My Manager REFUSES To Give Me Feedback As A Software Engineer!

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what's up I'm just leaving the office I got to get back in time for a live stream we're going to go to Reddit to the subreddit experience devs and this one is manager refuses to give feedback so this person says I'm been a big Tech organization been working in the same team since four years been aiming for a senior level promotion since a few years and in the midyear cycle I end up being disappointed with only one line you did good keep keep doing it will happen just not this time um so they go on to say they've actually been asking for feedback but the manager refuses to give them anything I don't I don't know the details right refusa sounds pretty extreme I ask if it's my impact and he denies it saying that he doesn't like folks who do stuff just for the

sake of impact okay um the irony okay that's not really I don't think that's relevant recently asked if I work not being visible enough there's a problem said it's not the visibility that matters but it's the impact okay and then he spoke on how there are people who do things just for being visible and he doesn't like that I agree with that I don't like that uh which is why I've kind of complained about this stuff in the past he's a pretty supportive manager otherwise unlike the team and the work switching teams or jobs would set back my progress at least by a few years and it just feels like the promotion is 6 months away every time so I mean is it actually resetting the progress I don't know um okay that's a interesting topic for today uh like I said I'm trying to

get back for my live stream I am in one of the worst moods that I've been in in a long time but I think that's going to be a bit of a uh Trend unfortunately um so we'll figure that out a friendly reminder that if you want questions answered leave them in the comments and if you would rather write something longer or you'd like to be kept Anonymous that you can submit your question to Dev leader on social media it's also my main YouTube channel that has edited down videos it's not just me blabbing in a car and um I recommend you check that out if you want to follow programming tutorials and stuff like that and it's also where I do my live streams every Monday night at 700 p.m.

which is what I'm rushing back to go do because last time I was late and apparently when you tried to stream cuz I stream to LinkedIn as well when I try to stream to LinkedIn and the event has already started the streaming platform doesn't work it doesn't tell you why it just says it doesn't work and in fact it will start streaming to the last LinkedIn event you had which is an absolute nightmare so we're not going to screw that up again today hopefully got an hour to get home but okay managers and feedback how to navigate this so first of all I think that it's good that this person's asking for feedback right um that's kind of my my go-to recommendation for folks is like and if you watch my other videos you'll know I'll say get on the same page as your manager

you know ask for getting aligned expectations because it's really difficult to do anything in terms of making progress if you don't have that right if you don't know what your manager's expecting they haven't been clear on that genuinely how can you expect to be making progress right you don't know what direction to head in so to speak so the fact that this person is doing that I think is good um I I don't know sometimes I'm a little skeptical when I read posts that sound like this because and it's not that I don't want to believe the person but when they say their manager refuses to give them feedback um that seems weird because it trying to imagine this right if I were to go to my manager and I'm like hey you know I want feedback on something if they're just like nope like

I don't think that's what's happening uh I think when they're saying the manager refusing to give them feedback I and again I'm speculating I don't know this um I'm assuming that the person is trying to ask for feedback in a particular way but they're not getting meaningful feedback or the their manager trying to answer it and it's it's not uh it's not actionable it's not concise it's like kind of just word vomit um or it's avoidance so what they're saying refuse but I I feel like you know what they actually mean is that like they believe that they're clearly asking for feedback and the result of that is that they're not getting something they feel that they understand like to me that feels a little bit more uh realistic and again I don't know so I'm not I'm not saying this person's a liar but

the reason I'm trying to frame it this way is like maybe that's feedback for this person is like are you legitimately asking for feedback and your manager is legitimately saying no no I'm not giving you feedback or is it more likely that you are asking for feedback and maybe you're not actually doing it in a clear way like are you trying to be specific with your ask for feedback because if you're just saying how am I doing and your manager's going I think you're doing good like that I could understand why you'd be frustrated from that like and it's not helpful feedback but I mean they're answering your question so I would say you know one thing to consider here is like how are you actually asking for feedback what is that look like um and just trying to be more pointed with your ask

for feedback right how can you be more specific because the more specific it is the more actionable it is for you and the more um specific feedback you can get from your manager okay one sec I have to stop and think if I can get through this this bus is going to be blocking more traffic than I am so we're good um they shouldn't have went so that's their fault I don't have my 360 cam on so I was uh I was a little bit too agitated to think about doing that so first thing you know for this person is just consider legitimately how you're asking for feedback and maybe there's opportunities where you can be more concise in your asks now I don't want to stop there and say that's the end of the story like you just have to do better uh your

