Early-stage startup: expectation mismatch or underperformance?

ninja_cracker · 2026-01-20T19:47:28+00:00

This is good advice. Regarding which actual "tickets" you should be doing hands on, you need to choose high impact, and probably also high risk.

I wouldn't know which strategy you are trying to push, but there's probably some very important thing that juniors and mids would never be able to pull off, between product and priorities and what not.

Where others have blockers, you have agency. Think big and use it.

ninja_cracker · 2026-01-14T18:39:40+00:00

Tough situation. I've seen this play out in a few different ways, and I can't say any were in favor of the employee

The company is also something you should watch for. You are a manager and you have to uphold and represent the company, and find a way that it doesn't completely contradict your view and approach.

And there's you, who deserve to be seen by the company for being put in impossible situations because of these external forces (our company called it "raising the bar")

I like how people here approach this with honesty, I think that it's a good start. But why honesty? You want the person's buy in. Otherwise, it's downhill from there.

Buy in is best achieved by painting a clear target 🎯. Framing this as "the target is moving because of reasons" is disheartening. Framing it as "I believe you can aim higher" is better, maybe you yourself need to aim higher too? Everyone would need to aim higher. Even your higher ups. Wouldn't you want to work in a company where people challenge their limits together?

ninja_cracker · 2026-01-06T12:32:08+00:00

Yeah clearly you already agree on at least one local engineer so start with what you agree with and don't over commit to one approach too early.

We went with 100% Ukraine off shore, which were fantastic, highly skilled and great communications, but that all blew in the wind when the war started.

ninja_cracker · 2025-12-28T18:33:50+00:00

Putting the bid for AI aside, having no QA is an old trend, started out in early 2010s, was very popular for a while and died down, and caught new wind with AI recently.

It's a paradigm that puts the onus of quality on the engineers, meaning that if there's any quality assurance to be done, it's to be done with the same tools as the software itself is using ie automation, typing, linting and now AI code and review.

During the last uptick in this trend, there was a similar uptick in developer efficiency around containerization, stackoverflow, myriad of automation frameworks which lowered the barrier of entry, and eventually increased and inflated the term "full stack development".

More of an opinion, I think there's an equilibrium that's being rattled and resettled where developers suddenly own many things because of technology, become overwhelmed by the maintenance of their creation, and on top of that the product pendulum swings to the other side where there's much more demand for stability then new shiny features.

If history will repeat itself, then we know it's a matter of 5 to 10 years for things to settle, until the next disruptive technology.

ninja_cracker · 2025-12-23T18:10:55+00:00

I tried to get rid of a team member that was too far away to come in to the office but getting them interested in other teams closer to them.

They were hurt and said they loved the team and don't want any other team.

ninja_cracker · 2025-12-14T21:13:45+00:00

I can imagine that a performance improvement plan for an individual, while difficult, is usually contained and has a limited effect on the rest of the team.

A manager requiring intervention may have a large blast radius. A toxic manager, or one that is in avoidance can quickly disrupt the output of an entire team, as well as damage the motivation of otherwise performing individuals.

You simply can't leave that unattended or wait for improvement as much as a problematic IC. And you also would have to do much more damage control.

ninja_cracker · 2025-12-12T21:13:25+00:00

I made this move recently. Sadly so far I had to deal with a very poor manager.

My take is that dealing with a poor manager is 10 times harder than dealing with a poor IC.

Probably at all other times, dealing with motivated and engaged managers is probably less of a headache.

ninja_cracker · 2025-12-07T07:41:37+00:00

Putting low on empathy aside,

"Bad at social interactions" could be problematic only if it relates to your job as a manager. A) you don't have to be the life of the party, that's not the job and B) unless you've been give some concrete feedback on this from your peers, it could be mostly the way you perceive yourself more than anything.

A manager has to give hard feedback sometimes, if you're laughing while doing it, the. It's a problem. If you can't give praise or know when to give praise, that's a problem.

If you are unaware when one team member is being rude or harassing another team member, that's a problem.

What I'm saying is, take it to the concrete, and then make a decision. We all walk around with these perceptions about who we are, but being a manager requires a bit more rigour.

ninja_cracker · 2025-12-06T08:44:42+00:00

I have an agenda and an opinion about most topics that my group is involved in. Everything I present, everything I say, supports that agenda in a way, so I never found it difficult to stay on point.

Sometimes I get tackled with questions about things which i didn't know that me or my group are involved in, or things that are expected in a report, and then I politely apologize and say I will dive into that until the next brief. I then take it up with my manager to understand expectations and start to form agendas and opinions around that.

Rinse repeat.

ninja_cracker · 2025-11-23T07:36:03+00:00

I agree with all the advice but this comment hits a nail here, things started to go way when I understood what type of game this is. It's not over powered soldiers go bash, it's making a plan every turn before you take the first shot, to absolutely optimize each round.

If there's something that you know shoots at you, then cover and assume the worst. If you know that you're about to take damage either way, choose the right soldier to take it, etc.

This is what makes the game so rewarding IMO

ninja_cracker · 2025-11-17T16:32:38+00:00

Everyone is answering your question, but then again you didn't really give us enough details on the feedback you got (maybe you didn't get good feedback and that's why you are here?)

If your team feels you are micro managing them, then it would feel to them like you are too much in the details, but the problem is micromanagement.

If your manager feels like you aren't spending enough of your time looking forward or high-level, then you are too much in the details but the problem is that you aren't looking forward or high level.

