
Ask HN: How to handle being sidelined gracefully? - qetuo13579
Our team’s engineering and project managers are based overseas. This year I’ve been acting as the local manager as well as a developer on some projects.<p>The company has recently hired an additional project manager overseas who has already started excluding me from project meetings. Another project manager has been hired to work in the local office and is starting next week.<p>I get the feeling I’m now meant to be sitting in the corner with my headphones on.
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ptero
> The company has recently hired an additional project manager overseas who
> has already started excluding me from project meetings.

This is a big red flag. There may be innocent reasons (e.g., new PM wants to
hold meetings at times convenient to him and his team and feels guilty
inviting you to meetings at 2AM your time), but it is more often a prep for
pushing old PM out the door.

You have two options: change things at your old company, or move. In first
option, I would try to get a candid face to face time with one of the senior
leadership folks. Ask about their plans. Say that your old project does not
need two PMs and ask if he can suggest other PM opportunities. This _only_
works if you are appreciated at your current company, but if you are the
company will likely work hard to accommodate your wishes -- good PMs are rare.

~~~
wjnc
Second this. There is nothing more professional than asking earnestly about
changes, especially in more senior roles. If you still see a role for yourself
in the company, create a sketch of the new situation and bring it to the
table. If not, prepare for yourself what time you need to transition and offer
them that as a way out. If they are hesitant to bring the changes to your
table, help them with your openness to the situation. If you have to leave,
leave with the best possible memory.

~~~
senorsmile
I agree with the above. I would also start actively looking. A similar thing
happened to me, and I'm glad I was already in the process of interviewing
BEFORE I asked a lot of questions.

------
MartinCron
It is possible that you are not being intentionally sidelined. This has
happened to me, where a company hired a new PM to help us scale, but just took
over the parts of my job that I most loved, leaving me with just the drudge
work.

I was livid. “We have a new guy... who doesn’t understand the product or our
customers or our process... and I am supposed to answer to HIM now‽”

Some advice I wish I could go back 10 years and give myself:

1\. “Own what you own” which is a variation of “choose which hill to die on”.
If you feel like something is “yours” you will resent people coming in and
fucking it up. If you conceptualize something as “theirs” you can feel good
doing your best to make it better. Being a humble servant can feel bad, but it
feels better than being fired for having angry outbursts (trust me on this
one).

2\. Understand your feelings well enough to talk about them. That might
involve talk therapy. Modern CBT is really great.

3\. Remember that anything you love can break your heart. And that is OK.
Better than not loving what you do. Maybe it is time for the relationship to
end? Maybe you can salvage it?

4\. Think and talk in terms of both work/life balance and work-life balance.
If having a diverse set of things to do at work is important to you (it is to
me, but not everyone) tell the company this. Some people love to be heads down
coders in one layer. Other people need to work across more layers. Some people
like to do PM or architecture work in addition to coding. Your managers won’t
know what you need if you don’t tell them, and you can’t tell them if you
don’t understand it yourself. (See #2).

Good luck! You are not in this alone!

~~~
deanmoriarty
I found your story intriguing, as I struggled with something similar, and very
much know what that feeling you described is.

I would love to know, in hindsight: why did the company decide to replace you
on something that you loved doing? Was this a case of under performance and
the new person effectively performed much better than you, or something else?

I have been victim of being replaced on something that I loved doing and I was
very passionate about (a couple times over my career), and to this day (years
later) I still think I was hands down much better than the person I was
replaced with at that task, under every aspect: pure delivery performance,
communication, sticking to improvements that provided value, maniacal customer
support when bugs arose. In other words, I deeply and truly cared, too much
actually and fell under the trap you described as “own what you own” (it was a
feature I actually patented while working under the company). For the other
person, that piece was just “meh, another thing I have to work on and
maintain”, which ended up being my attitude when I was moved to something
else.

I’ve tried repeatedly to assess the situation from an objective point of view
to see if my line of thinking missed some aspects which might have caused my
removal, but I just couldn’t find any bias in my reasoning if not of clueless
upper management.

~~~
MartinCron
I don’t think in my case that it was necessarily about _me_ and my
performance. Just like I don’t think that the OP’s story is necessarily about
him and his performance. When teams grow, they change. There is an all-too-
often unspoken assumption that roles will get more and more specialized as the
team expands. You can go from being a dev/pm/architect/analyst to being “just
a dev” or “just an architect” so slowly that you don’t even notice the de-
facto demotion until it is too late.