manager is is clearly doing a perfect job because I think the other part to this that is confusing is that their manager saying impact doesn't matter but then they're saying impact does matter it's the visibility part that they don't like um and I wanted to kind of talk about this part because it's kind of interesting right like impact does matter impact is one of the ways that we try to make sure that you're having like legitimate contributions right it's not like doing work at a company and just like staying busy doing random work is not the same as having high impact and to be able to grow as an engineer I I feel like this is the case anywhere I've ever had conversations is like it's going to come down to like the type of impact you're having like the outcome of your work it's

not how many lines of code you added or deleted it's not how many bugs you fixed it's not you know these random metrics it's like it's it comes down to the type of impact your work is having now when you're more Junior it might be less about that right because when you're more Junior a lot of the time it's just about building some momentum so it's not like to go from a junior level to midlevel the expectation is that you ship the most impactful thing in the world at your company or else I'd be setting the bar pretty high but the idea is that like hey at that level you're getting consistency you're able to push code through you're building up some level of autonomy and understanding right you're you're able to start being successful right uh I don't I don't want to like try

to use like a training wheels analogy because I think that's kind of like not uh not a very kind way to frame it but truly like you know your team is there to support you as you're getting ramped up and getting used to what it's like to to be operating as a as an engineer so it is expected that you're asking for help and you need guidance and that kind of thing right right so totally normal and expected but as you're becoming more senior it starts to shift a lot more towards impact and that's why when you're sort of at senior and Beyond a lot of these things come down to the fact like truly what kind of impact are you having uh you know say for me like at principal level it's like is your impact organization wide um and this is where the

visibility part will start to come into play but I just wanted to to touch on the impact part because like I said in uh in my my experience I have never seen the impact didn't matter or at least come up in the conversation okay so I I do think that that's confusing did I just stutter I do think that that is okay I do think that that is confusing when you're getting sort of mixed messages around like impact isn't important but then they start to hear it's the the visibility part for the sake of visibility is not important the impacts what matters um like I get that that's uh very confusing because like what what are you supposed to do with that that's very contradictory if you're saying it doesn't matter but it does um so just on the impact part before we talk about

visibility because the visibility part is where things like start to fall apart from me personally um I have some personal disagreements with the concept in terms of how I've seen it actioned uh but I want to talk about the the impact stuff a little bit more um so when it comes to impact I know and I realize if I were talking to the person that wrote this I feel like my advice isn't going to be very helpful because they're going to be saying like you know my manager it's their manager confusing them and I based on what they wrote like I I get it that is confusing um but going back to having conversations with your manager right I think having Clarity on the work streams that you're doing and being able to understand what type of impact that does have I think is important

it's not that every single thing you're doing all of the time is going to be like the most impactful thing in the world right it's like it's not really realistic but especially if you're working towards a senior sort of uh title then you know being able to at any given point have at least a line of site or you're currently working on a project with uh with some decent impact I think I think is important so if you're at a period of time where you're kind of like in this phase where you're you know you're picking up a couple of different uh depending on how people operate with like their JRA boards and whatever else or your Sprints if you're like I feel like I'm just kind of taking the next random task like you don't see any like cohesive uh pattern I would say

this is a ideally you catch it before this but a good opportunity to sit down and talk with your manager and say hey like I want to make sure that I can be uh demonstrating impact I want my work to be meaningful and you could say something along Ong the lines of like I feel like you know I feel like I'm doing good work I feel like I've been able to deliver on the things that are asked of me but I don't feel like I have a a cohesive set of work or like a project that I can um you know kind of take initiative on and you know you could clear it up with your manager like I feel like that's an expectation of me for you know progressing in my level and getting that Clarity like is that how you see it like

yes no um I feel like odds are yes it would feel very weird for me to have a manager just be like no I deny giving you feedback on this um and then trying to say cool like can we talk about such opportunities and maybe at that given moment just based on how projects are being run maybe there isn't something specific that you could jump into right now but I would be hard pressed if a manager couldn't think of something that was like at least coming up like hey we got a few things going on right now but like coming up there's a couple of projects that that might be something that you could start to look into so like I'll give you a heads up on some things we're thinking about they're not like prioritized just yet but this is what we're thinking um

because I like doing that if I have line of sight because I can get a sense for like hey does someone have an interest in this I want I want people on my team to be able to grow in their career like why would I not try to set them up with something that's that's coming up I would be transparent with them that like you know if I don't have confidence that this is what's coming up in next Sprint or something I would try to be clear and say like just so you know like no guarantee we're doing this just yet but these are a couple of things we're thinking through and if they're interested they want to explore more great it's a very fast bike um so I I think that's where I stand on that like is I think that you should be

