedural details). I&amp;#x27;m happy, but I can&amp;#x27;t stop thinking about that meeting. I really did work hard, so it&amp;#x27;s demotivating that it feels like the result of me working hard is unappreciated.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not thinking of quitting over this or anything, but it seriously bums me out. I don&amp;#x27;t know if I have a future at this company if the boss thinks I&amp;#x27;m not a good dev, and I really like it here. A month or so ago they added someone else to my project and I trained him on my code, and he&amp;#x27;s super smart and capable, and I&amp;#x27;m thinking that now they probably feel that they could fire me if they wanted and not lose much.&lt;p&gt;But the saddest part is that I really admire my manager and my boss, and I wanted to make them happy to have hired me, and now I feel like they probably aren&amp;#x27;t. I guess I can try to learn from my mistakes and get over it, but at the very least it feels like an inauspicious start.&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nbox9</author><text>&amp;gt; I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC&amp;#x27;s to make the jump to being a great manager&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item><item><author>dbcurtis</author><text>I have a theory about why it is so difficult for great IC&amp;#x27;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 interruptable, so that you can get those answers back to your juniors quickly, and also, you must protect your juniors from as many interruptions as you can.  AND THIS IS IMPORTANT: Make sure you are not that interruption.  If you want to ask your junior a question, HOLD IT and batch your questions, if at all possible, so that you are not a source of interruptions.&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, have clear goals, and communicate them clearly.  Most people want to do the right thing.  The better they understand the goals, the better able they will be to make decisions on their own that don&amp;#x27;t need adjustment later.&lt;p&gt;You need to encourage your juniors to ask questions as soon as they need to get clarification or unblocked.  To do that, you need to embrace the interruptions, that is your job now.  Both the interruptions from your juniors so that they get unblocked, and the interruptions from pesky people that will distract your crew must be short-circuited by you before they get to your team.</text></item><item><author>xanaxagoras</author><text>I have this junior engineer DM&amp;#x27;ing me right now and I&amp;#x27;ve been ignoring it because I don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with him and I have my own work to do. I&amp;#x27;m reading through your comment here thinking &amp;quot;hey, I&amp;#x27;m pretty good at walking that line, bothering the professor when appropriate, not waiting too long and not asking him for help too soon&amp;quot;... and then it occurred to me this guy is probably bothering the professor where I&amp;#x27;m the professor. Oops. Need to work on being more charitable with my time.</text></item><item><author>mushufasa</author><text>&amp;gt; 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&amp;#x27;s no longer necessary due to changing requirements, which I don&amp;#x27;t think I could have forseen.&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I&amp;#x27;ve experienced with new grad junior devs is that there&amp;#x27;s an adjustment needed to change from academic working to business working. In academia, usually the professor gives an assignment and you have to go off and figure it out, without bothering the professor, no matter what. In business, it&amp;#x27;s much better to &amp;#x27;bother the professor&amp;#x27; regularly and check in affirmatively on whether the assignment has changed, or to tell the manager about challenges that arise to re-plan together. As a junior employee, you&amp;#x27;re not going to know the full business context of what makes sense, and checking in can save weeks of time that would otherwise be spent off on your own.&lt;p&gt;Not sure if that&amp;#x27;s the case here, but certainly something you could consider going forwards to prevent similar situations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dusted</author><text>Since I&amp;#x27;m both an IC and a death metal connoisseur, I&amp;#x27;ll argue that it&amp;#x27;s more like going from playing in a death metal band to being a minister ;)</text></comment>