A metaphor I use with management to prevent this from happening again is “I
eat my broccoli so I get to eat my ice cream. Hiring someone to eat ice cream
for me so I can focus on just broccoli might make intuitive sense to you, but
will have a detrimental effect on me”

~~~
goldcd
That's a metaphor that I know is now stuck permanently. My only addition would
be that this is _your_ broccoli and ice-cream. I'm eternally mystified as to
what some of my colleagues like. Maybe the greatest benefit of agile I found
is I can just shove my needs/rankings into it - and can then just let people
pull out whatever they fancy from it. Running the other way there seemed to be
surprise when a dev found some major issue or came up with some great idea and
I was more than happy for them to add it themselves - and I'd happily rank up
it at the cost of one of my planned features. I get the distinct impression
that previous occupiers of my role were less flexible. What I've done (I hope)
is just to be as open as possible about what "I like" and be open, consistent
and say the same thing to anybody who asks.

~~~
Itaxpica
One of my old managers used to say that time and time again he would fret
about which of his people would wind up stuck having to work on the shitty,
boring parts of a project, only to find that someone else on the team was
really excited to work on what he had thought were the shitty, boring parts;
and on the flip side they would have seen as shitty and boring the stuff he
thought was most interesting. The lesson for him was that as tempting as it
can be as a manager to try to puppeteer everything, you can often get better
results by just stepping back and letting a team figure out how they want to
divide the work.

~~~
MartinCron
As a dev manager (small team) I am trying to never “assign” work. I just
prioritize and describe, and let fellow coders pull the items that are most
appealing to them.

Sometimes it means that I wind up doing work I would rather delegate if I were
being selfish, but for the most part, everyone benefits.

------
thiago_fm
If you enjoyed being a PM, ask that you want to become one in your company, if
you can't, just look for a new job in that role.

There are many companies hiring PMs and to be honest, it is hard to find good
ones, passionate about their job and that were previously coders or know well
about tech, as not many developers enjoy that route(they would rather become
tech leads or something else).

The grass is greener on your side as you might think.

~~~
mud_dauber
Seconded. The grass is indeed greener than you think.

------
melonbar
One of my buddies on the dev team I am on has been going through a very
similar situation. He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up
with most of the drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs
and SPAs he is stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins.
He has on occasion asked me how I managed to get all the fun stuff despite
being so new. My advice to him was as follows:

1) Communication is key, a lot of times management don't realize you hold
resentment and a simple conversation could really clear things up. Make your
wants known, don't expect them to just be presented to you.

2) Take the time to shine. Push yourself to impress those in charge.
Demonstrating value is always a good way to get more responsibility.

3) Try not to take it personally but instead ask yourself are some valid
reasons why they have made such a decision. Also try and ask yourself what you
could do to help the new hire. It isn't their fault and would probably love
the assistance.

In the case of my friend, although he is a fantastic worker, he struggles at
times to vocalize his contempt. Instead he will brood. Do not do this. People
can't read minds and at the end of the day it is managements job to do what
they think is best for the company as a whole. Good luck, hope all ends up
alright!

~~~
gaius
_He has worked there much longer than myself yet he ends up with most of the
drudge work. Instead of working on cool full-stack JS PWAs and SPAs he is
stuck putting content on WordPress sites and fixing WP plugins_

Your friend’s mistake is that he is _too_ professional, doing the work that
needs doing and pays everyone else’s salaries, while other more selfish people
prioritise getting some more buzzwords on their CV. I have fallen victim to
this mentality myself. It may be too late if he has been typecast, he’ll need
to reboot by going somewhere else. But it’s a sad state of affairs that being
conscientious is a career killer.

~~~
goldcd
I'd worry working anywhere where being "conscientious" isn't appreciated. From
another thread I've got it stuck in my head that there is "broccoli" and "ice
cream" work - and yes, if everybody concludes that WP work is "broccoli",
somebody needs to eat it, and for now it's the person who can eat it the
fastest is going to get landed with it.. ..then ask them what their ice cream
is and make sure they get some. And maybe most importantly, be up-front that
it's broccoli and that nobody likes it - but it's important.

~~~
gaius
All managers see is that the work is getting done and no one is rocking the
boat, they have zero incentive to look under the covers and see what’s really
happening, then one day their unknown crucial engineer walks and they wonder
why none of the self-promoting rockstars can do the bread-and-butter work, and
what exactly those guys have been doing all this time.

------
switch007
Spend the extra free time job hunting to find a place where you’ll be valued.

------
jstanier
Have you had a conversation with your manager about this? If so, how did it
go?

