Non Technical Senior Management is a Joke
Lately I have been assigned a feature to work upon. After completing it, I presented that one to the customer, somehow the customer was impressed with it and they told me that they are gonna try something with it and didn't merge my pull request and the management was aware of that as the customer told them.
Fast forward to today after 300 odd commits later, my manager is telling me we need to integrate that feature and hand over to qa to test. I clearly explained to him the challenges stating that rebasing/merging will cause issues like resolving lots and lots of conflicts, but he is adamant enough.
Turns out that the onsite and offsite management are in a communication void, and this guy has not been able to explain to them what are the challenges. And the communication blackout is because of this guy.
Turns out the entire management is chasing after numbers and not even tracking of issues and blockers we are facing. And yes in this project jira stories and requirement documents are cleaner than a white paper. 🤣😂
I've worked in software engineering roles all of my professional life. But in this case, I'll tell you something that you might not understand yet in your technical career.
Management is dealing with a different set of problems - regarding budget, revenue, profit & loss, hiring & firing, compliance with various regulations and government laws, people management, and a host of other challenges related to the business environment.
Management doesn't have the time or bandwidth to understand the intricacies of the technical problems. Nor is it their job role to understand the technical problems - that's what they hired you for.
Even technical people, once we get promoted into senior engineering roles or into management, don't have the bandwidth to look at the lower-level technical problems, and that's left to the ground-level engineers on the implementation teams.
The feature is needed by the business. The technology exists to serve the business not the other way around. It's your job to now to find ways to deliver the feature, and overcome the technical challenges.
So now that you've identified the potential challenges with git merge and rebasing, find potential solutions or workarounds for how you can still deliver that feature, and take the options to your managers.
Expecting management to understand the intricacies of technology will neither help them nor your career.
Good luck! 👍
The timeline that they gave was too unrealistic. We have been stretching for 12 hrs including holidays. Now tell me is it also my fault!?
This is an extremely sensible take and 100% correct. I work with both customers and my own colleagues who are non technical (but talented) people who have problems in understanding of technical challenges. But it's upto the senior tech folks to explain the issues in layman's words so that people can understand what the challenges are, and what the solution could be.
The OP would do well to gather the options available and present them to the manager. Let the manager decide on the approach considering the pros and cons.
