Alert! I’m just going to vent on here: how to deal with engineers who just aren’t doing a good job?! I have someone who is using outdated practices and tools, which slow everything down and throw off any timeline estimates (we’re not Agile, but that is a different conversation altogether). Their manager does not see a problem and insists that we are not going to change how a senior engineer who is set in their ways will do things. On top of it, they also don’t get the engineer any help to alleviate the slow progress. I have done the job and know for a fact that just catching up to the best practices of 10 years ago would cut the effort down 10x. Ugh! I have done a good job biting my tongue and keeping everything diplomatic. But this keeps happening so now it is affecting my personal peace 😔 PM some say is supposed to do “whatever it takes” to make the product successful. But I am also not supposed to take over this person’s code and fix it. What to do?!?! (Mostly just venting — so don’t feel like I am asking you to solve my problem for me) TC 1bn
Talk to the engineer in a factual way. Go do it now.
It’s not your job as a PM to “deal with” with a slow engineer, it’s the tech lead and eng manager’s job. If you’re the only person who think this engineer is underperforming this company may not be for you.
I agree wholeheartedly. I am staying onboard so I can get my product launched, and then I am out of here.
I agree with you completely. Also, if they know he is using slower methods, they should have accounted for this in the planning meeting. Heck, I would have put him down as a risk in my stakeholder registry. 🤣
You would overclock the engineer if you wanted him to be faster.
😂
It’s not your call to call an engineer slow. “Slow” in pm domain only means “slower than initially planned”. There’s no absolute speed standard that YOU can establish.
I agree. But like I said above, the pressure is from management. It is somehow my responsibility according to them if the engineers don’t deliver on time. Even though we have a project/program manager and a tech lead! Plus, in this case, I have done exactly the job this person is doing before, so I know the ins and outs of it. The slowdowns they are facing would have been avoided with proper use of best practices. Again, I want to get them help and am getting nowhere on that with management.
As a Product Manager, you provide a vision, the why, and functionality/requirements for the product. The project/program manager is responsible for dates/deadlines/delivery ensuring that the Product launches on time. In some companies, both these roles are performed by Product. From the beginning, you as PM align what needs to be built by the TEAM. Everyone including the dev manager, tech lead, project/program, cross functional partners should be aligned behind that vision and target delivery dates. The entire TEAM is responsible to launch on time. If a single person is affecting launch timeline, then his manager needs to address it and the program manager needs to surface that risk to stakeholders so that they are aware of the launch delay. How an engineer codes, if he is using old or new tech, if he is fast or slow is not the role of a Product manager. Yes you should be aware and call out launch delay as a risk. But to pin point this one Engineer on the team and calling out his performance is not your job as a PM, the dev manager is responsible for that. Ask the dev manager why your product is not launching on time. Put the accountability on him to take action.
Thanks for your post. Really quite useful!
You are welcome! Launching a Product is a TEAM effort, make people accountable to do their part. You can quantify accountability by conveying how the business will be impacted by the launch delay, example - revenue loss, market conditions, competition, resourcing etc.
It's not your problem. Take the extra time to relax. If your management is giving you so much deadline pressure that you can't relax, yeah you should go.
I have similar issue. I have thought about giving juicy bits to other developers and sticking slow guy with not so important features. At the end of the day you will have to find out what's important to slow developer and dangle the carrot to motivate.
Update: I haven’t said anything to anyone since I posted this here on Blind. However, things followed the course I had set them on over the last several weeks. I had told the engineer in front of the whole team that I wasn’t going to make him commit to anything he didn’t actually believe was posible. This is what had management reaching out to me and asking how I was going to ensure this engineer finished his deliverable. Well, he got things done in good time and now the bottle neck is we need to wait until next week to fit the review on everyone’s schedules 😂 I am glad I bit my tongue. My relationship with the engineer remains good. And I hope the managers see there is value in letting the engineers do the work, trust they are doing their best, and work on enabling them rather than adding to their stress. Once the waters calm down, I will work with managers and team to ensure we have proper tools and processes going forward. Thanks for all the input!
I'm not sure I understand the middle part. how did it get from management asking how you will ensure this engineer finished his deliverables, to him moving faster?
The engineer didn’t move faster. Just finished at their own pace, which was later than the original milestone, but now that it is done nobody is b¡tching about it anymore.
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I work at a tech company. But thanks. Not sure if I missed some sarcasm here.