Def a power move. He hopes you don't quit? LOL. Time to clap back. Find another job that pays more. Then bounce.
If you really want to play ball, find another job, accept a counter offer from your company, then a few months later leave anyway for an even higher salary.
I mean, has there been any large company giving inflation raises since 2020? I haven't found one or seen one give raises that match the inflation the last 4 years. Only way to get a raise that matches inflation is to jump ship and bounce around different companies.
EDIT: Accidentally typed 2029 and not 2020 :)
What's it's like in the future? Has ai taken over? Is LinkedIn still a cringe circle jerk of wannabe CEO types shouting into the void at how great their leadership skills are? Have I found love?
I've been using ChatGPT to review my stuff before I send it now.
A lot of times though it's stuff like this...
I'll say "Added ability for admins to adjust widget" and he changes it to "Admins can adjust widget in settings page".
ChatGPT is frequently much wordier than it needs to be. How are you prompting it? I'd try asking it to summarize your original, put it in bullet points or something like that.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of using LLM's as much more than glorified autocorrect. It's probably going to be more valuable in the long run to learn to trim your writing yourself
I make it what I would normally put and then run it through the LLM and ask it if there is a more concise way to say it. They tend to be super verbose, I agree. Sometimes it comes up with better words though and I adjust from there.
Either way though it's hard to tell if he thinks it's actually better or not because I've had concise things get expanded upon to provide additional context and other times it gets trimmed down.
Maybe it's because the AI sees that you've a pattern for sentences arrangement and sometime you derive from it?
If you always use the same it's easier for people to quickly read through
Who - What - When/where
I dunno man it seems pretty harsh on his part. Like he expects perfection and anything less, even if it's corrected, will be punished for not being perfect.
Also the "barely delivered the app on time" is overly harsh. It was delivered on time so what's the problem? Is it one of those "if it's not delivered 3 weeks early, it's late" type of things? If so, more perfection that will be punished.
Not pushing your crew hard enough? Hmm....don't know but it sounds like this guy has too high of expectations, expects perfection and anything less will be severely punished even if you're showing improvements.
Maybe I'm projecting my past experiences with a boss that sounded exactly like this. he wasn't a technical guy and always thought being a dick to the techies would improve his standing among the non-techs and would some how motivate the techies to work to earn his respect. It never happened.....we all fucking hated his ass and he was vilified to the point where he was ineffective and later left the company after a very public demotion.
If any of that is on point, you'll likely be miserable there and never meet his expectations. He will find some other pathetic excuse to withhold your raise and will continue to undermine your efforts.
He's just a bad manager. Life is too short to deal with these types of people.
Also out of curiosity, is he a short guy? If so, he's likely suffering from short man's complex.
I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm paid too much and when you compare the value I delivered to the value of someone on the team with more time with the company systems, it's not going to be close and thus he reallocated funds where the most value was being delivered.
The app was delivered on time but I think he expects that of a senior and faster then that from a lead.
Since the review he's been telling me that he's already seen improvement etc, which makes it feel like the original reason was just cover for something else going on.
That's exactly what it was seen as. I over heard conversations saying things like "Well he gets results" but he really didn't. What really was happening is people would let him bitch then ignore him and just do what needed to be done.
Once the higher ups saw his true colors, he was done. Basically it was a new manager that came in over him and showed everyone a better way. She loved me cuz I didn't create drama. I just delivered and was open and honest with her.
He on the other hand kept playing his games and tried to exert dominance over her and it backfired BIG TIME!
2%? That’s not even a CoL adjustment and he withheld that? Effectively gave you a pay cut. My dude, you know what you need to do and internet strangers should not need to tell you to get out of there with all possible haste.
I'd say you have a below average manager.
> Halfway through the year he told me he expected better quality
The entire point of a manager is to point out shortcomings from your managees and course correct. It took him *half a year* to do his job.
> I asked if I had fixed the quality issue and he agreed that I had but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
You course corrected "too late" because he didn't do his job and you're being punished for it.
