I hate being micromanaged. It kills my productivity.

Tim. His name is Tim.

He can only work if being micromanaged, bangs on his desk when frustrated or curses when confused (ALL day), and is the source of all my frustration and rants.

I highly dislike Tim.

I get really defiant when i repeatedly get micromanaged with bullshit instructions, such as asking me to have my just started c++ library poc which also involves a lot of learning and will earliest be usable in a few months, "ready for our customer devs" in 2 weeks from now.

just no, you fucking retard.

also, the lib alone wouldn't make any sense, since the code parts working with it don't yet exist at all.
and then getting instructed to ask customers if they can provide you with c++ code that solves the task for them in their own software, which of course will somehow magically fit in my existing codebase. even if it existed (which it fortunately doesn't because they do everything in C#), i don't think i'm going to be faster trying to somehow solder in their code into my library, of which i'm still brainstorming about the general architecture.

if you have so fucking unrealistic expectations, maybe stop sniffing glue all day and don't make this my fucking problem.

I'm managed by idiots who don't fully realize the nightmare they're creating.

They're making small operational changes, but hundreds of them with zero evidence to back their claims up.

When I bring up how it actually works, and how operations actually work I'm told I don't use the tools as much as management does and that my feedback is limited to how I use the tool.

So now I'm just gambling that they won't fuck up too bad before I get that sweet sweet sellout money and just letting them fuck everything up they want without any warnings from me.

I'm quickly learning that the phrase of the year is, "Fuck em".

Weekly status reports. BITCH, I'M TOO BUSY WORKING TO TELL YOU WHAT I DID THIS WEEK.

Mine are also almost always the same:
"fixed broken thing"
"worked on reports for broken thing"
"helped new teammates fix broken thing"
ISSUES REQUIRING ATTENTION:
"my connection is still shit, like i warned would happen before I moved"
"need workstation already connected to network to reduce connection problems"

These don't help the people who need to be micromanaged, and they just piss off those of us who don't.

Since we’re adding new backronyms every day, I propose SIMPLE.

S - Spaghetti: write tapestry of code like a chef.

I - Interlinked: if the project has modules, they should all depend on each other (we are strongest when we can depend on one another).

M - Micromanaged: if the product owner doesn’t expect reports in the daily stand-up, do they even care?

P - Perplex: diversity for the codebase.

L - Lazy: Bill Gates once said “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it”, for example, without testing, collaborating with team members, or ensuring the feature works with anything else in the codebase.

E - Opinionated: because I believe E should stand for opinionated and everyone else will have to work around this with adapters. But E should mean Opinionated because Uncle Bab said so.

Funny how I can go all day not being able to think of anyone that bad, but then when I remember THAT ONE GUY from a group project in college, I can't stop ranting.

highlights:
- He micromanaged our group without adding any value on his end
- Scheduled 2 hour meetings on Friday evenings to show us his work so we could "learn and take notes"
- when the group finally reached out and asked if we could work differently, he completely shut down. like stopped replying and working completely.
- last night we were putting together our presentation, he bailed because he had an 8-HOUR date with someone he just met....nevermind that we had our calendar set a month prior
- prior to that date, he submitted code to our final release that was riddled with bugs, so I stayed up all night debugging and rewriting his parts

</rant>

Joined a new startup as a remote dev, feeling a bit micromanaged. So this week I joined an established startup as a senior mobile dev where I work remotely.

Previous two devs got fired and two new guys got hired (me as a senior dev and another senior dev as a teamlead, also third senior dev will join next week).

Situation is that codebase is really crappy (they invested 4 years developing the android app which hasn't even been released yet). It seems that previous devs were piggybacking on old architecture and didn't bother to update anything, looking at their GIT output I could tell that they were working at 20-30% capacity and just accepting each other MR's usually with no comments meaning no actual code reviews. So codebase already is outdated and has lots of technical debt. Anyways, I like the challenges so a crappy codebase is not really a problem.

