There’s a ton of good advice but I’d like to add my two cents.
Your boss also has a boss that (s)he is also trying to make happy to keep his job.
Regarding design decisions, timelines and everything else, look at that from the business’ perspective. Are they about to miss a launch (and $$) because of a dateline pushed back?
Are they getting heat from customers (and risk of loosing $$) because some feature is faulty? (read, bad code, slow, buggy, etc)
At the end of the day the bottom line is money, so when you are able to optimize for that, you are usually held in high regard (good use of business money).
This can be a little counterintuitive for us engineers, specially if we haven’t been that long in the industry, because we are trained for beautiful code, elegant solutions, etc. instead of a company that is trying to meet next quarter’s goals.
I’ve received raised based on “hacks” that felt not dignified enough to be worth my time (read, junior with big ego wanting to solve hard problems), but that little toy app saved multiple members of the team about 2 hours daily!
Hope this makes sense, and don’t take criticism too personal, it can really affect you.
Try instead to put yourself in the shoes of your boss/manager and figure out what’s important for (s)he, what numbers is (s)he monitoring, who might be screaming (hopefully figuratively) at (s)he and optimize for that!
Your boss also has a boss that (s)he is also trying to make happy to keep his job.
Regarding design decisions, timelines and everything else, look at that from the business’ perspective. Are they about to miss a launch (and $$) because of a dateline pushed back?
Are they getting heat from customers (and risk of loosing $$) because some feature is faulty? (read, bad code, slow, buggy, etc)
At the end of the day the bottom line is money, so when you are able to optimize for that, you are usually held in high regard (good use of business money).
This can be a little counterintuitive for us engineers, specially if we haven’t been that long in the industry, because we are trained for beautiful code, elegant solutions, etc. instead of a company that is trying to meet next quarter’s goals.
I’ve received raised based on “hacks” that felt not dignified enough to be worth my time (read, junior with big ego wanting to solve hard problems), but that little toy app saved multiple members of the team about 2 hours daily!
Hope this makes sense, and don’t take criticism too personal, it can really affect you.
Try instead to put yourself in the shoes of your boss/manager and figure out what’s important for (s)he, what numbers is (s)he monitoring, who might be screaming (hopefully figuratively) at (s)he and optimize for that!
Good luck!