Productivity Q&A and Videos

Can I do well at Job and interview prep simultaneously? Would be interested to hear stories from people and strategies employed.

Hi all,

I was put on PIP today. The PIP period is from 01/2024 till end of 01/2024. He said unsatisfactory performance & had to do this to be fair to others in the team. I think I was being benchmarked against others who work on weekends as outlined in my previous question: .

Yesterday I asked my manager for a 1-week remote and 3 weeks PTO (the company has unlimited PTO) from end of January to 3rd week of February. Do you think this was one of the reasons leading to me being PIP during the month of January?

What should I do now? Should I strive to overcome the PIP or should I find a new job? Anyone successfully overcame the PIP? How do I balance PIP and finding new job?

For more information, my 1st-year stock won't be vested till 06/2024 (so 25% of my RSUs won't be vested till end of the 1st year working for them). I think I'm out looking for a new job, but don't want to lose the RSUs.

For the sake of extreme ownership what could I have done better? If you need more info from me I can definitely provide in the threads below.

I am a mid level engineer and I work for a manager who has micromanaging tendencies. Some of these tendencies include,

1. Going deep into implementation details of tasks that engineers are working on. 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 almost always leads into the engineer having to explain the nitty gritty implementation details to this manager to convince them that the engineer is doing the right thing. Overall, the manager shows very little trust on the decisions taken by the engineers.
2. 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. The manager is aware that the engineer is working on a bunch of things but they will not show any regard for that fact. This means that the engineer has to put everything they are working on aside to produce the thing that the manager wants. The problem is that this happens very often and it results in engineers either having to overwork to get their job done or affecting quality of their work.
3. The manager will put the engineers under extreme pressure to deliver projects on or before the deadline. This includes minor nudges in meetings, lunches, team activities etc. reminding engineers of the timeline to having 2 hour meetings to discuss where we are in terms of meeting the deadline.

I have a few questions based on the above context.

1. How to deal with such managers?
2. Is it sustainable long term to work for such a manager? I am considering getting to the next level in my role within the next 2 years, would it be advisable to continue working with this person?
3. Do most managers have more trust on their directs than described in the above situations?

I was hired as a mid-level engineer, but I'm performing at the level below it. I had about a year and a half of experience coming into my company but didn't get much from it due to multiple re-orgs. In hindsight, I was a poor hire for my role and have felt this way the entire time. I am not interested in the niche and motivation is a struggle at times. I stayed because the team was really strong and I thought I could focus on the coding and grow technically. That was a mistake.

Fast forward a year and a half later (now), my manager tells me informally that my delivery is ok, but the way I go about my work needs improvement and I'm not growing, so I am performing at a level below. I need a lot of help from other engineers. And that I need fewer comments on my diffs and to do more research on problems because I'm not problem-solving well enough to be at my level. He's completely right. The team is full of high-performers and I know that I'm doing poorly by comparison. But I'm already consistently overworking into the evening and weekends.

I'm also hitting the limit with my mental health. I am putting in effort, but am being told it's not enough. For example, I spend some time understanding X and think I understand it, but teammate questions me in a way that makes me apply that knowledge and I realize my understanding is not so good or I did not think about it that way, so I am ashamed because I have spent a lot of time working on the task, but have failed to deep dive into this part. Or my teammate asks me for my thoughts on how to make something better, but nothing really comes to mind. How do I work on this behavior?

Some other questions:

• Is this a sign to leave my team or company? And the profession? Despite my best efforts, I'm disappointing my team and it's taking a toll.
• I haven't been served a PIP yet, but is this a sign that it's coming?
• Naive take, but is it a bad idea/even possible to ask for a downlevel? The reasoning was that I'd rather keep my job than lose it.
• Any advice?

I am the last person who should be complaining right now, but I absolutely hate my job and the tech sector in general right now. I work at Sh*p**y and even though I got promoted, the hr culture has changed to not increase compensation upon promotion. There's a lot of other hr f**kery I am having to deal with besides this.

Clickbait titles on twitter, business Insider posts or any news media article talking about AI replacing software engineers has given me a headache. Like I get that CEOs are using AI as a coin term to jack up stock prices or raise money. I have enough experience to know there won't be a true AI software engineer for a while but it still bothers me somehow because of the uncertainty (media brainwashing).

Overhanging worry of getting PIPed and not being able to find a job, because a lot of my former colleagues who were let go took a full year to find a new gig.

I'm just exhausted from thinking. I'm scared to talk to my bosses because they will always side with senior leadership, and I am exhausted by the rumours that are circulating about Q* and all the other AI domination clickbait posts.