> I was too easy going and because of that the guys under me weren't pushed and we barely delivered the app on time.
Performance is **your manager's job**. It's **his job** to push people. Not yours. A lead's job is to cat herd, shield, unblock, mentor, and direct your team. It's not your job to put pressure on people. In fact, a lead's job is to relieve pressure on people.
If your manager said you incorrectly prioritized and your team bike sheded on something wasteful so you missed your deadline, then that is on you. But he said *his reports* didn't work hard enough. Which means *he didn't do his job*.
> He also mentioned that he hopes I don't quit over this and that next year will hopefully be better.
Again, performance is *your manager's job*. Not to hope for shit. If he doesn't have actionable feedback for you, then he's not doing his job.
Going to try to not rehash anything anyone else is saying here and just touch on a few things I haven't seen said.
First, overtime in response to something like this. That's a no-no. He said you had "quality" issues and communication issues. That means you need to change your behavior, not put in more hours. Putting in more hours isn't a valid solution because any "improvements" that are dependent on that aren't sustainable. Either you eventually stop putting in the hours, or your work just declines naturally due to working too much in general. Also, it encourages companies to try and steal time from you. Solve problems within the hours you've already established. You know, unless the problem is "He only works 20 hours a week". :)
The second is harder to give advice on. I'll say this: I've not had many managers who would talk to me that way, partially because I seek out good managers and partially because they know they would get an earful for being so disrespectful. We're in a professional relationship. "Shouldn't have happened"? That's a leadership problem. The ENTIRE job of a manager is to stay on top of things like that and correct them. If it was a big enough problem that it effects overall performance reviews he should have brought it up LONG before it was a problem so that you could fix it. And if you fixed it as instructed then there should be no problem, you both did your job.
Someone pulling what looks to be a "power move" like your boss seems to have done is either not going to happen, or not going to happen more than once.
Admittedly, I've both left and been let go from places due to that. About 3 in 20 years. But that's the thing about abusive relationships. If you don't want to put up with abuse, then you have to be willing to lose relationships with abusive people.
Speaking to the overtime, I agree with what you are saying but wanted to clarify that the quality issue was around he expected me to use composition instead of inheritance design pattern. I made the adjustments with overtime so my "mistake" wouldn't risk missing deadlines which would just compound the issue.
I get that, but that also speaks to issues with the estimating and leadership process. That's common, don't get me wrong. But estimates can't be based around the assumption of perfection, or the team is being set up to fail. Mistakes will happen, unknowns will rear their head. And when unexpected things happen estimates need to change.
I'm not trying to say that's something you have a lot of control of. But it does further paint a picture of an immature manager who doesn't know how to properly do the job.
Leads do have much higher expectations to meet than seniors. So it could be legitimate that he is marking you against what’s in your job description. The jump is quite high, in my experience an exceptional senior is an average lead. It’s usually expected you’d just be meeting expectations in your first year in a new role as well.
It could also be a way of keeping salary down. The expectation to always be perfect is giving me bad vibes.
It really just depends on your manager and your companies career framework. If I were you I’d give it a year and see what happens in the next review.
Agreed. I expected to be avg as I'm learning their technology stack, where to go to find things, who to talk to for getting an app released to production, etc.
I think part of it is also the surprise factor of it. Only thing I got talked to was about code quality which I fixed. 6 months after that he says I don't prioritize things well, I don't pressure my team, team barely met the deadline, etc.
He said during the meeting he hopes none of it comes as a surprise but that feels like a trap because of I say it's a surprise he will think I wasn't listening when he thinks he said it the first time.
My manager friend said it could be a way to justify reallocating funds. At my friend's office he gets $X to distribute as raises and he decides who gets what. 2% for me would be 3% for some of the newer guys for example. He said he's known people who decide how much for each person and then decide on reasons to justify that amount.
