Yes you do. Mobile apps bypass the end user’s ability to block data collection and spying lol

If it helps, tell your boss I hate them and will stop going somewhere rather than install another fucking app.

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.

Used to work with structural engineers. Ohhhh buddy the senior people were wild for that kinda crap.

We never teach these skills and then we threaten people with job loss for imperfection so most people are unequipped for the job and terrified of the consequences. Combine that with refusal to pay people in “lower” positions more than managers means that good people are promoted out of their area of expertise and into management which is just such a huge problem.

Society is fucking dumb.

I know nothing about IT and most of your comment went over my head, but this -

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.

is a situation that I’m intimately familiar with. That’s my mom. Me, I’m the autistic daughter that had to learn and develop her social skills on her own, in her adulthood years.

I have bad news. Despite nearly 37 years of knowing this type of person, I have not found any way that can consistently bypass their issues. Their reactions are built on how they feel, emotionally. Once that emotion is tied to an idea, they are stuck there until their feelings change.

For the dynamic between me and my mom, she’s stuck in some old school thoughts (though she would deny it if told so.) Me, I’m a progressive weirdo living alternative lifestyles, and it started young. The idea of her kids making decisions she doesn’t like makes her upset, but she doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead, when she hears an idea she doesn’t like (even if it’s something we’re excited about, like going to college), she goes silent and refuses to respond beyond little snippets of, “Stop it.” Needless to say, such a response makes us feel terrible. That’s why we’ve long since stopped sharing information with her. One of my brothers even got married without immediately telling her. Yeah, and she wonders why we don’t call more often.

The good news is, there can be conditions to have things be understood. The bad news is, your relationship with her is a factor in having it go well. You’d also need time - my mom only softens up to ideas after a period of time had passed since she first learned of it. Sometimes it was weeks, sometimes it was months, but it seems she always needs a processing period to come around to things.

An important thing to note about such emotional thinkers is that the person giving them the information holds a lot of sway in how they receive that information. I’ve got a leg-up by being my mom’s daughter, as that emotional attachment carries weight. For a boss, there’s a lot more work to do… and I do not envy your situation.

Some people would recommend attempting to befriend the boss. But if you’re like me, you know that’s not going to happen. Even if you possessed the social skills to go that route, I imagine you’d find yourself exhausted by the effort in no time. I sure would. One of the reasons I dropped the idea of professional piloting was because I realized that in order to get a good job, you need to network with lots of (often rich or arrogant) people. I just plain don’t have it in me to keep up such a charade.

Regardless, I’ve encountered the same behavior in bosses before as well. Unfortunately, I have not found any way to properly deal with them… short of going to their higher-ups or HR. Sometimes the higher-ups are as bad as the boss. Sometimes HR doesn’t care. Sometimes somebody does care, but the bad boss targets you for having reported them. I’ve seen it all, I’ve worked under their thumbs, I’ve seen how rusty the gears are all the way up the machine.

Of note, I have learned that the phrase “hostile work environment” is more likely to get HR to stand up and act. This is a situation worth documenting. You might want to start taking note of the conversations, the specific words she uses, along with times and dates of when they occurred. Showing a pattern is important. It’s also worth writing down the ways in which her behavior impacts your job performance.

As to dealing with immediate issues that need to be communicated to your boss, you might want to check your colleagues and see if any of them have better luck when talking to her. Although direct communication is usually the best option, it’s possible your boss already has unclear negative feelings about you, and that’s making it more difficult for her to listen to your words. (Sorry, bud.) Maybe having someone be the liaison between you would help her listen to the issues you’re dealing with. I’ve had to do that before, and though it sucked to need another person to do the talking, at least some problems got taken care of.

Anyway, best of luck to you and your colleagues. I don’t personally expect such a person to change, so I hope you find a way to wriggle out from under her irrational control.

Edit: Oh, and Merry Christmas to you, too!

A lot of techies have little communication skills, but even non techies can have bad and dysfunctional communication skills.

Good luck with it.

I mean, the example that you gave has me thinking that the manager is just bad. Some problems are just complex. You could not have left out the complexity here, because it is the problem. If it was as simple as they wanted it to be, then there would be no problem. But you can’t make the problem magically disappear.

A good manager would ask what the problem is. Then they would ask why that is more complex than they know it. Then they would listen to your response and not understand a single word, but still recognize that, hey, evidentally there is a reason. Their expert said so, they don’t have to understand the nitty-gritty.
The only reasons they might have to understand the nitty-gritty:

• They need to get active in their role to get the problem resolved, which they did not have to do here.
• They distrust you, which is a whole 'nother fucking can of worms.

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 🎄

That just sounds like a personnel issue. PM with pride issues that isnt technical but needs to facilitate technical discussions. Red flag.

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.

that’s exhausting. I’ve dealt with similar. it sucks and it drains you

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 have the same manager, he’s unfortunately my advisor 🤣🤣🤣

Thing with this joke that his me wrong is that isn’t how if statements are written. The else does not come before the condition in any language I’ve ever used or seen.

At the very least. It should be that he comes back with 1 or 13 loaves.

Buy a loaf

If they have eggs

Buy a dozen loaves

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.

im gonna do whats called a pro gramer move

Error: Couldn't match type 'Int' with 'Item'

“Works on my machine, closing ticket”

What’s a POs?

Why were your probation officers putting in tickets with you?

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.

I never fuck with Unicode or time zones.

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 😂

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?