- Trying to convince your boss that you don't need to make a mobile app for everything
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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It doesn't help that almost all my very non techy POs absolutely refused to put even the slightest effort into their tickets. Why acceptance criteria? just make it work!
MAKE WHAT WORK? YOU WROTE "FUNCTIONALITY X BROKEN" AND LEFT THE TICKET ITSELF BLANK!!! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHICH SERVICE THIS IS ABOUT!
Software Engineer checking in.
I'm fairly certain my senior position is paid as well as it is to compensate for the insane level of human bullshit I have to endure, rather than my ability to skills at programming.
Yeah, I still remember when I "became an adult" in terms of software engineering.
Our customer was fucking pissed, because a problem had taken multiple months to solve and there was no transparency why. Our senior was late for the meeting, so I had to explain what the problem was. I started out genuinely nervous and unsure how much I should dumb it down.
Then our customer tells me "No simplifications. I want to understand the problem in full.".
The nervosity was gone in an instant, because that was my home turf. Because I ultimately had the programming skills to explain the technological side with zero insecurity.
Evidentally, I wasn't yet as confident in customer communication in general, but yeah, that was certainly a huge milestone in my ability to deal with human bullshit.
3: off by one errors.
Had to be said.
I used to fully fully 100% agree with this. I'm not a computer science guy but I am a web developer and have been for a decade.
I've finally run into a new, third problem: managers who get angry as soon as they're confused, but refuse to learn basics. My project manager is a fucking nightmare to deal with. The moment, and I mean the first sign that she's not 100% totally understanding what's being discussed, she shuts down, gets dismissive and short, and refuses to hear anything further.
Tech has a problem communicating out, but I've never had this before. I try to take it slow but not too slow (she's an adult and not stupid), I've tried illustrating just to help her visualise, I've tried screensharing, I've tried metaphor, I've tried leaving unimportant details out, I've tried leaving important details out, I've tried giving very brief summaries instead of talking things through in any detail, I've tried saying "ok, no problem, which bit isn't making sense here?", I've tried saying "don't shoot the messenger", I've tried so many different approaches and it's just...
One of our clients has a server that they upload CSVs to. We built a plugin for their site that automatically fetches those CSVs, pulls the data from them into a DB, and populates stuff on the website. Going forwards, internal restructuring at our client company means that they'll be using the server for normal file transfers between them and our design team.
Their IT team do consider security important, so they've locked down FTP access to their server by IP. Our web server is whitelisted, our office IP and home IPs are not.
I emailed their head of IT the other day to ask about whitelisting our office IP, and asked the head of our design team if he wanted me to ask for their home IPs to be whitelisted.
Manager overhears and asks why we don't already have access. I explain that they haven't whitelisted our IPs because we've never had to FTP to their server like this before. She says that we have, because of our plugin. This is true, so I agree and explain that our server has been whitelisted, but not our office/home IPs. She asks how we connect to their server now, already a little bit angry. I explain that our server FTPs to the client server, and can do that because it's been whitelisted, whereas we don't connect from our laptops.
She's now actually angry. She says "literally everywhere else I've ever worked, you just FTP from your computer to the server." so I say we haven't had to do that before with this client. I say "it's not a problem, I'll just get him to whitelist our IPs and all good!"
She turns her back to go back to her desk, saying she doesn't understand why I have to make things so complicated and that I should be making things simple.
I would say there's between five and fifteen of these interactions every single week. I'm not the most socially skilled man, I know that. I've never had this issue before, though. Like, ever. I've worked hard in previous companies to get our web development teams to talk to and understand the marketing team, and vice versa. I've organised team lunches, or nights out after work (I know it sounds like hell but I promise they weren't). In one company, I even asked my boss if I could move my desk into the marketing office for a couple of weeks in an effort to bridge the gap (it was really bad at that place). I've asked project managers to embed into the web development team before to help build that social gelling that helps with work. It's been fine, genuinely.
I'm not skilled socially. I'm annoying, I get that. But this is mad.
Anyway sorry I just wanted to vent. I don't have anyone to whine and moan about this stuff to, really. Merry Christmas all who are reading! 🎄
that's exhausting. I've dealt with similar. it sucks and it drains you
Hey man, fellow IT here. I think it's very fair that you're frustrated, that would tick me off to deal with. Unfortunately it sounds like this manager doesn't like to hear anything but "yes", "right away" and "everything worked perfectly". This is what I'd call a shitty project manager.
While there isn't a perfect solution, I find that abstracting delivery of the problems has helped with this kind of person in the past. That is to say that if they're going to get mad no matter how you convey it, don't convey it in person or directly if you can. Post in team channels, leave a memo, anything but target the PM in one on one. The social pressure to act like they understand sometimes stops the early onset dementia from being your problem to deal with. If you can't solve the problem after a good faith effort, embrace avoidance.
