After a year of trying, coaching, assuming I’m the problem, talking to my skip level, hard convos with my boss, and much more etc I'm finally realizing trying to force myself into something that's simply not going to fit. With all humility I admit it may be me that failed. But life is short, it’s time to move on.
Cool story bro, why are you telling me?
Well I just want to say, the industry has an obsession with "growth" in performance reviews. But the reality is that growth only works when you build on someone's strengths. Trying to ask someone to grow by changing who they fundamentally are, leads to withdrawal, stagnation, and anti-growth. I'm actually getting worse at my job, not better, because I'm being forced to be something I'm not. It's depressing, draining, and frustrating. I can't be who I fundamentally am in my role.
It's important to know when your strengths are fundamentally misaligned with your job, boss, etc and leave ASAP. Don't try to force yourself to fit into it for the sake of "growth". You'll only drain yourself and there are better places for you. You may end up going through a traumatic experience that actually causes you to LOSE skills and abilities.
That is all, thanks.
After he announced it, I had a 1x1 with him and clearly let him know that he was the boss and I'd do my best to accomplish anything he assigned me. I also let him know that the business analyst duties didn't fit well with my skillset and that I would very likely struggle to produce output. We had a good, honest conversation about the situation and I ended up staying 100% as a developer. In the end he was happy and I was happy.
Why am I telling you? It's that I've learned it better to communicate and hopefully work things out then just pack up and head to another place.
If my boss wants to pay me a SWE salary and then insists I clean out the break room fridge on Friday that is his perogrative not mine.
I mean... I can buy this to a point. But for me personally, there are lines. And there are things I'm just not going to do. Period.
I know it's un-trendy to talk about anything being "beneath you", and I'm not sure that's the wording I would use, but there are simply things that I don't consider being in my wheelhouse and that if you ask me to do, I'm going to say "no". Then you can decide if you want to fire me or not.
Case in point: I used to be a parts counter clerk at Advance Auto Parts. We got a new manager and one day he comes in and asks me to go outside and sweep the parking lot. I said "no" and he tells me to do it or I'm fired. So I rip off my Advance Auto Parts shirt, throw it in his face, say "fuck you" and walk out. 30+ years later I feel absolutely no regret about that. I didn't apologize then and I won't now.
There's more to my life than a job and I can find another way to pay the bills. I don't have to take their bullshit.
My main concern, honestly, is not so much that the work is "beneath me" but more that I get pidgonholed doing that work. I know this isn't realistic, but I don't want come review time for people to say "it's great you do this stuff around the office/for the team/for the org" but it doesn't affect your metrics.
In some cases, I think the fear is being asked to do these things in a non-documented way means you have no evidence that you had these "extra-curricular" things you had to complete.
I'm fortunate I haven't had that happen to me, but it's a fear I always have at the back of my head whenever these sort of requests happen.
I love to sweep. If I could get paid as a SWE to just speak and "garden" our office, to make it a more pleasent environment, conducive to peaceful thought and pleasent interactions, I'd take that job in a heartbeat.
Christopher Alexander is a bit of a god-father of object-oriented programming, and architecture: https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-proce...
He believes that all work on something new starts with "repairing" the environment in which that new thing is being created. (The codebase, the room, the block).
The first step of repair is to tidy and clean.
Sooooo I can weave a compelling story to others about why cleaning and tidying is in fact _very_ reasonable to do, and some could argue it's some of the more important work someone could do.
If I were employed at a place that did not let me work on high-impact high-visibility roles, I'd move to somewhere that did as soon as possible.
(Unless I was already where I wanted to get in my career)
Cleaning break room fridges would not be an acceptable task. You sure could say yes and comply if you like cleaning fridges but usually people would probably just say no thanks.
If you just exaggerated to make a point I agree with you partially. But you always have to consider your personal growth and satisfaction with your work.
…within the predefined framework of “roles”
>If my boss wants to pay me a SWE salary and then insists I clean out the break room fridge on Friday that is his perogrative not mine.
