this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Struggling with inexperienced manager, job at risk due to bad rating - how to react? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by fololzl@programming.dev to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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Prologue: Long time Reddit subscriber, this Lemmy thing seems neat. I will probably ditch Reddit completely. Hi everyone!

tldr; joined new team two performance review cycles ago. Reorg before I joined, now have inexperienced manager who is different than hiring manager. Things went downhill after a while, probably due to personal issues, now my job is at risk. Another reorg with new manager happening soon, trying to save myself from layoff until then and trying to save my rep. Wondering how to do this best.

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[–] valence_engineer@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Potentially if the project isn't being known about for you then it's also probably not know about for your manager so you both look like you didn't achieve much. Given the economic climate they're probably worried about a layoff as well and having a report that isn't making them look good isn't optimal. In most companies the perception of what you do matters significantly more than what you actually do and it's even more the case for managers.

One final comment is that you probably need to build up trust with your manager. They probably don't trust you and you probably don't trust them on a personal level. In theory that's part of their job but they're the ones in power so in the end it benefits you more. One advice I heard which does in fact come off as ass kissing but is probably very beneficial in reality is to acknowledge in 1-on-1s to them the good things they did. "Hey manager, I really appreciate you giving such a thorough review of the project" or "Hey manager, thank you for pushing back so strongly on that request." Short and specific then move on.