Microblog Memes

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! 🎄