Dealing with a frustrating boss /u/Yak_Some CSCQ protests reddit

I joined the company I work for (NYC mid size trading firm) as a new grad about an year ago. But I’m feeling more and more frustrated as the days go by.

This is mainly because my manager is, in my opinion, unnecessarily hard on me in our 1 on 1’s. If I had to evaluate my own performance, I’d like to think that I’ve not only met expectations but exceeded them. Yet, in every other 1 on 1 with my boss, she uses an aggressive tone and reprimands me on something that either isn’t that big of a deal or not my fault at all. She does not appreciate the tasks I go above and beyond on with the same energy.

For example, I was assigned a task for a project that I hadn’t been introduced to or knew anything about. So before I started working on it, I went to the project’s site, and saw a bunch of errors pop up. Simply visiting the site seemed to have run a bunch of slow queries on the database, which in turn affected other services that were using the database. Since the site was for internal use within our team, the people who usually used it were aware of the issue and simply didn’t visit it, but I wasn’t told not to. In our 1 on 1, I was told to be more responsible and she acknowledged that it wasn’t “all my fault” and some part of the blame should go to another teammate, but I had to be more careful. I simply don’t see how I could’ve been more careful in this case, but I’ve found that arguing with her about it does not help. I think a simple fix could’ve been to (a) fix the broken system or even (b) disable the functionality that breaks the system temporarily. But I’ve noticed a pattern of blaming me instead of the system even in simple cases like these.

Another example is when I was working on software A that reported on the performance of software B. To work on my task, I needed to understand how software B worked in the first place, and the documentation wasn’t detailed enough for me to do my work. So I ended up reading some of the code for software B and proceeded to do my tasks. She somehow found out that I was looking at B’s code, and I was asked (in an aggressive and confrontational tone) why I was looking at B when my task was for A. When I told her I can’t work on A unless I know how B works, she said I should’ve asked a teammate. But the problem is that I needed a very precise understanding of how B worked to do my job, and a high level understanding wouldn’t have helped. So I thought looking at the code would simply be more efficient, and I ended up doing the task on time anyways so I didn’t really see the issue.

There are many more examples of similar issues. I’ve taken the blame in our 1 on 1’s pretty much every single time, because I feel like further arguing with her won’t resolve the problem.

I’ve felt very demotivated at work and these meetings are affecting my personal life too because I can’t stop thinking about why she behaves this way and what she actually wants from me. I’m very confused and frustrated.

I was thinking of talking to her about this in our next 1 on 1, and let her know how it’s affecting me, and that I can’t keep working in this environment. Is this a good idea or am I shooting myself in the foot? Would like some advice from some more experienced devs.

I joined the company I work for (NYC mid size trading firm) as a new grad about an year ago. But I’m feeling more and more frustrated as the days go by.

This is mainly because my manager is, in my opinion, unnecessarily hard on me in our 1 on 1’s. If I had to evaluate my own performance, I’d like to think that I’ve not only met expectations but exceeded them. Yet, in every other 1 on 1 with my boss, she uses an aggressive tone and reprimands me on something that either isn’t that big of a deal or not my fault at all. She does not appreciate the tasks I go above and beyond on with the same energy.

For example, I was assigned a task for a project that I hadn’t been introduced to or knew anything about. So before I started working on it, I went to the project’s site, and saw a bunch of errors pop up. Simply visiting the site seemed to have run a bunch of slow queries on the database, which in turn affected other services that were using the database. Since the site was for internal use within our team, the people who usually used it were aware of the issue and simply didn’t visit it, but I wasn’t told not to. In our 1 on 1, I was told to be more responsible and she acknowledged that it wasn’t “all my fault” and some part of the blame should go to another teammate, but I had to be more careful. I simply don’t see how I could’ve been more careful in this case, but I’ve found that arguing with her about it does not help. I think a simple fix could’ve been to (a) fix the broken system or even (b) disable the functionality that breaks the system temporarily. But I’ve noticed a pattern of blaming me instead of the system even in simple cases like these.

Another example is when I was working on software A that reported on the performance of software B. To work on my task, I needed to understand how software B worked in the first place, and the documentation wasn’t detailed enough for me to do my work. So I ended up reading some of the code for software B and proceeded to do my tasks. She somehow found out that I was looking at B’s code, and I was asked (in an aggressive and confrontational tone) why I was looking at B when my task was for A. When I told her I can’t work on A unless I know how B works, she said I should’ve asked a teammate. But the problem is that I needed a very precise understanding of how B worked to do my job, and a high level understanding wouldn’t have helped. So I thought looking at the code would simply be more efficient, and I ended up doing the task on time anyways so I didn’t really see the issue.

There are many more examples of similar issues. I’ve taken the blame in our 1 on 1’s pretty much every single time, because I feel like further arguing with her won’t resolve the problem.

I’ve felt very demotivated at work and these meetings are affecting my personal life too because I can’t stop thinking about why she behaves this way and what she actually wants from me. I’m very confused and frustrated.

I was thinking of talking to her about this in our next 1 on 1, and let her know how it’s affecting me, and that I can’t keep working in this environment. Is this a good idea or am I shooting myself in the foot? Would like some advice from some more experienced devs.