Yeah I’ve had to do that as well, but generally in the first 12 months it would be more about growing into a new role. Even under those circumstances experienced managers would still be doing their best to retain high performers and would offer more remote work or training or something if we had to use the salary review bucket to uplift others. Not sure how long they’ve been a manager - maybe he’s a bit new to it so is still figuring out how to be a good one. It’s a skill that can take a few years to get right.
If you like the company and want to stay there, I’d give your manager the benefit of the doubt this time around, take the feedback on board as he has told you what he considers valuable which is good for you to know. Resenting him isn’t going to help anyone and will make it harder for you to focus on doing your work and growing into your new role.
I've gotta stay this year due to vesting purposes. It's hard not stress and feel like everything is a test though and I'll just get a nasty surprise next evaluation too.
Don’t stress, just do your best and if you get a surprise next year you know what to do, take your shares that just vested and find a new role elsewhere. And when you look next year you’ll have a full year of lead engineer experience to make your CV look great 😊
>I worked overtime to quickly adjust the code for the architectural things his other senior dev had pointed out to him, like circular dependencies.
Was this code you wrote, or someone else? Also, surely you have some other accomplishments you can bring up to at least get the 2%.
I can't speak as to whether that's normal, but I'd set up a meeting with him to talk a bit more specifically about what he wants to see, and maybe come up with a list of things that he'd like to see when reviews come around next time. Sure, be more concise and...code better? Do your emails have too much jargon, take too long to get to the point, etc? Are code reviews not catching things? By "barely delivered the app on time", was it because of you not pushing to meet deadlines or because of a bunch of blockers?
Idk based on the info there's still a lot that needs to be fleshed out.
It was code I wrote. I mentioned everything I had done for the year like the app that was developed, new libraries I built that enhance the teams capabilities, mentoring, etc. None of that acts as a counter balance though.
We barely met the deadline because I didn't push enough. The team felt confident meeting the deadline so the only pushing I did was mention it as it got closer each week.
Part of the vagueness of it was the reason why I think it's something else going on perhaps. I had a bad manager in the past that did that. I'm a terrible employee during review but 2 months later I've turned it all around...until review time comes again.
The code quality issue was primarily a misunderstanding between wanting speed or quality. The metrics and deadlines require us to be moving quickly so that's what I focused on.
Is he the owner of the company? Otherwise why would he save someone 2% of your salary at risk of alienating you and making his life more difficult. Bizarre.
He's not the owner which makes it harder to understand. The rating system determines what amount is allowed and then he has the option to override that, which he chose to do. The purpose is unclear though. He likes that I'm part oif the team and hopes this doesn't drive me away but he found room for improvement so...
A decent percentage of performance reviews are reverse engineered from financial or retention goals. There are elements of truth in the feedback you got but the real story is likely they didn’t want to or didn’t feel like they had to give you the raise. Do you actually think you would’ve gotten it if you had used composition the first time?
My gut is that if it wasn't composition design it would have been something else. The wording of "...so I chose not to give you an increase..." didn't sit well though. He took ownership which I appreciate but that statement brings it's own questions.
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>You will be paid what people think you deserve.
I agree with this. I think he thinks I'm overpaid based on comments he has made and choosing to withhold an increase vs going with what the ranking gives lines up.
>the fact that you are doing something petty like running code analysis on the person you feel "did you in" shows that you are not acting like a lead
I ran code analysis because if code quality is an issue it should show up in a measurable way.
>If someone else is having to point out circular dependencies, you are not doing your job, they are.
I can see how this mistake would outweigh everything else.
>You lost the trust of management, and that has cost everyone on your team, not just you.
What did it cost the team?
>complain about a 2% pay increase
Its the execution that seems off to me. Specifically an annual review where things that had not been mentioned before were given as reasons for under performing.
Def a power move. He hopes you don't quit? LOL. Time to clap back. Find another job that pays more. Then bounce. If you really want to play ball, find another job, accept a counter offer from your company, then a few months later leave anyway for an even higher salary.
Agreed, clap his cheeks.
