Are You Being SET UP by Your Engineering Manager?

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Hey folks, I'm just uh headed to CrossFit here. Um going to experienced devs for the topic. This one is titled, "How do you deal with a manager who gives no feedback then blames you and damages your role?" It's a pretty short post. Looking for advice from experienced devs. Manager rarely gives feedback. No guidance, no check-ins, not even informal suggestions. Then I don't know where I get blamed for things that weren't clearly communicated. Ends up hurting my reputation, title, or even chances for advancement. So, we're going to talk through this one. Um, I'm going to get on the road here. This is just a friendly reminder that um, if you want questions answered, leave them below in the comments. If they're software engineering, career related, happy to try and help. Otherwise, you can send them in to Dev Leader on social media. That's also my main YouTube channel where I have uh, C tutorials.

I have a podcast uh, live streams every Monday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific on topics just like this one. So happy to see folks from Code Commute over there. Means a lot to me and it's great to be able to chat back and forth you too. So with that out of the way, um this is a topic that basically is like the feels like the only reason I exist at this point is to talk about this kind of thing. Um and there's a few of you that have watched enough code commute videos that already know exactly how I'm going to answer this, which is good. that means my message is getting through. And for those of you that are new here and want to stick around, this won't be the first perhaps time you've heard it and it's definitely not going to be the last. But this type of situation is exactly what happens when there aren't level set expectations.

Okay? So, you have someone who doesn't have clear expectations from their manager. Like they said, it's not being communicated and then they're being held to those standards. and then feels really crappy. Now, when we read through Reddit posts and stuff like this, even when people send in stuff, we basically only ever get one perspective. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't believe what this person is saying because I think this is a really common thing, unfortunately. But I I think the part that's missing is like we only get their perspective. So we don't get to hear how the manager perceives things, right? This manager is probably going, "Man, like why is this person constantly messing this stuff up like I thought I've been very clear about this, right? Like there's two sides to every story at least." So uh and I'm not saying that the manager one is is right or whatever.

I'm just saying like it would be very interesting to hear the other side. So when I talk about alignment um especially around expectations and stuff like that there's like it comes up in a bunch of ways in terms of like how you're working on a particular project in terms of what's expected of you in your role. Uh what's expected of you on a day daily or weekly basis, right? Like some people in their roles might need a little bit more specifics around that. or their level might need more specifics. Um, and then just like what's expected to get to the next level, right? There's there's a lot of things that your your manager will have sort of like expectations around. And I'm not here to say that those are like universally correct or true, but it's a true statement to say that your manager will have expectations on lots of things.

Like I said, projects, current role, next level, all that kind of stuff. So I think and we don't know from this person. They say, you know, their manager is not communicating this stuff. Are is this person even initiating a conversation around it? I want to assume yes, but it is an assumption. We're reading a Reddit post, right? So that would be my fir if this person came to me and was like instead of writing that post, they just like sent it to me to say, "Hey, Nick, I want to schedule a quick call with you. Can we chat through this?" And then basically said what's in that post. My very first thing that I would say to them is, well, you know, when you brought this up with your manager, like what have they how's that conversation gone?

And I would say, unfortunately, I don't have a stat and I would just be making something up, but I feel like unfortunately the most common thing I hear in this situation, and for context, most of these conversations when they're not my direct reports are with early and career mentor or mentees, sorry. um statistically higher that way. So might be more biased that way, but the overwhelming majority of the time is well, I haven't talked to them about it. And I can I can get this when you're early in career because you're like, I don't I don't even know how to work. Like I'm, you know, just just starting. I'm trying to figure things out. That's totally cool. Um, and I'm not saying it's like, you know, like shame on you if you're uh, you know, past junior, maybe you're like a senior level and you and you don't know how to have conversations like this.

It's weird. It's like if it if it's not a regular thing that you're doing and practicing, I don't blame you for being like, I don't know how to how to jump into that conversation. That seems like a an awkward one. I get it because it if it's something that you don't do regularly or don't try to um improve regularly, it's definitely going to seem weird, but that's just like how things are in general. Pick like when's the last time you played the saxophone? If you were to go do it, it's probably going to feel weird if it's not something you do regularly, right? It doesn't matter what it is. If it's not something you do regularly, it's going to feel a little awkward. But if you keep doing it, you get better at it, right? So if you're like, I don't know how to start these conversations, no worries.

