Programming

Nah, I also hate Jira. It's slow, bloated, complicated, and has 1000x features I, as a developer, don't need.

But then again, I also hate the manager that makes me use it in ways that frustrate me.

But then again, the reason my manager loves Jira and wants me to use it that way, is that they can run a bunch of automated reports like "We did X work this week, consuming Y hours (Or points or whatever) and we predict that we will be done in Z timeframe".

Buuuuuut, that's all bullshit. Garbage data in, garbage reports out. Jira gives managers the CONFIDENCE that they know what's going on, instead of just talking to developers, having conversations, etc. As it turns out, programming is hard, and doesn't have clear A->B->C predictability. So those tasks that are left? non-exhaustive. Those hours we did? Didn't take into account the thousand little things that didn't go into the backlog (And would take longer to add it than to just do the work and ignore the extra time spent on the task). That burndown chart? Completely useless.

Jira is used to skirt around the complexity of software development. It enables bad management to exist much easier, because it allows said managers to not engage with the team or product in any meaningful way, then to push up the chain "progress reports" that are meaningless, then, when deadlines are passed, managers get to blame it on the developers for not tracking enough work in Jira.

Jira enables bad management.

On the other hand, bad managers abuse every tool they are given, and bad managers existed before Jira, just instead of automated reports, they had email reports and hand tracked hours. So whatever, the tool was built to service a broken industry anyway.