I hope this helps, even a little. Merry Christmas 🎄
`Time to move, (no I Didn't read your screed, but the only way you get a rise in
I’ve finally run into a new, third problem: managers who get angry as soon as they’re confused, but refuse to learn basics. My project manager is a fucking nightmare to deal with. The moment, and I mean the first sign that she’s not 100% totally understanding what’s being discussed, she shuts down, gets dismissive and short, and refuses to hear anything further.
I don't work in IT and the rest of the story doesn't carry over, but I just left a boss behind who behaved exactly like that. Some sort of insecurity, probably about being in a leadership position in the first place.
I think it's dumb; if you've been thrown into the hierarchy sideways and want to become a good leader you need to listen to people even if it means eating some humble pie.
I’m not skilled socially. I’m annoying, I get that. But this is mad.
Yep, that's me, too.
I have the same manager, he's unfortunately my advisor 🤣🤣🤣
I have the same manager. Its turned a nice comfy job into a job which I dread. I dont understand how these kinds of people get to these positions.
I've been in IT for 25 years.
The hardest, the absolute hardest part about my job is humans. Managers, CIOs, project managers, users, other IT workers...all humans.
The machines do whatever I tell them to do.
It's the humans that ruin everything. I could do the entire technical part of my job in 4 hours a week. And I'm pretty sure most of the other IT workers could do the same.
Egos, bad communication, misunderstandings, disagreements, laziness, short attention spans, power trips, did I mention egos? That's why I have to work a full work week.
Sometimes it really can just be an email though. Just saying.
Here's a (very old) joke I like to tell on tech forums sometimes; it nicely encapsulates how they communicate. Most people get it, but there's always a few who don't think it's funny:
A programer's wife asks him to do some shopping: "Please buy a loaf of bread, and if they have eggs, buy a dozen."
He comes back with 12 loaves of bread.
The wife asks: "Why on earth would you get 12 loaves of bread?"
"They had eggs."
im gonna do whats called a pro gramer move
All of the worst programmers I have worked with do that exact thing and refuse to acknowledge that they might have misunderstood what was said.
The good ones ask for clarification when something sounds weird.
As a programmer working support. I often ask users for clarification on how they expect things to work, and they often make me imagine a dog going "no take only throw" by saying 'i don't know just fix it.'
Yeah, those people are annoying too.
Early on in my career I've wasted time on projects implementing the wrong thing a few times so ever since I clarify to a fault even if it doesn't sound weird. If something can be interpreted multiple ways I always ask for clarification even if one interpretation is "more popular". I'd rather spend 5 minutes asking for clarification than waste a week of everyone's time.
Since then I don't think I've ever implemented something "wrong". There might be miscommunications in other parts of the communication chain but never with me.
Ugh.
Listen here, you little shits. I hired you because I don't need robots. I can build robots, for crying out loud.
Error: Couldn't match type 'Int' with 'Item'
I took a class in my undergrad program titled Human Engineering and Ergonomics. It was an elective in comp sci but I really think it should have been a requirement. Going through how humans communicate and perceive interfaces/communication. Every developer should have to take it.
This trickles down into UX design aswell, so many programmers just do not understand it, which makes opensource software sometimes so annoying to use
Similiar, I studied "media computer science" - it was just c.s. but with a focus multimedia and multimedia interaction.
People joke, that everything with "media" is just a light degree, but the focus was very much on how humans interact with computers ,how humans interact with humans via computers and how the average human engages their work goal via computers.
Not having your user be your sworn enemy and cosplaying as a user helps with creating less shut software in less iteration.
Not having your user be your sworn enemy
That gave me a good laugh, because every dev I've ever worked with sees users this way.
On the other hand you have people like the guy I’ve tech-assisted 30 minutes ago who refuse to read a single sentence of the information they are provided. “Click here right?”
I've worked with developers like this. Guys who literally stare at an error message, and then ignore it and start clicking around. Fucking infuriating 😂
It doesn't work
OK, what's the error?
Missing semicolon.
... and what could be the issue, possibly?
A missing semicolon?
Good guess. Now where would you put it?
There?
No, why there? The correct line is even in the compiler error.
Oh, like this?
Yes.
I had this or a similar discussion with my trainee almost twice a day after one year of training. He was incapable of understanding the most basic messages, but his father was a friend of my boss 😑
On the other other hand there are error messages like “That didn’t work [Fuck you].” No info, no further steps no nothing.
Can’t just everyone involved in these processes get fucked?
Got fucked. That didn't work [Fuck you]. No further info.
I never fuck with Unicode or time zones.
time zones
There's only a few falsehoods about time to be aware of:
https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca
Have you ever read the notes in the Iana timeline db?
Since I’d the stuff is insane
And look, with AI you can do pair programming while avoiding any of that uncomfortable "team building."
Of course they know human communication is important.
It's the thing you get in the way of for monetization opportunities.
Why can't you just use Microsoft Teams?
There's a reason why usable security, project management, HCI are a thing