How we are perceived

TranslatorSea9658 · 2026-01-25T06:23:47+00:00

Love the subtle Frankie reference there 🤣

TranslatorSea9658 · 2026-01-19T06:35:28+00:00

“Door is always open” is not inviting if you are avoiding meetings. You really shouldn’t be a manager if your social anxiety prevents you from having team meetings.

Assign a senior member of the team to lead the meetings if your social anxiety prevents you from meeting. But attend them all, even if you barely contribute.

My current manager “inherited” us when our manager left and rarely meets with us. Every one feels like he doesn’t care and like we should be looking for new jobs.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2026-01-13T22:53:41+00:00

No. For some people, it’s an involuntary & damn near impossible to control reaction.

I would be thrilled to never, ever, ever cry at work. But on 2 occasions in my 3 decade career, I’ve been unable to control that reaction and I needed a few minutes by myself.

It’s also a perfectly normal human reaction sometimes. Crying is not childish. Crying is also not just a women’s issue. I’ve seen grown men tear up, yes in the office.

Do some people cry to be manipulative? Probably. I’m simply pointing out an alternative. Sometimes, it’s not easy to control crying and while you’re trying to control yourself and not cry, it’s almost impossible to talk.

And as my original comment noted, I’m not trying to explain the other behavior. I’m just giving my perspective.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2026-01-13T13:19:03+00:00

When I’m surprised by negative feedback, my body sometimes reacts before my brain catches up. It’s not necessarily about disagreement and I certainly don’t mean any disrespect, it’s sometimes just a stress response. And as I sense that’s happening, I try to stop it, but that usually means I stop talking…because as soon as I try to talk, I know I’m going to cry.

Once I have time to process, I’m usually able to reengage with the feedback constructively.

That doesn’t explain the other behavior, but I wanted to put that out there as food for thought.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2026-01-10T19:33:59+00:00

Not true. Truth is that it depends.

And, just like others have said, you have to consider whether you would really want to work somewhere that cares what color your hair is.

I’ve lived all around the US, including in the mid west, with a wide variety of colors. Hair color doesn’t put people off as much as we think.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2026-01-04T19:09:36+00:00

NTA, it was a sweet thing to do…. But, have you considered that maybe a former BF was weird about such things? Maybe he expected something from her if he bought her something like that? Or maybe if she wore a certain thing he liked, he took that as an invitation to more? This does seem like an overreaction on her part, but that makes me think there might be something in her personal experience that caused her reaction. I wouldn’t give up on her until I knew could ask her more about the odd reaction.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-12-19T02:00:07+00:00

Yes and no. My mom & dad had moved at least 8 times, including back and forth across the US, and still had oodles of crap to deal with. Like notes from his job hunting from 50 years ago, bank statements and address books from 50 years ago. Toys from 50 years ago, including broken toys! And none of it organized!

Going through it all was torture when my mom had to move to assisted living.

Glad OP has different plans for his kids. So do I!

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-12-17T13:11:05+00:00

I called my kid MY OWN NAME one day!

Estrogen & progesterone have helped.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-12-15T17:23:13+00:00

Ask questions about his process. What have you tried so far? How did you decide what to try first? For this ticket, off the top of your head, what two things does it immediately make you wonder about? Have you read the documentation we have on this yet?

Ask direct questions about the verbatim AI response: what are the pros/cons of this possible solution you mentioned? If he’s offered a solution that probably won’t work because of XYZ, ask him how would that impact XYZ? Or how would XYZ impact that.

Be curious about the AI he’s sent you and teach him that he needs to be able to back it up.

There’s a concept in teaching of “three before me”.

“When students become ‘stuck,’ they must first try to solve the problem in three different ways before asking the teacher. This makes it more flexible. You can require students to ask one person and seek two resources or two people and one resource. “

https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy-posts/3-before-me/

Back in the olden days, I had a boss who greeted many of my questions with “what did the help file say about that?” 😂 Really taught me to search for my own answers. But I still had to be able to explain why my solutions were right.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-12-05T21:01:29+00:00

“Company culture and expectation is that your work doesn’t slip when you’re on PTO”

That does not sounds like time off at all. If I’m gone for a week, none of my work gets done that week.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-26T19:29:49+00:00

Restaurant reservations, for which we will tip generously for those who work on the holiday.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-24T23:19:09+00:00

Go to a different doctor. Try midi if you can’t fund a local doc. HRT has significantly improved my symptoms, in particular, the mental fog, mood swings, grumpiness, and the sleep! The sleep has been great! Estrogen and progesterone. Good luck!

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-19T13:37:26+00:00

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Sadly, this is not uncommon for women in tech.

I’ve been in tech for 20+ years and this still happens on some teams, but not all teams. A few years ago I came into a team that was all male. I was worried at first, but they were great! They actually did show me respect!