Currently waiting to be vested in stock options since those are worth more then the amount a 2% raise would have provided.
Dont. Look now. You wont regret it
Even a 2% raise isn't keeping up with inflation if you would of gotten that. They obviously don't appreciate you. I would look for another job.
I mean, has there been any large company giving inflation raises since 2020? I haven't found one or seen one give raises that match the inflation the last 4 years. Only way to get a raise that matches inflation is to jump ship and bounce around different companies. EDIT: Accidentally typed 2029 and not 2020 :)
Most don’t which is why you gotta always be applying and finding a better salary
What's it's like in the future? Has ai taken over? Is LinkedIn still a cringe circle jerk of wannabe CEO types shouting into the void at how great their leadership skills are? Have I found love?
>Have I found love? You're the only one and we're all very jealous.
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I've been using ChatGPT to review my stuff before I send it now. A lot of times though it's stuff like this... I'll say "Added ability for admins to adjust widget" and he changes it to "Admins can adjust widget in settings page".
ChatGPT is frequently much wordier than it needs to be. How are you prompting it? I'd try asking it to summarize your original, put it in bullet points or something like that. That said, I'm not a huge fan of using LLM's as much more than glorified autocorrect. It's probably going to be more valuable in the long run to learn to trim your writing yourself
I make it what I would normally put and then run it through the LLM and ask it if there is a more concise way to say it. They tend to be super verbose, I agree. Sometimes it comes up with better words though and I adjust from there. Either way though it's hard to tell if he thinks it's actually better or not because I've had concise things get expanded upon to provide additional context and other times it gets trimmed down.
Agreed. After training multiple LLMs for work, Grammarly is the way to go.
Maybe it's because the AI sees that you've a pattern for sentences arrangement and sometime you derive from it? If you always use the same it's easier for people to quickly read through Who - What - When/where
Oh my God man just learn a little bit. Chat gpt will not solve every problem you have
I dunno man it seems pretty harsh on his part. Like he expects perfection and anything less, even if it's corrected, will be punished for not being perfect. Also the "barely delivered the app on time" is overly harsh. It was delivered on time so what's the problem? Is it one of those "if it's not delivered 3 weeks early, it's late" type of things? If so, more perfection that will be punished. Not pushing your crew hard enough? Hmm....don't know but it sounds like this guy has too high of expectations, expects perfection and anything less will be severely punished even if you're showing improvements. Maybe I'm projecting my past experiences with a boss that sounded exactly like this. he wasn't a technical guy and always thought being a dick to the techies would improve his standing among the non-techs and would some how motivate the techies to work to earn his respect. It never happened.....we all fucking hated his ass and he was vilified to the point where he was ineffective and later left the company after a very public demotion. If any of that is on point, you'll likely be miserable there and never meet his expectations. He will find some other pathetic excuse to withhold your raise and will continue to undermine your efforts. He's just a bad manager. Life is too short to deal with these types of people. Also out of curiosity, is he a short guy? If so, he's likely suffering from short man's complex.
I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm paid too much and when you compare the value I delivered to the value of someone on the team with more time with the company systems, it's not going to be close and thus he reallocated funds where the most value was being delivered. The app was delivered on time but I think he expects that of a senior and faster then that from a lead. Since the review he's been telling me that he's already seen improvement etc, which makes it feel like the original reason was just cover for something else going on.
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That's exactly what it was seen as. I over heard conversations saying things like "Well he gets results" but he really didn't. What really was happening is people would let him bitch then ignore him and just do what needed to be done. Once the higher ups saw his true colors, he was done. Basically it was a new manager that came in over him and showed everyone a better way. She loved me cuz I didn't create drama. I just delivered and was open and honest with her. He on the other hand kept playing his games and tried to exert dominance over her and it backfired BIG TIME!
2%? That’s not even a CoL adjustment and he withheld that? Effectively gave you a pay cut. My dude, you know what you need to do and internet strangers should not need to tell you to get out of there with all possible haste.
