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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 tea

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.

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.