Your wording here is kind of vague. Are you saying that you would acquiesce to anything a boss requests?
What if it’s not the breakroom but a public bathroom? What if instead of cleaning it’s foot rubs? Would you taste test exotic foods for your boss? Babysit their kids?
If the answer to any of these is even remotely close to “yes”, then to you there is no such thing as a software engineer or a software engineer’s salary. There would only be only servants and sovereigns, and servants’ wages.
I do my best to communicate openly with my immediate superior about the reality on the ground, but if my advice is summarily dismissed, at certain point I just check out.
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Maybe I haven’t lucked out and found a manager who not only listens but is actually empowered to change things.
Sure, but why? Why wouldn't you have a direct, honest conversation with your manager?
I'll tell you why.
Because it can be terrifying.
You don't know how they will react, whether you'll be forced off interesting projects, put at the top of the layoff list, or similar. You can watch how they handle other situations and get an inkling, but you don't know.
Good bosses won't react like that and there are many good bosses out there who want you to grow and will work with you to achieve your goals. But there are plenty of bad bosses too.
From this perspective, it's a lot easier to just pack it in, write off the boss and company, and find a new job. It's less satisfying, to be sure, but less terrifying.
It's taken me a long time to realize how important it is to have a boss you can have a direct conversation with. It's also a factor of my experience and knowledge of my self-worth too.
If I were a new developer in my first job, it'd be a lot harder to have a tough conversation with my boss, because my alternatives would be fewer.
Never understood this attitude. I'd have told him that what he was doing was very inappropriate (without buy-in from the team), and if he doesn't back off I'll quit. He can ask around for other opinions so it's not just coming from me but it's a hard line.
Of course this mostly works cause as a developer you don't need to be afraid of finding another job. But that's good. Workers having leverage over bosses is good.
The reason not to do this is that you're very likely to provoke a defensive response and have the other person dig in their heels. A gentler approach is more likely to get results, less likely to create tension in the relationship, and sets the tone of future decision making as adversarial.
If that doesn't work you can try firmer approaches, and you can of course always quit or use the threat of quitting, but 99 times out of 100 leading with that will lead to worse outcomes.
You don't give up any leverage by first trying to resolve conflicts without threats.
The parent is treating it like a job.
No judgement from me on this, but that's the difference.
Why should anyone work for a person like this? If a boss decides to make huge changes like this unilaterally without at least talking to the team, why does he deserve a polite conversation from his team?
Good advice for almost any situation.
Seems like OP did all these things.
One developer actually found that he liked the business analyst work better and continued on that path.
How do you know it was better, in this circumstance, if you don't know what the outcome of packing up would have been? It's impossible to know all the consequences of our actions.
Everytime I have received some insultingly low offer from a startup, they start talking about "growth", "what I can own", "wearing many hats". Meanwhile, the founder is sitting on some 40% equity grant.
How you're supposed to perform at your currently level is pretty well spelled out by your manager - exactly what your expectations are, etc.
However, you're supposed to perform at the "next level" prior to being promoted. Expectations are less clear here.
This leads to you doing a lot of things you think will get you a promotion (most of which is very valuable to the company). However, it gives the company an easy opportunity to say - oh, all that extra work you did was great and much appreciated it - but that is not "next level" work. No promotion. Try again next time. Also, no, we won't tell you what will get you promoted. Keep guessing. Hopefully you guess better next time. Sorry for your loss and our gain. Goodbye.
It is orders of magnitude easier to just get hired at the next level at a competing company. And, on top of that, you'll likely get paid much more, too.
If you're doing the job, you're doing the job even if they won't officially give you the title.
successfully get another job: 30% raise and no increase in responsibility
anybody married to their current management is contributing to the wage gap
I'm at a level now where the next level up just looks miserable. The people I know one level up are the most intelligent productive people I know but almost every single one of them has some bizarre unexplained health issue likely related to stress. The things my boss, her boss, and their peers are able to accomplish is amazing to me but, man, i just don't think that level of suffering is worth the increase in pay.