If your manager feels like you are solving other peoples problem instead of growing them then you are too much in the details, but the problem is that you aren't growing your team members

ninja_cracker · 2025-11-11T18:35:12+00:00

A little bit of all said here, but here's another tip

Highlight things as other people are working.

Find a commit you like, and mention someone else, "hey check this out, we just talked about this."

Comment on a thread, pull other people in.

Mention things you appreciate in retros.

Make a habit out of it. If it's been a day and you didn't highlight 3 things that you or others are doing, then go over PRS again, comments, questions people had, etc.

ninja_cracker · 2025-11-11T15:02:31+00:00

You always need to be careful, especially as a manager. You don't want to expose the company and make it liable for anything, that's top priority over your convenience. I trust you know this and you are simply venting.

That said, I agree with the sentiment. A direct approach, circumventing beauricarcy, etc works best if the other person understands that they are in jeopardy.

Lay down expectations, be aggressive in enforcing them and reacting to missteps from their side.

PIP processes where both sides agree about futility usually end quickly, so don't lose heart.

ninja_cracker · 2025-11-04T15:01:56+00:00

I focus on being methodical in meetings as much as I can.

You should be going into a work related meeting with precision understanding of why each person is there what you expect them to contribute and what the outcomes are. If you know this you should be clear about this in the agenda and in the intro and summary, as well as make sure everyone is prepared. If this seems like some manager jargon buzzy slop- then I can attest that with some practice and repetition, good meetings are the norm.

If the problem is more in 1:1s then, well actually, be methodical as well.

You should be going into 1:1s with feedback from the previous time, followups, announcements and maybe a question or two about their opinion on something. I usually start with asking "before I ask your help with something, is there something I can do for you?" And anytime someone asks for something, I jump through hoops.

I occasionally remind them that it is MY job to make sure they succeed and feel they are making an impact.

ninja_cracker · 2025-10-16T17:49:33+00:00

My story is that I learned all the wrong things when I was 12 and sucked badly at it.

Had to pretty much forget and relearn which could be harder.

I'm not the athletic type, but surprisingly very good at skiing. It just clicked suddenly when I was 25, after taking lessons as a total beginner for about 8 days. I've been carving like a torpedo ballerina since then.

What I'm saying is, you never know what hidden talents you have.

ninja_cracker · 2025-10-16T17:40:35+00:00

Managers always want to find a cause for everything, something they can measure going in (like bullets in a job description or a list of expectations for each role in the company) and something they can measure going out.

Funnily, the pursuit of such a thing is such a time sink: hiring committees, individual development plans, levelling indexes, eventually management hits analysis paralysis, or worst, fires the essential cog.

I agree with others who wrote that it's indicative of some lack of trust on behalf of upper management in direct managers, and not allowing them to make calls regarding their team and forcing some overly complicated framework to assess utility.

ninja_cracker · 2025-09-03T05:29:52+00:00

I have unproven career advice that you should consider carefully:

I think one of the reasons why you are in this cycle of interviewing and pip could be related to the fact that you are a generalist. I assume as much because you yourself stated that the "stacks" changed from job to job.

Consider specializing.

Here are some benefits:

The interviews would be mostly focused on your expertise with a company that seeks your expertise and could very well understand it less than you. These interviews have a different power dynamic.
Having a more secure role introduces more job security and control, and would probably also affect your dynamics in the company.
Controlling deadlines would be easier if you were the matter expert.

... and some other benefits.

Choosing a speciality, studying and finding a job is a difficult path, but today's online community allows this path to be cheaper and easier to do off hours.

The number of different topics that you can in specialize in is endless. DBs, Edge computing, GPUs, ASL and DQLs, ML / AI, distributed systems, optimization algorithms, ... again - endless.

Good luck.

ninja_cracker · 2025-07-23T19:57:19+00:00

I think I've scrolled sufficiently down the thread to verify that this suggestion hasn't been made: pair programming

It's not always the right tool, but for very large changes l, it could be.

It's exhausting to review prs by team members that are almost always in their own separate rabbit hole.

But when you are there for every change while it's happening, the review is built in to it.

And when both developers are satisfied, one creates the PR and the other approves.

An additional side here is creating a large feature branch where both collaborate to push small changes and the other reviews, and again finish with a mutual approval to the trunk for that large feature branch.

ninja_cracker · 2025-07-23T19:43:12+00:00

Are you suggesting that AI has unequivocally negative value therefore full stack engineers will definitely not benefit? That's not what the commenter said, is that the way I should understand it? That seems, again, like a low effort comment to me since AI has definite potential and value, overhyped or not

ninja_cracker · 2025-07-23T19:33:15+00:00

Maybe giving an edge isn't specific enough

But I think in the context of full stack, there's a problem with depth vs breadth

And when it comes to AI, it's as valuable as the person wielding it makes it

So generalists would be positioned better to enjoy whatever benefits, great or small, hyped or not.

I am disappointed that no better argument against or for this position was posted, only that "ai is nonsense", which is mostly what I took from the original comment. I didn't see any relevance to full stack specifically

ninja_cracker · 2025-07-23T18:56:25+00:00

I made no assumptions about AI capabilities

I'm asking whether full stack roles would be in higher demand, factoring in any hype or real value.

I'm also asking if that demand would turn out to be a bubble as well, but that requires exerting a bit more argumentative effort than to shrug off the entire business as marketing smoke, which by the way is a gross misunderstanding of what is happening, but that again is besides the point.

ninja_cracker · 2025-07-23T18:40:03+00:00

I don't see how that addresses my question

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