trying to look for impactful work um you know don't freak out if you're like oh no I'm not doing anything that feels like it's very big and impactful at this moment but having some line of sight into that I think is a great opportunity for have a conversation around it right so that's that's that part um I want to talk about visibility because this is something that I feel like is very nebulous um I never I struggle with this a lot and I I want to I wanted to be transparent about that right I think it's important that when I'm talking about things I am clear with you if I feel like I'm speaking about this as an authority or at least from my experience um and in this case I understand from what I've been told about visibility but it actually does not sit

well with me and uh and I struggle with it a lot personally and it makes it challenging for me as an engineering manager to try and talk to other people about visibility if it's something that I don't feel like I have um I don't know like I don't want to say it's because I don't have a solid understanding of it I don't have a solid understanding of how other people that are the ones that measure the visibility how they're thinking about it maybe I'll frame it that way so a lot of the time visibility and impact go hand in hand okay and that's because when you're working on things that are very impactful the amount of visibility associated with that is greater right there's generally a a relationship between these things if something is not very impactful probably doesn't get a lot of visibility and

something that is very impactful probably does get a lot of visibility now visibility on its own isn't like necessarily a good or bad thing it's just a thing right like you could have a lot of visibility for something bad right like you have visibility across uh the organization because you deleted you know you dropped the prod database and lost all the data that's going to there is some visibility for you um might not be great but it's visibility so when we talk about visibility the idea is generally that if you're doing what is deemed to be impactful work that people know about it now where this starts to feel pretty like like political from uh the perspective of like an organization is that it's kind of like who has the visibility into your work and I I kind of feel like a lot of companies

set this kind of thing up in a way that feels like I don't know a good way to put it it feels like it's not conducive to like good software engineering and it's just like a game to play and it really bothers me uh maybe I don't know maybe I'm not cut out for for big Tech uh in the end right like so I was at a startup for 8 years that grew into a midsize company of a couple hundred people I've been in big tech for the last just under 5 years um and yeah maybe genuinely like if that's that becomes the expectation or something that you have to kind of do in big Tech maybe that's not something I'll ever align with personally um but I understand like the the rationale behind it right it's how do you how do you quantify the

impact if there's dollar amounts attached to everything sure like saved x amount of dollars or generated x amount of dollars great okay but there's a lot of stuff that's really difficult to just attach a dollar value to so sometimes the amount of uh you know the work that someone's done and the positive impact that that can have on an organization um you know is is observed across the organization right so it's impactful and you could probably quantify it but also there's a lot of visibility into it because different parts of the organization you'll have uh you know different leaders across the org that are like yes I recognize that work as goodness even for my part of the or and I know that so and so is working on it the problem I find is that people are people and we love to game things

right so if I tell you just let me uh it's going to be like a contrived example and I'm making it up off the top my head so I don't even know if it's going to work but if I told you the way to get promoted is that you need to do high impact work with a lot of visibility the the problem is that people will try to gain these things and I don't mean like in a malicious way so I'm not sitting here being like Oh all these Engineers are you know being malicious and whatever it's just like no like you've given them you've given them things to optimize for that's what they're going to do if their goal is to be able to grow in their career they will optimize for these things so generally I find it starts off with hey like

you you need to do something that has impact okay so how do we optimize for that like hey manager I would love to be able to help lead a big project I want to make sure that I'm having that impact and I don't feel like that's a bad thing right I feel like that can be a good thing now you can have some people that take the per the perspective that like if other people are helping me or other people make it look like their um I don't know their contributions are outshining me on this project that all all of a sudden like it's not my impact but I think this is a bit of a misconception because I think some people perceive impact as like a um is it I don't know if the word or the phrase or one is like zero sum

like basically you have a situation where like 1+ 1 can equal three right so if some if you're leading something and you're doing all this good work and someone else is participating in the project and they're also getting like you know they're delivering good work as part of your project it's not like all of a sudden your good work in leading this is overshadowed and like oh well you don't actually matter no like it just means that both of you are going to be recognized for having impact now people might have different experiences with that and disagree and maybe that's why they they have this perspective so so be it I'm not I can't tell you your lived experience is wrong uh but from what I've observed and my philosophy on this kind of thing is like it's not that someone else's success takes away

