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Struggling with inexperienced manager, job at risk due to bad rating - how to react? (self.experienced_devs)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by fololzl to c/experienced_devs

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Prologue: Long time Reddit subscriber, this Lemmy thing seems neat. I will probably ditch Reddit completely. Hi everyone!

tldr; joined new team two performance review cycles ago. Reorg before I joined, now have inexperienced manager who is different than hiring manager. Things went downhill after a while, probably due to personal issues, now my job is at risk. Another reorg with new manager happening soon, trying to save myself from layoff until then and trying to save my rep. Wondering how to do this best.

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[–] fololzl 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to go through all of this. Yeah, there's no doubt I have some room for development, and I think I focussed way too much on getting the project delivered vs. also making sure communication around it will arrive at senior executive level. You're pretty much on point with your observations. I think that's actually a super helpful comment on how to get more concise about asks.

I thought a lot about your last paragraph and maybe I've been too idealistic about bringing in my own style. Like, I know this kind of communication and I've done it before, but it doesn't seem to fit my personal preferences. Eventually, if I'm hitting so much resistance I can either learn to accept a different, more actionable style or look for a new job I guess.

It's helpful to get some outside opinion, and it does help me better to categorize the feedback better, I gave it a lot of thought over the weekend. I honestly appreciate your comments as they're short and actionable, and I agree that's a good thing.

Now I still have the problem though that I'm at risk of being PIPed or layed off directly. The personal component comes in because there are rumors about further layoffs and PIP quotas. Given my overall contributions of which my manager is aware, I know that I wouldn't be taking a hit if I had a better relationship with my manager, or the business would be in a better situation.

Anyway, I still have a bit of time to think through how to go about the conversation with my skip level in the best possible way.

[–] valence_engineer 2 points 2 years ago

Potentially if the project isn't being known about for you then it's also probably not know about for your manager so you both look like you didn't achieve much. Given the economic climate they're probably worried about a layoff as well and having a report that isn't making them look good isn't optimal. In most companies the perception of what you do matters significantly more than what you actually do and it's even more the case for managers.

One final comment is that you probably need to build up trust with your manager. They probably don't trust you and you probably don't trust them on a personal level. In theory that's part of their job but they're the ones in power so in the end it benefits you more. One advice I heard which does in fact come off as ass kissing but is probably very beneficial in reality is to acknowledge in 1-on-1s to them the good things they did. "Hey manager, I really appreciate you giving such a thorough review of the project" or "Hey manager, thank you for pushing back so strongly on that request." Short and specific then move on.