Problem is that management seems to be shitting bricks now and because they got burned by devs who treated this as a freelance gig (Im talking taking 8-10 weeks pto in a given year, lots of questionable sick leaves and skipping half of the meetings) now after management fired them it seems that they are changing their strategy into micro managament and want to roll this app out into production in the next 3 months or so lol. I started seeing redflags, for example:

1. Saw VP's slack announcement where he is urging devs to push code everyday. I'm a senior dev and I push code only when I'm ready and I have at least a proof of concept that's working. Not a big fan of pushing draft work daily that is in in progress and have to deal with nitpicky comments on stuff that is not ready yet. This was never a problem in 4-5 other jobs I worked in over the years.

2. Senior dev who's assigned as the teamlead on my team has been working for 1 month and I can already see that he hates the codebase, doesn't plan on coding too much himself and seems like he plans on just sitting in meetings and micromanaging me and other dev who will join soon. For example everyday he is asking me on how I am doing and I have to report this to him + in a separate daily meeting with him and product. Feels weird.

3. Same senior dev/teamlead had a child born yesterday. While his wife was in hospital the guy rushed home to join all work meetings and to work on the project. Even today he seems to be working. That screams to me like a major redflag, how will he be able to balance his teamlead position and his family life? Why management didn't tell him to just take a few days off? He told me himself he is a senior dev who helped other devs out, but never was in an actual lead position. I'm starting to doubt if he will be able to handle this properly and set proper boundaries so that management wouldn't impact mental health.

Right now this is only my 1st week. They didn't even have a proper backend documentation. Not a problem. I installed their iOS app which is released and intercepted the traffic so I know how backend works so I can implement it in android app now.

My point is that I'm not a child who needs hand holding. I already took on 2 tickets and gonna push an MR with fixes. This is my first week guys. In more corporate companies people sit 2 months just reading documentation and are not expected to be useful for first few months. All I want is for management to fuckoff and let me do my thing. I already join daily standup, respond to my teamlead daily and I ping people if I need something. I take on responsibility and I deliver.

How to handle this situation? I think maybe I came off as too humble in the interview or something, but basically I feel like I'm being treated like a junior or something. I think I need to deliver a few times and establish some firm boundaries here.

In all workplaces where I worked I was trusted and given freedom. I feel like if they continue treating me like a junior/mid workhorse who needs to be micromanaged I will just start interviewing for other places soon.

Today spent 20min in a senior android dev interview debating an ex backender CTO about the importance of final classes where he tried to pull out some sort of perfect answer from me about it. Ironically this is the same CTO who failed managing a previous android contractor who was supposed to rewrite old app and ended up with an even shittier new app in 6 months of time. Now they are insecure and are looking for a new contractor who will be micromanaged this time.

But hey I guess he knows the importance of final classes. Some CTO's need a reality check and at least some business training, because your perfectly written app is useless if it doesnt fulfill business needs.

Their app is based on heresdk and built around navigation. The biggest bottleneck is that it works shitty on low end devices so their competition solved this problem by using a whitelabel rooted tables with a custom ROM wher u have full control over hardware, permissions and battery management. However this startup thinks they can build a perfect navigation app which will work perfectly on all devices while at the same time while also relying on a poorly optimized navigation sdk. Poor initial strategy I'd say and they didnt learn from previous 2 failures, now they are searching for the next savior android contractor who will have to solely implement evrything.

Hey guys. I am in a situation where I need to decide wether to take on a new project or not. And if not, how to turn down that client so that I would not burn any bridges. So I need your opinions on this matter in order to make the final decision.

To make things clear heres some background info. 10 months ago I quitted my fulltime position in another EU country and went back to my own home country. 10 months forward till today and I have my own ltd company which currently has 5 projects. Its doing pretty well money wise. All projects combined, I already earn more then I ever did and I need to work max 10 hours a week since all projects are remote projects so I dont waste time on useless meetings and etc. However I dont feel fulfilled or challenged anymore because surprise surprise doing well paid projects doesnt guarante your sense of fulfillment.

So I noticed that I have lots of spare time which I spend diving into rabbitholes with hobby projects. I decided that its time to scale my company and take on more projects and maybe even hire more people.