from yours and vice versa so unfortunately what can happen though is people end up going well like no no you're stealing my thunder like I need to be the one it needs to be me and this is where things start to fall apart because I feel like that is not conducive to good software engineering that's called PVP right that's player versus player that's you only caring about yourself because you've been told to optimized for that or that's your interpretation is like if I want to get promoted it needs to be me it needs to be my impact and I feel like this is even more the case with visibility okay so you can find something that has enough impact and then you spend all of your extra time I don't know I don't even know what extra time means in this case who has extra

time um you spend a great deal of effort basically just trying to drive as much visibility to the thing that you're working on and you over index on this you basically like all of your effort as long as you're getting you know uh some progress on the project done you spend so much time just trying to communicate to everyone look at this look at this thing I'm doing um and it's almost like that's where I would agree if this person's saying what their manager said is real um where they're like I don't want people to just pick things for visibility I'm like I wouldn't either that feels like a weird thing to the that you should try to optimize for so this is why I said I think that there's a correlation if you're working on truly impactful work that has a lot of impact

almost by definition it's going to have uh more visibility right because the impact is great it's not not guaranteed necessarily but like generally speaking the more impact the greater the visibility okay so I just think that we end up optimizing things that are put in front of us it's like I don't know like human nature right we want to someone says here's the criteria you go no sweat like we're I'm a software engineer my I can do the analysis I know how to optimize and I will do it um I just don't really agree personally with like that being the setup for optimization now the other thing that I find I really don't like about the visibility thing is like and maybe again maybe this is my own personal sort of experience with it if I'm having a conversation with my manager about the work

I'm doing and my manager has has said to me like this is this is a work stream for you that's going to have organization um wide visibility it's a good project for you to be on um personally I would like to be in and maybe this is me being naive I would like to be able to trust my manager and believe in them that if they say that if I deliver on this that this has significant visibility that that visibility sort of will happen I don't unless they explicitly tell me that this type of thing needs to be um communicated more I don't anticipate that I'm going to go out of my way on like a a rally and like go shout out to all of the leaders in the organization to say look at me look at me look at the project I'm doing

and I don't feel I should have to do that because if my manager has said that the project has significant impact then that should come with the visibility but again maybe I'm being naive Maybe truly you do need to go parade around and tell everyone what you're doing I don't know um but I've definitely found myself in situations over the last five years where it's like hey do this this has the right amount of visibility this is going to be great you know put put your energy into this and I go Okay and like I can rationalize that like the the impact that it's going to have is great and then I do it and then the feedback is oh not enough visibility and I go ah like really because like if I delivered on the thing that you said that was supposed to have

the visibility were you expecting me to go advertise it more and then didn't tell me that or did you have it wrong and it actually wasn't that impactful right um I get it that's going to be on me to some degree to be able to make sure that I can follow up with that kind of stuff and be proactive um so part of me gets that but the other part of me starts to be like hey look like if that keeps happening then I don't really know if I can trust what I'm hearing in terms of visibility and impact right like I just I wouldn't keep uh I'm not going to keep repeating the same thing so um it's my my kind of take on I don't really like visibility because it feels a little bit nebulous I find right I could be again I

could be going around to different leaders in the organization and shmooing and being like hey you know this thing I'm working on that's really important I could be doing that I don't I don't necessarily think that that's a good use of my time to be honest um it just feels like that's not super helpful you can make you can make arguments that like being able to communicate stuff is uh you know is helpful and I don't disagree with that like for example I worked on things and we set out uh you know uh organiz oration wide newsletters for updates and stuff like I think that's a helpful thing right here's here's something that's coming to the organization here's how it's going to impact you and the goodness that comes with that I think yeah that I think that's great um but I I don't feel

like I have to kind of schmoo to the other individuals to to bring that sort of visibility and to be fair no one's telling me to do that because if they did I would I would get a really bad feeling like H like I'm not doing that um not worth it so I think for this person right when it comes to impact when it comes to visibility I would say um and feedback right they're not getting feedback from their manager the first thing I said at the beginning was like um if they're doing a reflection on how they're asking for feedback maybe there's an opportunity here to be more specific with the feedback not hey how am I doing but more of a hey I did this you know we just did this project update here's the status like did you have any feedback for

me on how I could present that status better to these stakeholders or I just I just put this design review together and uh you were you know in the meeting or we were reviewing the design dock I did uh do you have any specific feedback for me on what I could do to make my document more clear right ask for specific feedback because unfortunately I mean like I can understand where especially if put on the spot if you're if you're not giving someone some time to think about this like give me some feedback on how I'm doing it's like H where do you start um and I've I've I'll be transparent I've had Engineers on my team say hey you know we're in a one-on-one they're like hey we have some extra time I was just wondering if you can give me some some feedback

