Have I mentioned how much I fucking hate project managers? It’s such a worthless position. Suck up money to talk and act important and waste everyone’s time.
The President of my company died this morning. They sent out a typical condolence email and finished it with the line “His only ambition in life was to make “my company name” the number one leader in our industry. There’s no greater way to honor his passing than making this your goal for 2023.” I about fell out of my chair laughing when I read that. My company is bleeding people right now. On a team of 11 we’ve lost 6 people in the last 9 months. And they wonder why when they’re trying to use this guys death to try and rally the troops.
I never want my job or career to be the first thing people think of or mention when my name is brought up.
Currently on my way to Alaska for week long vacation. The PM scheduled a pretty big dev release for the 15th. Apparently he didn’t know about my vacation even though I went through the correct request off procedure in February. I’m now getting pressure and heat from upper management bc we have to move the date back 2 weeks. apparently there’s 2 other calendars I was “supposed” to add my off on
I would walk into traffic if I had to do my PMs job. It’s all budget, finances, projections, and HR bullshit. Which leaves me to deal with scheduling and technical issues, and just checking my planners design work.
That’s how ours are supposed to be now with Tech Leads and Product Owners, but they’ve all been here 20+ years and think they still have power. They could easily dump 3/4 of them now, but they won’t. I was on a project kick off call the other day and 6! PMs joined.
We have product and not project managers in my team, and my PM handles this (minus HR stuff) and handles soooooo much inter-team communication that I loathe. I'm basically a software architect now and hate all the coordination part of my job, he handles probably 80% of the project documenting and most communication, although I have to be on lots of meetings still these days. He's absolutely worth every penny we pay him and likely a ton more.
As a manager I love project managers because they do most of the work I would've done 30 years ago but now don't have to
Took train from Anchorage to Denali today. simply breathtaking. We’ll be here for a few days. Probably do a glacier helicopter tour and hike. headed back south and to Seward for a couple of days.
My coworker brought in a tub of double bubble today… what’s the over under for number of pieces I plow through?
I’m officially “that guy” who never does anything after hours work related. Supposed to have dinner and meet my boss for the first time as well as a bunch of coworkers I’ve never met but I can’t do it. I have debilitating anxiety and haven’t been around anyone work related in over 3 years. I also realize that I only own a suit, a dress shirt, and all tshirts and shorts.
Shove down the anxiety with alcohol like an adult, which works out super great over a long period of time
It sucks as this is probably the only time I’ll ever get to meet her in person but I don’t know the other like 20 people and literally, and I say this knowing full well what replies it will illicit, have nothing to wear like business casual. I haven’t had to wear that type of clothing in at least like 6 or 7 years.
Yeah I’ve had alcohol issues by doing that in the past that were not so great. I know you’re joking but I did that for a long time before actually going to a dr for anxiety.
Was this kind of a last minute thing? Also I’m a p big introvert so I hate walking into a room of people. I’ve found if I’m there first and able to greet people one at a time as they come in it helps a lot. Maybe there are some work arounds that would help with what you’re anxious about
No not a last minute thing. I didn’t know it was going to be a lot of people until yesterday though. I’ve been wfh since 2020 so I haven’t had any type of interaction with coworkers and even before that I hated having to do anything with them outside of work. I’d rather someone kick me in the balls than go to lunch with coworkers.
Had to do it again today. Boss made dinner plans that would have worked for me but not for my coworkers. Granted she’s not even their boss but just being accommodating and nice by inviting them, but the new location is really far away and I live in the city and it would be during bumper to bumper rush hour traffic and no way I’d make it there on time.
Why not just share with your boss that you have anxiety? I’m sure she’d be accommodating. She wants to eat with you not the others.
Honestly it’s not even the anxiety this time. It’s the time and location. I should have mentioned something like a week ago when I had to take off 3 days because I had a breakdown. Wife took off to be here with me but I just used vacation time and said I had family stuff.
I mean an hour plus drive to eat at a place where I would just order a water isn’t really making my decision any harder.
Maybe tell her about it now? Instead of using time and location use anxiety as the reason so you can let her know. That way you have a reasonable excuse and she doesn’t feel like she’s getting blown off or you’re disengaged
I mean I can but it’s also not me blowing her off. I pick up my kid from daycare. My wife makes it home maybe around 6 depending on traffic. Making a 630 dinner that’s an hour drive is pushing it even if my wife makes it home right at 6.
Also I’m an idiot and should have prefaced that I’m aggressively trying to find another job. I posted about it in another thread but there is no where else for me to move up within the company. Like even if I went out of my way to do the dinner stuff it gains me no favoritism or a raise or a promotion or anything because there isn’t anything. So I was posting as I’m the annoying/cringeworthy coworker as I’m the one who was ducking out but I stand to gain nothing and just get a free shitty meal that I wouldn’t eat and out gas money and time going there. I did buy some shirts last night though.
Client my team has been working for for three years dropped us with no warning yesterday. And this is after stringing us along for 4 months about new rates, becoming their primary project partner, and promising us 80km of design a month. I mean, I get it, capitalism, but I’m just really upset that I’m finally feeling like I’ve got the hang of this job I got promoted into 6 months ago, and 5 people on our 7 person team have been together for 2 years now, so there’s a lot of internal trust. All my design planners are going to another project together, and me and the other managers are all going to try to kick start a new client, so at least we’ll have some continuity and no one’s being made redundant, but it’s still a kick in the nards.
My coworker just sent me a long winded, slightly unclear, teams message asking me, to ask another coworker to add a few other people to a meeting invite I just sent out. The body of the email contained “please forward as necessary” because it’s a meeting with about 6 different groups and I obviously don’t know who all should be invited outside of the key people. What the hell lol. Engineers, amirite
Kinda cringeworthy. My wife had to take this online career development class at work and the person teaching it asked “How is your career different now that it was 25 years ago?” and called on her to answer. She was 9. She said they were allowed to say pass as it wouldn’t apply to him but had to got through multiple people passing until they finally got to someone who was old enough to answer the question. Just seems like you’d ask 5-10 years ago and not 25.
I would have passed because my honest answer is: I’m no longer so naive that I think the company I work for cares one bit about me.
She loves her job and works for a great company that encourages their employees to take courses like this to further their careers within the company and move up. Just thought it was strange asking the 25 years thing as you’d be thinking everyone in there is 50 or older.
Speaking of I forgot yesterday about a weird one she told me. They let a contractor go after 2 weeks because she’d been no show multiple times and was taking 2-3 hour lunches. Again only been there 2 weeks and they had to let her go on Friday. Well I guess security didn’t deactivate her badge but she came in yesterday morning like nothing had happened and they had to escort her out of the building. Awkward. She was a no show on Friday so they emailed, texted and called her and left messages so I guess she didn’t get them or just thought nothing of it and showed up.
Got a screening call tomorrow for a DoD contractor with jobs out here in the UK. I honestly don't know if I want to get back into that world, and I turned down an offer about a year ago cuz the vacation days sucked and it would have messed with my visa, but my current job just liquidated my team and has moved me to a workstream where I'm basically waiting around to see if any contract nibbles become real, and my visa is up in November so if I have to move from a spouse visa to a work visa, now would be the time to do it, and the pay is like 3x what I'm making now. If they can get to the 20-ish PTO days I might take it. Even if it's only for a year we can bank a shitload of money in that time.