Haha. You failed. I can feel the judgement from here. Sounds like the classic preconception of the socially-challenged developer. I thought that meme had died years ago. I promise you I am nothing like that, and not very blunt when communicating either. My role is at least 75% teamwork/management, not development.
As someone else mentioned, there is most likely a cultural divide here. I know you’re not “just checking in”. If you were truly worried about my well being, you would not be mixing that with a progress update. “Let me know how I can help” is also just a backhanded way to tell me something is wrong.
What I would like is a professional conversation (not a blunt one). “Look, X, I’ve noticed you didn’t deliver Y and Z on the agreed timeline yesterday. If you need it we can offload some of the tasks to ABC. As you know we need this live by X because [reasons]. Let’s schedule a call if you’d like to discuss how we can get this back on track. Cheers, Your Manager”
None of the “checking in” bullshit, just honest and direct, but also not offensive or judgmental. A more personal talk can be had f2f or over a call.
But that's the issue here: this is how a lot of managers "just check in"! Maybe that's not how you would do it, but that's how a lot of us do.
There's no backhanded way of telling something is wrong. "Is there anything I can do to help?" is a legitimate question. I believe that is the crux of the miscommunication here, not the cultural part (I'm also in EU).
I believe you're reading this in a different way others are, which is completely okay, but is leading to lots of misinterpretation. I'd seriously rethink if you're not the one being judgemental here, especially about the "passive aggressive" part.
I also think you're also coming from a compeltely different direction here: you're giving management advice, while what I was trying to give is how to interpret your manager's words.
As someone else mentioned, there is most likely a cultural divide here. I know you’re not “just checking in”. If you were truly worried about my well being, you would not be mixing that with a progress update. “Let me know how I can help” is also just a backhanded way to tell me something is wrong.
What I would like is a professional conversation (not a blunt one). “Look, X, I’ve noticed you didn’t deliver Y and Z on the agreed timeline yesterday. If you need it we can offload some of the tasks to ABC. As you know we need this live by X because [reasons]. Let’s schedule a call if you’d like to discuss how we can get this back on track. Cheers, Your Manager”
None of the “checking in” bullshit, just honest and direct, but also not offensive or judgmental. A more personal talk can be had f2f or over a call.