Has anyone been able to learn to defuse from situations like this? I bet 08' was even worse than the current times. How did people deal with job uncertainties then? Really need answers because my productivity at work has gone down the drain.

What’s the best way to handle a situation as a tech lead when you are under pressure to deliver your tasks and ensure that the other team members are also on track? If one developer slacks and doesn’t meet the deadline, is it automatically the lead's fault, especially if the situation was raised well in advance. If the person continues to under deliver with poorly written code, is it okay to spend time and pair program and get work done just to meet deadlines? Keep in mind that the developer is a junior engineer and requires fair bit of hand holding.

I had to approve a PR, although I was not 100% confident, it wasn’t a breaking code and it wouldn’t have caused any backward compatible issues. I received extremely harsh feedback for approving a sub standard from a peer/colleague. Had I not completed the PR, my manager would have provided feedback on the delayed project, what’s the best way to navigate between two leads or managers who are not aligned and expect different outcomes from the same situation?

Please help.

My Role is Senior SRE

I received my second performance review and it came in at a -M which means Sometimes meets expectations. This is my first year in big tech and I'm at a loss for words. I worked 12-hour days since I started. The first 6 months I just winged it and did not realize how strategic and crucial these performance reviews were.

So for my second 6 months, I aligned with my team lead and manager. I executed every project they asked me to and even created some projects to help the entire team. I was led to believe I was doing good work. However, this Tuesday I received the news that my rating is again a -M. They said that they did not put me on a PIP because they saw improvement from the last PR.

They told me the reason was that I am one of 3 Sr. Engineers and that two of them are performing more than I am. Since we are rated on a curve I am last. 9 out of my 10, 360 reviews were positive and an M or above. I have a follow-up meeting next week with my manager to discuss my improvement plan. I also set up a call with my manager's manager for a coaching/mentorship call.
Here are my questions.

• I feel like my manager sees others as more proficient than me. Even though other colleagues tell me I am better than the other senior engineers how can I break out of this perception my manager has?
• How can I avoid a PIP? Our next performance review is in 2-3 months due to some changes they made in the yearly PR schedule. I don't think I can make enough changes during that time.
• What should my approach be towards my manager and his manager?
  • I want to be humble but also direct.
  • I feel I am not being treated fairly but I also think the system may be designed this way. I don't want to appear like I am a victim either.
• I fear that I will get a PIP due to my manager's subjective opinion I will lose my job, my apartment, and I will have lost the last 2 years of working myself to the bone. How can I escape being in this state of survival?

In lot of meetings I am feeling I am less knowledgeable than others and unable to add value a lot. All my peers are very smart.

When analyzing critically I feel maybe I am spending a lot of time learning and lesser doing.

What works for me is => having focus blocks. Catch is that I am getting too comfortable sometimes not having meetings. This leads to missing lot of context sometimes.

What tips does community have to to handle this pressure?

We have a sprint planning session every two weeks where epic owners create tickets and they are presented to people. Whoever is interested in whatever tickets, they assign it to themselves.

Everyone has 10 story points worth of tasks where 1 story point is one day’s work. When these tickets are created, the creator assigns an estimated story point value based on their judgement of the complexity of the ticket.

But sometimes, the task can be more complex than estimated and it might spill over.

I tend to take 10 points worth of tasks but definitely 1/2 points get spilled over to the next sprint because of unplanned delays while finishing them and my own inefficiency/ procrastination.

I have been given the feedback that I tend to overcommit and it would be better if I brought it up earlier in daily stand ups in case some tasks are taking more time than usual. This will enable others to pick up some other task on my board in case they are done with theirs.

I do see my inability to complete the 10 points as a personal failure even if no one explicitly points it out or cares about it. Most of my team mates tend to get them done though. I am 6 months in the team and the rest have been there for 2-3 years at least. I want to get better at planning and completing my sprint tasks. How do I approach this problem?

I'm still navigating a career switch to SWE, and I tend to get pretty overwhelmed when looking at code. I already ask a lot of questions, and I want to be more self-sufficient because my full-stack team members are pretty busy. (They are all kind and would all be willing to to take some time out of their day.)

How can I get faster at reading code on my own while balancing a team transition? I'm at the point where I understand the high-level purpose of parts of our codebase but little as to how the moving pieces all fit together.

While I understand that there is likely no magic threshold to determine the point at one needs to ask for codebase navigation guidance, a good rule of thumb would be helpful when possible.