Working with a micromanager

1. Depends on the manager. People tend to go all "control freak" when they feel out of control in some other way. So they want to do the thing they KNOW how to do, to feel competent.
   If you can start from that point of view (whether it's specifically true right now) that your manager realizes they're in over their head, you might be able to coach them into how to manage you.
   
   For example, "I am working rn on x and y, to get [thing] done by [milestone]. You want me to do z. That is going to impact the timeline of x and y -- even if I work late to get it done, because I'll be more tired then the quality may suffer. Is that the prioritization you prefer? Z first, then x, then y?
   
   In other words: their job is to prioritize and remove blockers/find resources. If they're not doing that -- if they're seagulling (fly in and ****) -- then nudge them towards prioritization and blocker removal anyway.
   
   Also, and this may sound super manipulative, but it's really not: when they do a good job doing THEIR job, give them approval! Thank them for organizing, removing blockers, finding resources, aligning stakeholders so your project has support, etc.
2. Not sustainable long term, and whether you personally can endure it really depends on whether this hooks into your own issues, or whether you can separate it out and do good work, despite this noise. I would have a very rough time, and I'm an oldster. But I know people who truly don't care at all, and just roll with it.
3. "Most" isn't really relevant; I think you're looking for "enough." Enough so that you can specifically search for a new manager where you ask behavioral interview questions such as "you know your direct has a lot on their plate, but your manager just asked you a question, and you want to get the answer to them. What do you do?" (Follow up: "What do you do if your manager does that frequently?")

Timeline Pressure

The manager will put the engineers under extreme pressure to deliver projects on or before the deadline.

Here's an excellent thread around how to push back: "What are good strategies to push back when the deadline is not realistic?"

If possible, proactively solve the problem by baking a lot of buffer into the timeline to begin with. This way when your manager pushes you, they can eat into this buffer you planned for this very occasion. Here's some good discussions around that:

• "How do I better plan my work during sprints?"
• "How can I get better at estimating long-term projects?"

...to having 2 hour meetings to discuss where we are in terms of meeting the deadline.

I would also politely (but firmly) push back against these massive wastes of time. Pretty much no meeting should ever be 2 hours long, especially not project status updates. If your team isn't doing this already, start publishing very detailed regular status updates async and push your manager towards those instead.

I'm sorry to hear about your manager situation. I highly recommend reading through a similar discussion here: "My manager and I don't see eye-to-eye. How can I improve this relationship?"

At a high level, I recommend delivering some honest (but empathetic) feedback to your manager and building a coalition among your teammates, especially as this seems to be a problem across your entire team.

If your manager is not receptive at all of the feedback and doesn't show any signs of good intent, the unfortunate best course of action is probably to switch managers/teams.

Finding a good engineering manager (EM) is so important, and unfortunately, most of them are terrible. This is why we gave a masterclass about understanding what a good EM looks like and how to find one: [Masterclass] What Software Engineers Should Look For In Their Engineering Manager

Pinging For Stuff

When there arises a situation that the manager wants something from an engineer, they will want it immediately i.e. within the next few hours, eod etc.

This is something I recommend every person do:

• Maintain a list of your priorities, stack ranked by time-to-impact ratio (i.e. tasks that require little to medium time per unit of impact come first)
• Regularly share that list with your manager, primarily in your 1 on 1
• Whenever anybody comes in with a new task, even if it's your manager, share that list and politely push them to explain why their new task deserves to be on the top of the list

The manager is aware that the engineer is working on a bunch of things but they will not show any regard for that fact.

Make it clear that opportunity cost is real: "I agree that this task is important, but if I context switch into it, my existing project XYZ will be delayed by ABC days/weeks. XYZ is the team's #1 priority according to our roadmap planning - Are you sure we're okay shifting priorities like this?"

There's a lot of interesting and common scenarios here, so I'll go through those too.

Making System Design Harder

I have been in meetings/discussions where proposed solutions by engineers have been ripped apart by this manager without them having enough context about why the engineer is doing it a certain way.

This doesn't solve the core problem, but I recommend preempting this feedback in a doc instead of having it blow up in a meeting, which seems to be your current situation.

Here's some good resources here:

• "How can I minimize thrash when I present technical designs for my projects?"
• System Design Masterclass: Taro Playlists - This video series goes through how to make a very thorough technical doc. If you do this, you should be able to isolate your manager's thrash into an async doc, which is much more manageable.