So I started searching for other projects I could work on (prefferibly remote projects or flexible ones where I could come in 2-3 days a week in office and work remotely rest of the week). Reason being that I am already out of sync with fulltime position lifestyle and I am totally result oriented, not punch in my hours and go home oriented.

For exampleIf i get my weekly tasks I prefer to do them in 1-2 days (even if it requires doing double shifts which rarely but happens) but then I want to have rest of the week off. Thats how my brain works and thats how Im wired. I cant stand fulltime positions especially in enterprise bigger companies where I come in and do maybe 2 hours of actual work everyday because of all useless meetings and blockers from backend/etc. Its soul crushing to me.

So I posted linkedin ads and started searching for new clients/projects. One month ago I went to an interview for an android project in a startup.

The project looked interesting enough. Main task was to rewrite their android app from java to kotlin. Apparently their current current app was built by a backend developer who wants to focus solely on backend.

So during the interview they showed me their app which was quite simple frontend wise but not so simple backend wise from what I was able to figure out.

Their project lead (also a backed guy) asked me my estimation of price and completion of task. I told them maybe 2-3 months to do everything properly.

Project lead was basically shocked because all other candidates told him they can rewrite the app from java to kotlin in 2-3 weeks. I told him that everything is possible but his app quality will suffer and for a better estimation he would we would need to sign an NDA so I could evaluate the costs. So we ended the interview.

After that we kept in touch for one month (it took them one month to google a generic NDA and sign it digitally with me).

So heres the redflags I noticed:

1. They dont respect my time. Wasted 1 month of my time and after signing NDA gave me 2days to estimate their project and go to a meeting and give them detailed info about what I can offer. I thats not a brain rape then I dont know what it is

2. They are changing initial conditions we talked about. We agreed on rewriting the codebase and be done with it. Now they prefer a fulltime worker who would be responsible for android app as his own product. So basically project lead was not able to find a fulltime dev so now hes trying to convert me (a company owner) to his fulltime worker.

3. Lack of respect. During the interview he started speaking in his own native language to me with some expression (he seemed pissed off at that moment when he switched languages).

4. Bad culture fit. As I said Im used to relaxed clients and projects where I dont need to be chained to a desk a monitored and be micromanaged. I mean lets sign a contract give me access to your codebase and tell me what to do, I will produce results and lets be done with it.

5. Project lead is a backend guy who doesnt understand how complicated android apps can be. No architecture and no unit tests are in his frontend app. He doesnt care about writing proper app since he ships it in his own device so he doesnt need to worry about supporting custom devices or different api levels of android and etc. But not having any architecture? Cmon.

So basically I am confused. Project lead needs a fulltime dev but hes in contact with me in hopes that I would sign a fulltime contract. But how I can work fulltime if all what I can see are redflags?

Basicaly I thinkthis was a misundersanding. Im searching for fulltime remote projects and hes offering fulltime inhouse projects. Project lead never outsourced so hes confused as well.

As you can see decision is already basically made to turn him down, I just need to know how to tell him to fck off in the most polite manner and thats it.

New dilemma. Now that I have some interviews lining up, I’m having trouble trying to figure out which direction I want to go. One is a company offering unlimited PTO (whatever that actually means), remote only, non-micromanaged work. If I want a nap in the middle of the day, cool. Just gotta make progress.

Another is in an industry that I really want to get into.

A third is with a major entertainment company that is contract to hire with a high probability of hire. Amazing perks and benefits from what my friends that work there tell me.

And it’s looking like maybe all three making an offer simultaneously is a possibility.

So I might need to choose between a comfortable situation, my ideal industry, and a big name on my resume that includes great benefits.

I should be happy but this is stressing me out!

I finally found out what is agile: You get assigned to a ptoject with fixed estimations of the tasks, but you have 30 minutes daylies in which you get micromanaged to do more work. The added AI blockchain value is that these dailies count as dev time for you, while for others it counts as TL, PL, PM, PC, Front office time.

And now for final deep learning, inovative, DevOps, java, javascript cutting edge, bleeding edge business aspect.... THIS IS A FUCKING SOLO PRoJECT!!!