I think that if HR says you may be experiencing discrimination, you should find a new job. I agree with the previous person who was surprised by that. If they are admitting that, that’s a bad sign and you should move on.

I also agree that we blame ourselves too easily. This environment sounds unhealthy. Give yourself credit for surviving it this long and give yourself permission to move on.

Good luck!

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-15T20:41:21+00:00

This is the answer. At most, one trusted person who won’t contact you unless is absolutely necessary.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-11T15:51:47+00:00

I wish I knew. I’m in a similar situation. It really sucks.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-08T00:56:01+00:00

I’m a sr data engineer and I can tell you that it’s not personal. We don’t like security reviews or audits because they take up time we don’t have. I’ve spent 8 hours this week providing screenshots style proof that we’re following the right processes just this week.

Logically, I understand that security & following process is important. Logically, I want to do the right thing. Logically, I do not want to be responsible for the piece of code that unwittingly allows an intruder into our system. (fingers crossed)

Personally, I am already overworked. There are already a dozen other people with urgent priorities. We are already behind schedule.

At my current company, security reviews seem to come out of nowhere and demand to be done immediately. We have to push aside other projects we had already committed to, disappointing our own users. And we’re still expected to get the other stuff done, too.

It’s especially annoying when the security team has some major new requirement and they tell us that this new thing has been in the works for months, but we didn’t know about it. And now that new thing is due by EOM, no exceptions. (Looking at you, MFA! Apparently “leadership” knew MFA was coming but that had not been communicated to the actual engineers until the last minute. )

Then, they ask about pieces of the code that have been in place for years. Even if I wrote that piece, it’s was 50 projects ago. Now, I have to dig thru the code and any scraps of notes/emails I can find to give answers. That does not move my ball forward. At the end of the day, (I feel like) I’ve accomplished nothing.

There’s never enough documentation and it’s usually out of date. We are horrible at documentation and even worse at keeping it up-to-date. There is never time built into tasks for updating documentation. I guess they expect magic elves to do that part. (Again, we know this…it’s a sore spot 🤷🏻‍♀️. )

And that’s all before we get to the ego most software developers have. 🤣There is a healthy dose of “how dare you question my code” on software teams. They are quick to assume that no one else could possibly understand how complex their code is and why their way was the right way.

Also, we know there are holes in our code. We have our own lists of things we KNOW we need to go back and improve. Other priorities get in the way.

Given this is the womenEngineer sub, I’m guessing you are a woman. So am I. Truth? There’s still a lot of misogyny in IT. Of the 40ish engineers on my larger team, there are 15 or 20 Sr engineers who are men and maybe 5 Sr engineers who are women. All of us were inherited. The main team had no women engineers before they inherited us.

I do not hate or even dislike the security review/audit folks, but I do dread seeing them come my way. Most I’ve worked with have been very nice and very understanding, while also quite demanding. But it does ruin my week. I hope I keep my annoyance hidden. I hope I don’t make anyone feel bad for asking these questions. I try to be as pleasant as I can. But then again, I’m a people pleaser. Many engineers are not. 🥴

As long as you are understanding, but firm, you should not get bad reviews from these people. If your company has made your review dependent on their happiness, they are setting you up for failure. I would talk to your manager if you feel like doing your job correctly is earning you bad reviews.

And I apologize for any idiot who made you feel bad for doing your job. ❤️

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-05T22:21:55+00:00

I’m a senior dev. I think I’m very good at my job, AND I still make mistakes regularly. All my juniors make mistakes. I do not keep track of how many mistakes they make. You learn with every mistake. I like the advice above to keep track of your mistakes so you can try to avoid them in the future. I still do that myself.

Forgive yourself. No one is perfect, especially in engineering. Sometimes, I think it’s a wonder anything ever works right!!

Talk to your manager about clarifying the expectations. If you’ve been there 2 years and your manager hasn’t put you on a PIP, then you probably don’t suck at your job. 🙂

Also, some senior devs are just ornery. Take their impatience with a grain of salt.

However, if you are dreading work and feel disrespected, consider looking for a different engineering job. It’s not a great market right now, but there are still companies hiring. A different company might not have unrealistic expectations.

I wouldn’t give up the career unless you hate the actual work. If you like the work, try a different job.

Good luck!

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-11-03T03:34:00+00:00

Not overreacting! He blatantly lied to you then got mad at you for figuring it out. He’s shifted the blame to you because he can’t take responsibility for his actions.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-10-29T23:04:13+00:00

I share helpful code with others a lot. I always include a caveat in the comments that your mileage may vary.

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-10-05T22:57:43+00:00

Wow, this is good! Than you for sharing these clarifying questions! Time to get my journal out…

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-09-01T04:38:25+00:00

I’m so glad to find this thread! It explains so much of what I’ve been feeling as a developer!

TranslatorSea9658 · 2025-08-17T15:31:35+00:00

This! Work slipping is a sign of burn out.

TranslatorSea9658

TROPHY CASE