My boss just won't read things! Today's example:

Me: There's an issue when there isn't an image on an item. (Picture attached)
Boss: If the image exists it's probably a permission issue.

This is just the latest in a very long list of examples. I wrote off most of the others since they were often in a longer paragraph or complicated issues, but this was literally one sentence and he skipped half of it.

Sounds like an issue of a technical boss. Accepting issues because some understanding the technical issue behind it and accepting it. That's cool for devs often but could be less good for the product.

Steve Jobs forced his devs to make something that was impossible according to devs but Steve Jobs said - it's possible, I've seen it at xerox and you fucking make it. In the end, the devs made it. And it was smth new because the xerox team did smth you could see as 'cheating' to get that results. The subject here was smth like "windows overlay". You could see it as the z-index of css. Source: his book.

Moral of story - often it's good to have a boss not accepting technical limitations for sake of quality.

Side note: i don't mean that jobs wasn't technical, he converted arcade machines to color for ffs, that's more advanced than most stuff all of us are doing now.

@retoor it was impossible according to the time frame the devs had, and they had to work overtime alot.

@feuerherz I don't remember there was a time frame involved but hey, did it work or did it work? And yes, overworking can be seen as a negative thing but I was focussed on what was good for the product. What OP posted was about accepting less quality product

Maybe he's dyslexic and read 'when' as 'where' and thought the complaint was about a missing image. Well, there's no need to be dyslexic to make that mistake.

Maybe part of the problem is that the text didn't explain the issue, just when it happens?

To clarify, he's not dyslexic, and we have this issue all the time.

Let me put this in a more generic context

Me: this person doesn't have legs
Boss: legs can be broken by hitting them with a baseball bat

Ok... I guess you're not wrong, but that has nothing to do with the situation. I just told you he doesn't have legs, so clearly they aren't broken.

Consider giving your boss feedback in an structured way.

My team has recently been forced to take a class on how to give constructive feedback - so these would be my tips:

1. Ask if it's a good time (if they have a headache or personal problems, it's a bad time) "Hey, how are you doing? Would this be a good time to talk? I would like to give you some feedback"

2. Lay down the terms. For example "I have some feedback regarding communication. I'll tell you how I feel about what I think is an issue. Then you can share your point of view and we can try to resolve it. OK?"

3. Just tell em the issue straight up, from your perspective - including 1 recent example: "I feel like when I ask you questions - sometimes you respond without having read my question properly. For example the other day I asked about images that did NOT exist and you gave an answer about images that DID exist. Can we talk about this? Are you aware of this?"

I've been involved in a situation like this. A dev lead from another team was writing really short and incomprehensible messages on slack.

A colleague in my team gave them feedback.

Got the response "Thanks for telling me! I was not aware it looked that bad. I admit I have a bad habit of replying to Slack questions really sloppily when I'm in meetings. I guess I imagine every question is super urgent. I will chill out and read questions properly in the future. Thanks again"