I am a SWE with 10yoe and have never had problems performing and dealing with my managers. I typically take large problems, produce an architectural document going over the major decision I intend to tackle, submit it to my peers for review and ideas, and once we reach consensus I start providing a task breakdown where typically every task is an independent unit that can be achieved in 2-4 weeks of work, and I implement it. I provide this breakdown for the whole feature, which might last from a few weeks to a few months. I worked like this for 10 years, but for the past 6 months my new manager has been giving me problems. She is massively micromanaging, she is constantly asking me for details nobody would ever care about. The architectural document? Needs to be much more detailed, describing each individual step of the implementation. The tasks breakdown? Needs to be much more granular, basically at a “I’ll write class Foo” level. A task for her is essentially something that can be done in a couple hours, so every day I need to churn 3-4 new tasks... The task description? Needs to be much more detailed, basically a sequence diagram with the interaction of each classes and API call, and super detailed explanations of the work. If I were to do things this way my productivity would seriously collapse by 70%+, and it’s just incredibly boring. Also, this way of work wouldn’t produce any benefit: she doesn’t even read what I write and never in 6 months has provided a technical feedback that made any sense at all. So, since I have a long tenure at the company and a good track record of working on hard problems, I’ve basically been ignoring most of her micromanaging behavior and got away with it, but I don’t fool myself thinking it’s a good long term strategy, management always wins in the end. What would you do?
Sink or swim.
Very useful
Couple of things that are missing. Your TC, which company are you working at? Can you do internal transfer? What’s your promotion cycle like? Do you intend to stay in the company? Are you interviewing elsewhere? Did you have a talk with your team and manager about it? And for crying out loud, where is my TC?
TC:450k Net worth: 1.5M Company: late stage startup Future plan: don’t care about promotion, but I have to stay until the company sells (let’s say 2 years) so I get potential retention bonuses
“I have to stay until the company sells” that leaves the discussion about shifting companies. Now answer my other questions. Did you talk to your manager about it? Can you shift to a different team internally?
Give feedback to her. If she’s not receptive to it talk to your skip level. If the skip level is reluctant to change the behavior you’re probably going to either just ignore her bullshit or leave the company/team. It sucks but shitty managers are the primary reason people leave companies.
How do you structure your work, if I can ask? I’m genuinely curious. I thought I was pretty agile myself by keeping things organized with loosely defined tasks to allow myself the freedom to incrementally redefine them as the implementation progresses, making sure before the project that JUST the big architectural picture is agreed among the stakeholders.
Wait, so if you are planning to implement a completely new data pipeline architecture relying on several off-the-shelf distributed systems and complex behavior (that’s the kind of things my startup does), you are saying nobody is going to take the time to create a document outlining the whole architecture end to end and the major components, and gain consensus from all the technical authorities in the company? That’s what I meant with architectural document and high level task breakdown. I typically work on very large macro features that heavily affect the product line and take 6-8 months to build, so it’s massively important to consult all the technical leaders before embarking into sprint task management
Except telling us that your productivity would come down by 70% what other argument you’ve shared? Rather what more can you share here on blind. You can threaten to quit and get your way or quit really. But are you getting beaten up on schedule? Did you ask for more time for effort to produce elaborate documentation. You are a long timer, you should be easily able to have 1-1. There are so many things that i’m too tired to type can be done beside going to skip
It’s simply not just the way I want to work, I’m not a junior (but I certainly still learn a lot from smart junior folks!) and I proved to the company over the years that I can effectively execute projects without having to create a task for taking a bathroom break.
As i said you only want to work your way.
Why don't you provide the detailed spec that she is expecting from you? It's not a bad thing to write a detailed plan on a piece of paper so that someone else can know what's on your mind and verify if you are thinking in the right direction. She is just trying to ensure that your plan is solid. Cooperate with her for one project and I almost guarantee you that she will never ask you to do this again.
Because it doesn’t make sense, that’s not the level of details that can be useful to anybody. This is what I currently do: Task: “create a new API to save a specific information” Design: I document the API and its format Task estimate: 1 week What she wants is a series of micro tasks such as: - Create makefile (4 hours) - Create class foo (4 hours) - implement business logic inside class foo (4 hours) ... and so on until you fill the week Each task need to have detailed content about what’s going to happen. So, for the makefile, I would write what make targets I’m planning to write (lol!) and stuff like that.
I think you need to have a heart to heart conversation with your manager. It almost seems like you are probably not understanding what she wants. Talk to her about it. Ask her to convince you how this level of details could be helpful to her. I think she just needs more details to ensure that you are in control. Setup to an hour with her for few days and provide as much details as she wants. Sort it like an experienced person. Think from her perspective - a new manager, needs to ramp up and deliver. Wouldn't you like to ensure that you can meet the target if you were on her shoes.
>She There's the problem. Better start kissing ass or say goodbye to your retention bonus.
What do you mean specifically? I had other female managers in the past (I’m male myself), and generally never had any issues with them.
You won't be able to change her behavior, unless your skip gets involved. Either go with it or leave.
She sounds like she needs a little something something
Sounds like she is process oriented and you are results oriented. Tell her you could do what she's asking but it would be very painful for you. Ask if she's willing to compromise.
Wow that was beautiful, I don’t know why it never occurred to me. Yes, she is a process person, all she cares about is the process. I am a result person, I don’t care about the process because I don’t know what the process is, I am in the camp of “I know roughly how the solution is going to look like, so let me start and the work in front of me will exactly tell me what are the next set of tasks needed”.
stop being a dick... and collaborate ... typical long timer mentality ...
In what sense I am not collaborative? I am incredibly collaborative, I always involve most of the team in all my architectural decisions and take ample feedback from everybody and always take code review feedback super seriously.
Basically you’re used to doing things only one way....your way. Now that has changed and you’re complaining about it. Every manager has a different outlook.