My PM doesn’t tell me to do anything. Their job is to prioritize things on the backlog and give status updates. Very, very rarely do they tell me that whatever I’m working on no longer needs to be done at all.
Generally speaking, if I do get an interruption, it’s from the person above the Project Manager. And they’re more of the “shit hit the fan” variety of problems that need to be resolved.
My PMs are all about time allocation… yet they fail to understand what research is.
Pm: How long until you finish designing and implementing this thing?
Me: I cant put a time on it, weve never done this before and have no points of reference. So i could figure it out today or a month from today…i cant give you a time because its bever been implemented.
PM: Sighs in dissapproval… ill just say 5 business days. Hows that.
Me: if we are just making up numbers, sure
5 days seems pretty reasonable to design and build most stuff. It’s function and system/integrated test that takes time not to say there’s not random bits of work that take months before anything testable can be produced.
*My experience is in giant systems processing mainframe class data. The programmers in my team use COBOL
Sounds like you got someone with experience in hardware. They’re all about just shitting a date on paper.
The key to good PMs seems to be that they will make up the fake schedule without even talking to you. The schedule will be made up either way, so if they can not bother me that’s a ok.
My good PMs understood that their role was to attend meetings and create a buffer between myself (who understood what had to be done and was doing most of the work) and the higher-ups. The awful PMs were the ones who thought they were running the show and driving everything.
Our current PM gets involved in projects from day dot. Plans out vague technical ideas, makes up timelines, gets involved in meetings and suggests things to clients, totally rules the roost.
Shame she’s completely fucking clueless about any of the actual work, really.
I usually preferred male PMs, solely because my contempt for their lack of technical knowledge was never mistaken for chauvinism. Women PMs who stayed in their lane – or even better were actually technically competent – were A-OK with me.
I used to tell my bosses that everything would take three months. I would then ensure that everything took three months, usually by fucking off for two and a half months and then blasting something out in the last two weeks.
just don’t you dare ever proactively prevent a problem
always gotta spend 5x on the current dumpster fire
Which is when I just do it I tell them afterward. I build it into my estimates so it doesn’t put us behind.
There are still a few cans that get kicked down the road though, for various reasons.
PM = Project Manager?
Years ago when I still worked for companies as an employee my team had this PM that was so desperate to get things done and get them done early. I mean he was a nice guy but always pushing. The thing is though my team was pretty damn solid and we got stuff done early, all working, tests passed, all that cause we liked to play battlefield 3 and eve online together when we had the free time. Course we never told the PM this. Also the PM liked to motivate us with food if we worked late to get stuff finished. So we used this to our advantage and once or twice a week we allowed the PM to buy us dinner and beer/snacks because we told him we’d be working late to ensure deadlines were met. When in reality we’d just be in the office playing eve online together and wanted food and beer while we did so.
I don’t feel bad for the project manager, he came from money, he constantly told everyone he came from money, so we took his money.
Prime Minister? Prime meridian? Protocol maintainer?
Project Molester.
ok, I really didn’t know when I made this comment, but I’m pretty sure it’s project manager and no one said it outright so here
Penis Massager
Penis Magician
Penile Manager
Personal Masseuse
President Messiah
Project Mangler
Harriet Jones 🪪, Protocol maintainer.
don’t you think she looks tired?
Protomolecule
Panicky Merman
Preventative maintenance? Post moderator? Pickup mailman?
Percussive Maintenance?
Definitely not Product Manager
Pelican Modalizer
Procrastination ALWAYS paid off for me.
Though I usually succeed despite procrastination, I’m pretty sure in most cases things would have gone better with alacrity.
Worked for me, could be an environment problem.
PM expert mode challenge: recall the last thing you asked for
It doesn’t count if what they remember is that 6 business days ago you agreed to 5 business days
