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> I advise leaving a place that requires your manager to dictate which tickets you work on As someone who recently left a place like that: I agree. I'm a highl

> I advise leaving a place that requires your manager to dictate which tickets you work on As someone who recently left a place like that: I agree. I'm a highly-paid professional; it was really frustrating to feel like my manager didn't trust me enough to figure out what I needed to work on.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
It really depends on what you are shipping: 1. does what you are shipping have lots of international regulations and compliance requirements per country it will be available in with new countries being rolled out on a planned basis -> your manager will determine what you should work on 2. Are there things being released on a set date due to some sort of legal requirement, business deal? -> your manager will determine what you should work on 3. Is it basically the same product in all markets / countries other than internationalized text with not pending contracts or business deals requiring specific functionalities impacting the company? You should be able to determine what you should be working on.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  I disagree. Though (1) and (2) are good points, but they shouldn't be telling you what to work on at the individual ticket level. Even then, they should prioritize and set a healthy deadline (if appropriate); and that is it. Implementing a high priority ticket may still require addressing technical debt to implement, or dealing with other lower priority tickets first -- because they block the new, higher priority ticket. If your manager needs to know all these details and can tell you "no, you can't fix X to build Y" then I really think that is a crappy place to work; not just due to the politics involved, but also the code must be absolute crap.
maccard 3y ago
Manager/Tech Lead here who had someone who would choose their tickets themselves. It's a giant pain and makes my job 10x more difficult when I tell another team that something that's low priority to us but high priority to them that something will be done, and instead find it sitting in in-progress with a tech debt bugbear of theirs in review. The priority on the ticket was set for a reason, it was assigned and scheduled for a reason. There's only so many hours in the day to explain why some things are prioritised. If you think that's wrong, be a professional and talk to me about it. I promise you, I want to have the conversation that you need to actually work with your team far less than you want to fix that JSON output.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  You’re a manager, not a dictator. Manage that shit. If it’s a low priority for you but not for someone else, you are prioritizing wrong. Don’t complain because someone doesn’t want to play politics with you. Learn your team, play to their strengths.
  - maccard 3y ago
    There's a wide berth between being a manager who prioritises work and a dictator that assigns out stack ranked tickets with no end in sight. My job is to make sure the teams priorities are straight, and I can't do that if you or someone else are subterfuging my efforts to do so. Unless otherwise demonstrated, I trust that you (my team member in this case) are a smart, well intentioned person, and I ask that you assume the same of me. Going behind my back because you don't like what I'm asking you to do is "otherwise demonstrated".
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      A team member and manager don’t operate in a vacuum. It’s your job to communicate priorities and ensure the team buys in to the priorities. If they don’t and you didn’t get that buy in, then you can’t blame them for having their own priorities. You can say “these are the priorities” all day long, but so can anyone. The team, as a team, should agree on the priorities. Your job is to communicate the business priorities, the teams job is to turn them into technical priorities which may or may not match the business’s exactly. If you’re not getting the last part and communicating it back upstream, you’re not doing your job.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

It really depends on what you are shipping: 1. does what you are shipping have lots of international regulations and compliance requirements per country it will be available in with new countries being rolled out on a planned basis -> your manager will determine what you should work on 2. Are there things being released on a set date due to some sort of legal requirement, business deal? -> your manager will determine what you should work on 3. Is it basically the same product in all markets / countries other than internationalized text with not pending contracts or business deals requiring specific functionalities impacting the company? You should be able to determine what you should be working on.

withinboredom 3y ago
I disagree. Though (1) and (2) are good points, but they shouldn't be telling you what to work on at the individual ticket level. Even then, they should prioritize and set a healthy deadline (if appropriate); and that is it. Implementing a high priority ticket may still require addressing technical debt to implement, or dealing with other lower priority tickets first -- because they block the new, higher priority ticket. If your manager needs to know all these details and can tell you "no, you can't fix X to build Y" then I really think that is a crappy place to work; not just due to the politics involved, but also the code must be absolute crap.

maccard 3y ago

Manager/Tech Lead here who had someone who would choose their tickets themselves. It's a giant pain and makes my job 10x more difficult when I tell another team that something that's low priority to us but high priority to them that something will be done, and instead find it sitting in in-progress with a tech debt bugbear of theirs in review. The priority on the ticket was set for a reason, it was assigned and scheduled for a reason. There's only so many hours in the day to explain why some things are prioritised. If you think that's wrong, be a professional and talk to me about it. I promise you, I want to have the conversation that you need to actually work with your team far less than you want to fix that JSON output.

withinboredom 3y ago
You’re a manager, not a dictator. Manage that shit. If it’s a low priority for you but not for someone else, you are prioritizing wrong. Don’t complain because someone doesn’t want to play politics with you. Learn your team, play to their strengths.
- maccard 3y ago
  There's a wide berth between being a manager who prioritises work and a dictator that assigns out stack ranked tickets with no end in sight. My job is to make sure the teams priorities are straight, and I can't do that if you or someone else are subterfuging my efforts to do so. Unless otherwise demonstrated, I trust that you (my team member in this case) are a smart, well intentioned person, and I ask that you assume the same of me. Going behind my back because you don't like what I'm asking you to do is "otherwise demonstrated".
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    A team member and manager don’t operate in a vacuum. It’s your job to communicate priorities and ensure the team buys in to the priorities. If they don’t and you didn’t get that buy in, then you can’t blame them for having their own priorities. You can say “these are the priorities” all day long, but so can anyone. The team, as a team, should agree on the priorities. Your job is to communicate the business priorities, the teams job is to turn them into technical priorities which may or may not match the business’s exactly. If you’re not getting the last part and communicating it back upstream, you’re not doing your job.