on how I'm doing right and a couple things right so number one uh mentally I have not prepared anything specific and that doesn't feel very good okay there to go um it doesn't feel good for me to like be like I can't give you something more specific in the moment um number two for me like based on my personality and how I operate like I I like sometime to think about things ahead of time and so the side effect of that when this has happened to me is I will generally say to people hey no problem I said i' love to give you feedback and then I'll tell them like I can give you some like off the top of my head I can give you some highle feedback on things and um if you want because clearly if you're looking for more feedback if

it's not happening you know regularly enough or you're kind of going through a particular phase where you would just like some additional feedback because of a project you're working on or something whatever it is no problem like let me sync up with you further sorry should have went H I'm going to beat myself up now okay um yeah I'll give you some more specific feedback uh you know we can meet later in the week or what like tomorrow whatever it is so that I can have some time to process it so generally I'll do that and then give them some highle feedback and um I find that's a good compromise where I'm not just like you're you're doing good pat on the back and then and then they're like great my manager sucks um but I can say something in the moment even if it's

not going to be super actionable or something like that but I can use that as a signal to say hey we should talk about this more because clearly you're you are looking for more feedback so good balance I find that way so I would recommend to this individual that's something to do in terms of impact um yeah I I do think that it's part of going for senior U being able to demonstrate that and having conversations with your manager about trying to align some projects it doesn't mean sometimes it's not going to be yes you have to go lead this project but you might be able to participate in a project that has big impact and you can play a significant role in that and that could be awesome right and then I would say like for for me like at principal level the expectation

is that I do have projects I am leading it's not for me it's not going to be significant just to participate in projects um and in fact the feedback that I've received most recently is that um it's not even it's not even executing on projects I need to be able to be in a position where that's funny my my wife's dog is howling I could see her looking up and oooing which is really funny she's super cute um yeah the it's not just sufficient to execute and deliver it's like and even with uh with Vis ability the most recent feedback was it needs to be Innovative so it needs to be high impact very visible but also something that is new and Innovative that hasn't been done before um so for example something like the project that I'm leading right now that is very impactful

and has a lot of visibility does not actually meet the bar for Innovation which is frustrating because that's a lot of time and effort so this is why this kind of thing can get really muddy uh and I think that you need to be able to have conversations with your manager about building that aligned expectation because otherwise you're going to have friction and resentment because you're you're you're feeling like you're hearing different things and I think it's totally understandable why when people get feedback that's very generic or they're not getting feedback um or they have been given feedback and then they follow it and then they get a different result doesn't work right if you're always getting feedback like yes you're doing a good job keep doing what you're doing I think for a lot of people that means what it sounds like which is

okay I'll keep doing it and probably pretty soon within you know within the year maybe it's the next promotion cycle then should be promoted but that's like such a missed opportunity for aligned expectations unfortunately so um I do think it's important to try and drive uh Clarity around that um ultimately you know ultimately if you're trying to have that conversation with your manager and it's not happening it might be something that like you're not in a spot where you're going to grow effectively which is like kind of hard to acknowledge and say right um I'm trying to I'm trying to think if I had people on my team that were coming to me for feedback and I couldn't give them ways or things to focus on where I'm like hey like to go from this level to the next level this is what we need

to be aligned on I'm not saying like here's a specific project go do this and then you're done but like if you're not working in this direction you know you're not going to be progressing if I can't tell people that then I don't feel like I'm helping them grow at all and if they wanted to go somewhere else where they're getting that support I shouldn't be surprised by that um so anyway those are my thoughts little bit ranty tonight 27 minutes before the live stream so if you've watched this far uh this will probably go up on Wednesday morning if I do everything properly so this is my reminder to you if you like these types of conversations but you want to be part of it on Monday nights so 700 p.m.

Pacific I do a live stream on my main Channel called Dev leader um I don't do it in the car I do it in my office and uh you can you know I encourage people ask questions in the chat whatever I'm presenting on which is usually my My Weekly Newsletter issue the same topic I will happily pause that and just talk about whatever is being asked in the chat I would prefer to do that so if you enjoy these and you want a chance to actually chat and have me answer questions live please come join me on the uh the Monday Night Live stream they are all recorded as well so if you're like I don't know what's involved in that I want to see go over to Dev leader you can probably see like the I think there's a tab for live videos that

are recorded and you can see watch it on 2x speed so you can you don't have to listen to me blab for as long um but you can see what's involved and uh the opportunity there so I hope to see you I know a bunch of you from code commute have joined on the dev leader live streams it's really cool to see there and uh yeah I will hopefully see you next week take care