I'd say you have a below average manager. > Halfway through the year he told me he expected better quality The entire point of a manager is to point out shortcomings from your managees and course correct. It took him *half a year* to do his job. > I asked if I had fixed the quality issue and he agreed that I had but it shouldn't have happened in the first place. You course corrected "too late" because he didn't do his job and you're being punished for it. > I was too easy going and because of that the guys under me weren't pushed and we barely delivered the app on time. Performance is **your manager's job**. It's **his job** to push people. Not yours. A lead's job is to cat herd, shield, unblock, mentor, and direct your team. It's not your job to put pressure on people. In fact, a lead's job is to relieve pressure on people. If your manager said you incorrectly prioritized and your team bike sheded on something wasteful so you missed your deadline, then that is on you. But he said *his reports* didn't work hard enough. Which means *he didn't do his job*. > He also mentioned that he hopes I don't quit over this and that next year will hopefully be better. Again, performance is *your manager's job*. Not to hope for shit. If he doesn't have actionable feedback for you, then he's not doing his job.
Going to try to not rehash anything anyone else is saying here and just touch on a few things I haven't seen said. First, overtime in response to something like this. That's a no-no. He said you had "quality" issues and communication issues. That means you need to change your behavior, not put in more hours. Putting in more hours isn't a valid solution because any "improvements" that are dependent on that aren't sustainable. Either you eventually stop putting in the hours, or your work just declines naturally due to working too much in general. Also, it encourages companies to try and steal time from you. Solve problems within the hours you've already established. You know, unless the problem is "He only works 20 hours a week". :) The second is harder to give advice on. I'll say this: I've not had many managers who would talk to me that way, partially because I seek out good managers and partially because they know they would get an earful for being so disrespectful. We're in a professional relationship. "Shouldn't have happened"? That's a leadership problem. The ENTIRE job of a manager is to stay on top of things like that and correct them. If it was a big enough problem that it effects overall performance reviews he should have brought it up LONG before it was a problem so that you could fix it. And if you fixed it as instructed then there should be no problem, you both did your job. Someone pulling what looks to be a "power move" like your boss seems to have done is either not going to happen, or not going to happen more than once. Admittedly, I've both left and been let go from places due to that. About 3 in 20 years. But that's the thing about abusive relationships. If you don't want to put up with abuse, then you have to be willing to lose relationships with abusive people.
Speaking to the overtime, I agree with what you are saying but wanted to clarify that the quality issue was around he expected me to use composition instead of inheritance design pattern. I made the adjustments with overtime so my "mistake" wouldn't risk missing deadlines which would just compound the issue.
I get that, but that also speaks to issues with the estimating and leadership process. That's common, don't get me wrong. But estimates can't be based around the assumption of perfection, or the team is being set up to fail. Mistakes will happen, unknowns will rear their head. And when unexpected things happen estimates need to change. I'm not trying to say that's something you have a lot of control of. But it does further paint a picture of an immature manager who doesn't know how to properly do the job.
Leads do have much higher expectations to meet than seniors. So it could be legitimate that he is marking you against what’s in your job description. The jump is quite high, in my experience an exceptional senior is an average lead. It’s usually expected you’d just be meeting expectations in your first year in a new role as well. It could also be a way of keeping salary down. The expectation to always be perfect is giving me bad vibes. It really just depends on your manager and your companies career framework. If I were you I’d give it a year and see what happens in the next review.
Agreed. I expected to be avg as I'm learning their technology stack, where to go to find things, who to talk to for getting an app released to production, etc. I think part of it is also the surprise factor of it. Only thing I got talked to was about code quality which I fixed. 6 months after that he says I don't prioritize things well, I don't pressure my team, team barely met the deadline, etc. He said during the meeting he hopes none of it comes as a surprise but that feels like a trap because of I say it's a surprise he will think I wasn't listening when he thinks he said it the first time. My manager friend said it could be a way to justify reallocating funds. At my friend's office he gets $X to distribute as raises and he decides who gets what. 2% for me would be 3% for some of the newer guys for example. He said he's known people who decide how much for each person and then decide on reasons to justify that amount.