But like hopefully the more of these videos you watch, the more examples you'll see of this cuz it's very very common. So that would be number one is like how do you start having conversations like this if you're not already? And I would say okay, like do you have regular one? Like then we have to start working backwards. Like what do your regular one-on- ons look like? Oh, we don't even do that. Okay. Like that's a I think like a baseline thing that we got to get in place. Like that is your sort of health check with your manager at a minimum, right? You don't have those? Cool. How do we get those started? If you do have them, what's the cadence? What are you talking about in those? Do you need a more regular cadence? How do you bring that up with your manager to say, "Hey, I'm going to need more support on this stuff because I feel like the once a month one-on ones aren't enough.

Could we try doing bi-weekly or we do bi-weekly? Hey, like thank you, but like it would be really helpful for me to be able to be more effective if I could have them weekly. Could we find a way to make that work?" And just trying to work until you find that right cadence. Then what are you talking about in your one-on- ones? I've made videos on this recently. I'm not going to go totally into detail, but at least in some of the meetings that you're having with your manager, you should be able to bring up the topic of like what is expected of me in my role and if you're gunning for the next one in that role. Um, in particular, if you're having conversations like this regularly where it seems like you're getting on for something where you're like, I didn't even know like that was expected of me.

So, cool. Like, a couple things. If that happens, I would say it would be really helpful to go do a bit of like a a retrospective conversation with your manager saying like, "Hey, like you know, I don't know what the situation exactly how it unfolds in in in this person's examples, but I would in a timely way, not like waiting like months for it. I would in a timely way try to schedule some time to talk with your manager about it and say, "Hey, like I just saw this feedback. I saw that this wasn't expected on the project." um you know that's based on my understanding that's not where things are at. This is making me feel whether you know whatever express the emotion like it's uncomfortable. I'm uncertain. I'm frustrated by this depending on what it is and then say I would just like to be able to talk through this to see where uh perhaps a miscommunication happened or or where where I could improve for next time.

Right? the the framing that we want to have is like something happened. If it's like completely out of whack, that might be something you want to go clarify to like I don't know retroactively have addressed, but otherwise I would just focus the attention on like next time. It seems like this is a common thing. So like if it's going to come up again, how do we start getting ahead of it? So that would mean like when you have this conversation, the reality is there's probably communication that's owned by you and your manager. Sounds like if they're not regularly trying to provide feedback or being clear about things, then the uh the likelihood of them taking some sort of accountability and improving the communication might be a little bit more slim. Doesn't mean it's zero necessarily.

So I would have the conversation, see what parts that you can own better going forward, what you might have some expectations in terms of your manager like, hey, in terms of if you want me to be able to do these things effectively, I need that kind of feedback up front or that that clarity. Um, if you're just saying that's an expectation of the role, great. Thank you. Now we've clarified that. I understand that going forward. Um, but enough on that. I want to kind of use the last little bit of the drive to CrossFit to talk about the other going on here. Because if after hearing what I just said, you're like, "Yeah, but the stuff that my manager saying is always stupid. I don't agree with any of it. It's completely ridiculous expectations." Like, if you've already done the stuff to level set expectations and you're going, "No way." Like, "This is outlandish." The very first comment in that Reddit thread, I was joking after I read the post.

In my head, I was like, I wonder what the first comment's going to be. And my guess was going to be, get a new manager, right? Like, you don't have a manager that's supporting you, get a new one. Time for a team change. Time for a change. because the advice and sorry the the top comment was essentially something like that someone actually wrote a little bit more but I thought it was going to be a very quippy like get out of there. Uh anyway, the the challenging part with this stuff, right, is like if your manager is set in their ways and you're like, "Hey, like I want to try improving. I need uh clarity on the expectations." You know, this is what would help me going forward. And like they might just be like, "No, that's just not it's not how I operate. Otherwise, you would have been having the support already kind of thing." um trying to change your manager might be an uphill battle.