~~~
qetuo13579
The engineering manager has been on leave while all this has been happening.
I'll be bringing up my concerns when he's back next week. I'm sure he'll be
quite understanding. He did reply to one email to point out that there isn't a
lot he can do because the new PM reports directly to the CEO, not to him.

Basically the engineers will have multiple bosses. The engineering manager for
technical direction and the project managers for task priorities and day to
day management.

I think there is still a role for me to play as a senior engineer to mentor
and assist the other engineers on their projects but it's harder for me to do
this when I'm out of the loop.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
> Basically the engineers will have multiple bosses.

That's a huge red flag. Unless you have hope of that getting fixed, I'd start
looking around.

------
rdiddly
Well, how did you end up "acting as the local manager?" Were you formally
assigned to a named job role? Or were you a dev who stepped up to take on
management duties? It sounds (mainly because of the word "acting" with all its
connotations of being temporary and ad-hoc) like the latter. (Already I'm
doing guesswork and reading tea leaves, just like you seem to be in your post.
Can anybody talk to each other over there, or no?)

Anyway, maybe in the eyes of management you were handling two jobs, which
maybe they appreciated, but as soon as they were able to rectify this, they
helped you out by hiring someone to do the managing so you wouldn't have to.
If they had the wrong idea about you (i.e. you prefer managing and now want to
keep doing that) then you probably need to express your interest in management
and advocate for why/how the company would benefit by your doing it.

But yeah in general people have the right to a clear job description that
everyone agrees on, and to be able to review various duties as they apply to
that, and accept or reject them, and to modify the job description if and when
applicable.

~~~
qetuo13579
Originally both the engineering manager and project manager were based in our
office. The engineering manager moved to the overseas office a few years ago.
This year the project manager moved to the same overseas office. I was asked
to step up and supervise the other engineers.

I'm not a proper PM, just the senior dev who keeps an eye on the others to
make sure they aren't falling down any rabbit holes.

I would much rather be a developer than a manager but I guess I thought I
could still be involved in all projects from a technical standpoint.

~~~
rdiddly
Seems like a sound idea and I don't see any obvious reason why you couldn't do
that. Especially if the PMs have a less technical background, as they often
do. What you're talking about is sort of like a technical advisory or senior
dev role and seems like a good thing for a company to have.

Politically it would probably be good to get each PM's buy-in and agreement
about it, just from a standpoint of protecting their precious egos and
avoiding a pissing match. Even though they seem to be the ones stepping on
_your_ toes a bit.

------
rvn1045
How does this work from the other side? are there people discussing they
should collectively exclude someone? what are the conversations that are
taking place. I have never been on the other side, so would like to see a
perspective from there.

~~~
maxxxxx
It's often a matter of convenience. Dealing with overseas people is hard
especially if there is a time difference. They probably don't explicitly
decide to exclude someone but instead it's too much work to include the
person.

~~~
qetuo13579
I turned up one morning to find two of my coworkers in a project meeting
conference call with the PM. Later in my weekly "all projects" call with the
PM I asked why I wasn't invited. She told me it wasn't my project. She also
doesn't think it's necessary for me to continue attending the weekly "all
projects" meetings where we discuss progress and priorities on all the
engineering projects company wide (across 3 sites).

~~~
maxxxxx
I guess you really are being excluded!

------
AnimalMuppet
Do you _want_ to continue being a manager? Do you want to continue to be a
developer? Both? Are you unhappy because you feel rejected or unappreciated?
Or do you really miss the work?

They could assume that you want to be a developer and not a manager. They may
be intentionally sidelining you, _and think that they 're doing you a favor_.
The only way you can fix that is with communication.

Or, they may currently need you as a developer more than they need you as a
manager. If it's temporary, you can choose to ride it out, making it clear to
them that you want back into management when possible.

TL;DR: You have to talk to them to find out what they're thinking, and why
they're doing what they're doing. Don't guess. Ask.

------
sys_64738
Is that you, Milton?

