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MichVandal said:
If I were asked to be a PM, I would politely decline. Thankfully, in my career, I've never been asked- but then again, probably 20 years ago, they became an official position.

I'm not sure how to describe them, but we spend too much time worrying about the message to management vs. actually talking about the project. And because of that mindset in management, our section meetings have transition to us talking about our projects to mostly wasting time updating the one pagers for our managers.

Which means we have both PM's and managers to deal with instead of focusing on the actual project.

All of the PM's I've encountered are amazing at being passive aggressive to people- for every error state, they manage to blame everyone- thinking that if everyone worked on the issue at the same time, it would solve the problem. But that hardly ever does anything other than make people mad.

PM's tend to think they know about the technical details they are "managing" which makes them pretty dangerous when they hardly ever know enough.
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So what I'm hearing is:

1. Not respecting the team's time
2. Not recognizing the PM's personal technical ignorance
3. Fostering a fault-finding, distrustful environment

And what would help would be:

1. Ensuring time taken on management results in a commensurate decrease in task time and/or some magically equivalent increase in quality
2. Being humble, asking questions, having a technical peer to evaluate whether management objectives and guidance make practical sense
3. Being open, suspending judgment, focusing on the task and not on supposed deficiencies in performance

Is that fair?

I really want to be "one of the good ones."
 
Kepler said:
So what I'm hearing is:

1. Not respecting the team's time
2. Not recognizing the PM's personal technical ignorance
3. Fostering a fault-finding, distrustful environment

And what would help would be:

1. Ensuring time taken on management results in a commensurate decrease in task time and/or some magically equivalent increase in quality
2. Being humble, asking questions, having a technical peer to evaluate whether management objectives and guidance make practical sense
3. Being open, suspending judgment, focusing on the task and not on supposed deficiencies in performance

Is that fair?

I really want to be "one of the good ones."
Click to expand...

I would also suggest to know your technical limits. So that the team does not have to spend time explaining to you every single little detail.

As for "is that fair" - I suppose it is, but can't really picture a good PM.
 
MichVandal said:
I would also suggest to know your technical limits. So that the team does not have to spend time explaining to you every single little detail.

As for "is that fair" - I suppose it is, but can't really picture a good PM.
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I meant is that a fair summary of your concerns, not is the interaction fair. Fairness is what works.

So don't just know my limits but do some reading so I'm not wasting their time? Got it. Is it okay / welcome to take subject matter experts aside and ask them what resources they think I would find useful? You know one of the biggest obstacles to learning about what you don't know is you don't even know what you don't know.

This is good feedback, thank you.
 
As for the new job, I'm hoping this becomes full time. Kids are awesome in general, the bathroom is single person with a lock, and I haven't been called sir all week.
 
If I can dream,

I'd rather write, give TEDx Talks/motivational speeches, and model full time.

And I will see if I can accelerate what's left of my MSW program and finish before August 2023.
 
Would love your advice on whether you think I'm being a bit ungrateful. I was given what's called a Spotlight Award as a thank you from a co-worker for the help I provided her two weeks ago in arranging things for a video shoot in the office. Which was very nice of her. The was two days long and, even though the office is technically open, there were things that needed to be arranged to get it done. Plus, I was onsite at 6:30am for load in, stayed late on the second day for load out and had to work with our Facilities and Corporate Security teams to plan everything.

Said co-worker was literally back from maternity leave for a week when this came up. While on leave, she moved to North Carolina. She did fly up for the shoot but given that she is out of state, that's another reason why I was brought in to help get this set up. Fine. I'm OK with all that. While onsite, co-worker was appreciative, said she was going to award me for helping her out. As a bit of background, we have a corporate recognition program that awards employees with points that we can accrue and then use them to "shop" in a gift catalog. I actually have more points than I can use, but that's not the, well, point. Anyway, Friday I get an email from her with a Spotlight award certificate. Normally when you get awards, you get a generated email from the program that tells you that you've been given an award, click here to see, etc. Found it a little odd that I wasn't notified that way. Opened the PDF of the certificate and saw it was just a lovely certificate with no mention of any points. Huh.

I go to the website of the recognition program to see if I'm missing something but it turns out you can present a Spotlight award and not offer any points. Which I think defeats the overall purpose of the program. I'm feeling a little annoyed that I wasn't presented an award with points, which I also know makes me seem a bit ungrateful. When you present an award with points, managers have to approve it as it comes out of a budget, which is why sometimes it takes forever for these awards to be offered. If all I was getting was a certificate, I'm thinking I should have received that a few days after the shoot, not two weeks. And I kinda want to know whose decision it was to only offer the certificate.

And before you all say anything, I get that I am overthinking it. It's just part of a pattern I feel where I get taken advantage of and I don't have the spine to push back. And really, how do I push back? I'm not the type of person who needs to get recognition but I do not like not getting recognition when everyone else does. That's happened more than once. It's frustrating at times.

OK, so that was an extremely long post to whine. Thanks for letting me vent.
 
My LinkedIn profile was searched by KBR.

Does this mean I get to meet the Queen of England and the Lizard People?
 
I will say this:

My team lead at Meijer is growing, learning, and is a really affirming lady. She tries her best to help me and has helped through difficult stuff.

I learned she was basically shoved into the role, and is trying to adjust. So I will empower and support her growth as much as I can.
 
Between Meijer, this new job, and Uber Eats, I've worked 15 days in a row.

I'm wiped out and really haven't had any time for me.
 
Scarlet said:
was just a lovely certificate with no mention of any points. Huh.

I go to the website of the recognition program to see if I'm missing something but it turns out you can present a Spotlight award and not offer any points. Which I think defeats the overall purpose of the program. I'm feeling a little annoyed that I wasn't presented an award with points, which I also know makes me seem a bit ungrateful. When you present an award with points, managers have to approve it as it comes out of a budget, which is why sometimes it takes forever for these awards to be offered. If all I was getting was a certificate, I'm thinking I should have received that a few days after the shoot, not two weeks. And I kinda want to know whose decision it was to only offer the certificate.

And before you all say anything, I get that I am overthinking it. It's just part of a pattern I feel where I get taken advantage of and I don't have the spine to push back. And really, how do I push back? I'm not the type of person who needs to get recognition but I do not like not getting recognition when everyone else does. That's happened more than once. It's frustrating at times.

OK, so that was an extremely long post to whine. Thanks for letting me vent.
Click to expand...
My company has a “Shared Success” program. A former manager of mine told me that all recognitions via the program are reviewed and managers either approve for a base amount, an increased value, or for no value. The person submitting has no say on the value, is your program the same overall design?

(I’m of the opinion that my company’s base reward has $0 included and it’s rare these days for anything more than that. Lousy Harvard MBAs taking over the company in the past few years.)
 
MissThundercat said:
Between Meijer, this new job, and Uber Eats, I've worked 15 days in a row.

I'm wiped out and really haven't had any time for me.
Click to expand...

That's me the rest of this month. Today was my last planned day off until 10/1. I feel ya. Hopefully I can sneak in a day one of these weekends but I have doubts.

I'll be taking some comp days in October for sure.
 
dxmnkd316 said:
That's me the rest of this month. Today was my last planned day off until 10/1. I feel ya. Hopefully I can sneak in a day one of these weekends but I have doubts.

I'll be taking some comp days in October for sure.
Click to expand...

Like I want to hammer punch those who say "it's finally Friday," but all I can do is scowl in disgust.

The good news is my new job says more clients are coming on and the 10-15 hours/week I initially agreed to has high potential to become full time.
 
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