So, it's unfortunate and this is why I think that I don't know what the exact wording is in the phrase, right? But it's like people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. Unfortunately, if you love your job and you have a manager in place, that could be absolutely, you know, like job ruining 100%. So, I always like saying to people that I think, and this is just my kind of philosophy on things, it's not it's not necessarily your responsibility. You can disagree with this. That's totally cool. But I always try to recommend having a conversation about how can we improve things because I don't like believing that people are malicious. I do like believing that if people have a little bit more clarity, that means for the manager as well, if they're going, "Oh, I didn't realize that this was having a negative side effect." I

believe that most people, again, I can be absolutely wrong on this, but I believe most people would be interested in going, hm, I wonder how I could do better here. I feel like most people like the idea of improving, but given how much effort goes into it, that's where their mind might change. So, if it was like, oh, as your manager, all that you needed, all you feel like you needed was like, I don't know, I'm just making something up, right? Like, all you needed was a weekly, you know, 15-minute check-in on that project. That could be an email or a message like, okay, like, cool. Like, next project, we'll set that up. Other managers might be like, "No, like I don't, you know, that's you shouldn't need that at your level, whatever." But my point is that I would always recommend that people try to have a conversation about it.

The worst uh in my opinion, the worst that could happen is that someone just says, "No, I'm not budging on that." And you go, "Okay." Like, you can keep trying, but sounds like to me the the signal is pretty clear if someone's just outright resisting it. And um yeah, I think honestly at that point it's like time to to move on from it, which is shitty for sure. But at at what point do you like you have a couple options, right? You remain frustrated. You don't change anything. You just keep living this out and you're like, "Wow, everything sucks. Sucks enough that I have to go write about it semi- anonymous anonymously on Reddit for a bunch of strangers to give their feedback on. Okay, so that's scenario one. To me, that doesn't seem like a good spot to be in.

Scenario number two is you get a little bit more uncomfortable and you try to have a conversation with your manager about it and not just a one-time thing, but trying to shape how this could be more effective going forward. Okay? And if that works out, awesome. You had an uncomfortable conversation. Maybe it takes a couple of them and uh you have a little bit more clarity and stuff going forward. A bit more of a system to work with your manager on this kind of stuff. I'd say that's a win. Doesn't mean it's a perfect world, but an improvement hopefully. Or you have that conversation and nothing changes. The manager doesn't want to change, not interested. Um and then you're back at square one. But at least at least at this point you've tried one of your major options which I think is that I think the next major option is probably considering leaving.

Now leaving doesn't have to mean leaving the entire company. If you work somewhere that you really enjoy uh the culture of it just like your manager happens to be the crap person. It might mean it's worth leaving a a technical space that you're interested in to pursue a better manager. Um, doesn't mean there aren't other teams that offer similar things, other companies with teams that offer similar things, but I I I get it. Like going to a new company is u especially with the job market right now. I think that's a little bit more of a stretch. It's not impossible. I talk to people all the time still landing jobs, but I get it. I even know by making a statement like that, someone's going to be pretty upset. Like you can't just say that other people are getting jobs because no one's getting jobs. People are getting jobs.

I understand it's difficult right now. So yeah, it's not like any path here just doesn't have any friction. But I think this is a question you have to ask yourself is like if it's already so right now like what's a I can't remember the sort of the quote or the phrase I heard but basically you know in life there's always going to be challenges right always challenges doesn't matter so wouldn't you like to pick the challenges that you spend your time and effort on. So in this case, if you're like, "Yeah, that sucks. Sucks that I have my manager doesn't share expectations with me, always putting me in these bad spots." But like the other alternatives you're hearing from Nick over here are have a conversation about it. You're like, "Oh, no. Absolutely not. Can't do that. That would be terrible. Not doing that ever." Okay.

I mean, you're you're acknowledging that you don't want to go deal with that friction or that set of problems and you think that the other ones are a better set of problems. Okay? Or I don't want to leave my team to do a team change or a company change or anything like that because that comes with its own set of problems. Okay? Then you're saying that the first set is okay in comparison. Now you can keep looking for alternatives but every everything is going to have its own set of challenges and problems. So I I always feel like instead of trying to go through life being like how do I eliminate all problems that I could possibly encounter, it's just like find like we're happier when we can say at least I have uh you know influence over over these challenges, right? And I got to pick the challenges I want.

So, I think that's what I'd have to say about that, but it's going to be a common theme on this channel and always will be. Um, I'm just arriving at CrossFit now. So, I'll remind folks again if you want stuff answered in the comments. Um, just leave them below. Uh, otherwise, you can send them into Dev Leader on social media. That is the main YouTube channel. It's a weird spot to park. Um, and I did mention too that there's a live stream on that main YouTube channel. So, every Monday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific. And I hope to see more of you there because we can talk through stuff like this. Thanks and we'll see you next