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I've certainly seen this employed as a way to argue against wage increases. "If we're going to pay you 15% more, how are you going to add 15% more value?" Sadly this rhetoric often works on people because it sounds so obviously intuitive at first. Thing is, jobs can become more valuable even if they're exactly the same, and the employee provides exactly the same input from day to day. The market decides the value of a job.
This quote assumes that the employer refuses to acknowledge the employee adds more value than what their compensation represents.
I'm always of the mind that my value to my employer is 1.5-2x what I'm actually getting paid, at the low end. Asking for more money is simply trying to better negotiate the way I'm compensated for the value I'm already delivering. If my employer fails to recognize that, I've learned no amount of loyalty to the employer or flexibility to try to do more can change that.
Jokes aside, if someone tries such manoeuvres it might be time to reevaluate if 15% is enough to stay.
1. Get a role as a junior developer at a FAANG, get 2+ promotions, hope your team has enough scope and resources to let you try out manager duties
2. Get a role as a junior developer at a growing company, be quickly forced into manager duties, then transfer into FAANG
True, some places will use this to their advantage to underpay you, but you should be aware of it as a tool in your career.
One of the conclusions was that, essentially, the normal instinct with Performance Management to focus on improving weaknesses is wrong and leads to sub-optimal outcomes. The best managers actually doubled down on each individuals strengths, and simply accepted weaknesses as something to be smoothed out to the minimally acceptable level. (e.g. someone may not be "good with people", but they can't be openly hostile with co-workers.) Instead the manager would look for another employee which had that weakness as a strength, and manage responsibilities appropriately.
It speaks exactly to what was wrong in OP's experience.
I can't change my project to need more proof of concepts in every case. So, I have two things in my toolbag: I can try to coach someone to know my expectations for this project and help with coaching those behaviors and skills, or I can let them go for being a square peg when we need a round hole.
I wish we had better ways for matching people with the best jobs that rewarded what make them excel.
tank - can soak up damage and keep the big bad focused on them dps - does damage to the target while healer - makes sure everyone stays "alive" through the fight.
Mismatching roles never really works well. You get similar patterns in the "real world". You're people person does well with end users, etc .. It's a more diverse group (sometimes much less defined) but a similar set of ideas to follow.
Thank god they solved that problem!
No, this is typical "The only way to be smarter than everyone else is to do it different so I gotta do it different".
good managers are good because they're good managers, not because of this 1 weird trick.
"good managers are good because they're good managers"
LOL thanks. I guess all these books are pointless because you figured it out! Thank god you solved the problem!
It is likely I have failed. I have tremendous empathy for this boss. But I also have to think of my strengths and where I can be successful elsewhere.
If it's truly getting to the point where it's affecting your mental health, the job is no longer what you should prioritize.
>"With all humility I admit it may be me that failed."
My advice for anyone in this spot is to quit quickly. I've left a number of jobs within the first month because it was an obvious bad fit. They likely weren't happy about it, but we'd all be miserable after 6+ months of me not performing how I know I can. Don't be sentimental about the work that went into getting the job, just go find a good fit.
Sometimes you don't have a choice. If you've been laid off, you may have to jump on the first thing that comes along (will usually be a suck job with high turnover - those always seem to hire quickly) and keep looking for something good.
Even worse, when you have more of those in there.
In reality they wanted me to do change management, negotiate budgets, negotiate dates, coordinate projects, make power point decks…
Because of my excellent track record delivering technical stuff they expected great results from me doing this new stuff. I couldn’t deliver it as they wanted. “You must grow and become a leader, that’s the path forward” they kept telling me. In the end it didn’t work and I left.
Now I’m in a new team and they expect me again to become a leader but this time it’s different, it is truly a technical leadership and I hope this time it will be different.
In particular, they should have hired a seasoned release manager instead of trying to turn you into one.
(Some Dev Ops proponents have some nonsensical argument about continuous release meaning you don’t need a release manager. Those people are incompetent, and don’t know what a release manager does.)
My personal "growth" trajectory will eventually entail starting my own shop, I suspect many other people will have similar paths.