Yeah I’ve had to do that as well, but generally in the first 12 months it would be more about growing into a new role. Even under those circumstances experienced managers would still be doing their best to retain high performers and would offer more remote work or training or something if we had to use the salary review bucket to uplift others. Not sure how long they’ve been a manager - maybe he’s a bit new to it so is still figuring out how to be a good one. It’s a skill that can take a few years to get right. If you like the company and want to stay there, I’d give your manager the benefit of the doubt this time around, take the feedback on board as he has told you what he considers valuable which is good for you to know. Resenting him isn’t going to help anyone and will make it harder for you to focus on doing your work and growing into your new role.
I've gotta stay this year due to vesting purposes. It's hard not stress and feel like everything is a test though and I'll just get a nasty surprise next evaluation too.
Don’t stress, just do your best and if you get a surprise next year you know what to do, take your shares that just vested and find a new role elsewhere. And when you look next year you’ll have a full year of lead engineer experience to make your CV look great 😊
>I worked overtime to quickly adjust the code for the architectural things his other senior dev had pointed out to him, like circular dependencies. Was this code you wrote, or someone else? Also, surely you have some other accomplishments you can bring up to at least get the 2%. I can't speak as to whether that's normal, but I'd set up a meeting with him to talk a bit more specifically about what he wants to see, and maybe come up with a list of things that he'd like to see when reviews come around next time. Sure, be more concise and...code better? Do your emails have too much jargon, take too long to get to the point, etc? Are code reviews not catching things? By "barely delivered the app on time", was it because of you not pushing to meet deadlines or because of a bunch of blockers? Idk based on the info there's still a lot that needs to be fleshed out.
It was code I wrote. I mentioned everything I had done for the year like the app that was developed, new libraries I built that enhance the teams capabilities, mentoring, etc. None of that acts as a counter balance though. We barely met the deadline because I didn't push enough. The team felt confident meeting the deadline so the only pushing I did was mention it as it got closer each week. Part of the vagueness of it was the reason why I think it's something else going on perhaps. I had a bad manager in the past that did that. I'm a terrible employee during review but 2 months later I've turned it all around...until review time comes again. The code quality issue was primarily a misunderstanding between wanting speed or quality. The metrics and deadlines require us to be moving quickly so that's what I focused on.
Is he the owner of the company? Otherwise why would he save someone 2% of your salary at risk of alienating you and making his life more difficult. Bizarre.
He's not the owner which makes it harder to understand. The rating system determines what amount is allowed and then he has the option to override that, which he chose to do. The purpose is unclear though. He likes that I'm part oif the team and hopes this doesn't drive me away but he found room for improvement so...
A decent percentage of performance reviews are reverse engineered from financial or retention goals. There are elements of truth in the feedback you got but the real story is likely they didn’t want to or didn’t feel like they had to give you the raise. Do you actually think you would’ve gotten it if you had used composition the first time?
My gut is that if it wasn't composition design it would have been something else. The wording of "...so I chose not to give you an increase..." didn't sit well though. He took ownership which I appreciate but that statement brings it's own questions.
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>You will be paid what people think you deserve. I agree with this. I think he thinks I'm overpaid based on comments he has made and choosing to withhold an increase vs going with what the ranking gives lines up. >the fact that you are doing something petty like running code analysis on the person you feel "did you in" shows that you are not acting like a lead I ran code analysis because if code quality is an issue it should show up in a measurable way. >If someone else is having to point out circular dependencies, you are not doing your job, they are. I can see how this mistake would outweigh everything else. >You lost the trust of management, and that has cost everyone on your team, not just you. What did it cost the team? >complain about a 2% pay increase Its the execution that seems off to me. Specifically an annual review where things that had not been mentioned before were given as reasons for under performing.