A good project manager is worth their weight in gold. Large scale projects are complex and have lots of moving parts. Someone who understands this and is good at keeping all the "parts" moving while heading off any potential issues is extremely valuable.
The problem is that often the people doing the hiring don't know what it takes to run a large project, much less what good project management looks like. They just hire some idiot with an agile certification whose only skill is moving items around a kanban board in a way that gives the illusion that progress is being made.
Yeah, as a General Foreman in construction I would be up to my eyeballs in nonsense without my PM.
This is the correct take.
Another problem is when management somehow manages to make a simple project into a crazy complex project.
I see two drivers of this: General empire building, more headcount under me == I am more important
Trying to use unvetted, low quality labor to do something being their abilities and trying to make it up with volume because corporate leadership declared it should be possible and anyone who says otherwise it's a bad fit for the company.
This and the following thread are great guidelines for would-be PMs.
Personally, however, I will avoid the role for the rest of my life, because it’s too much work.
Our project managers are salespeople, they over promise our capabilities, mostly because they don't even know what we can do, and disappear the moment a contract is signed. Leaving it up to the employees who actually do the work to meet impossible expectations.
There's been a few good project managers who get involved and check in on things, but there's only been one (out of a dozen+ or so) in my 7 years working here who's actually asked us what we can do and how long things take before taking in contacts. I'm sure they, or at least that kind of approach, will not last very long.
Man, gotta disagree here. There are deadweights under every job title. Had a pm that literally carried the team on her back, while simultaneously shielding us from bullshit from on high.
Unfortunately, you're right about as much as the original meme is. At my current gig, I've worked with half a dozen PMs, and while the majority of them were (seemingly) sweet and nice people, at least half of them would struggle to pour piss out of a boot if you wrote instructions on the heel. Even with project templates and runbooks, we still regularly had to clean up after them because they didn't do part of the project or expected us to work on stuff that wasn't marked as being live yet.
I've definitely seen both extremes. It's insane the difference a good PM makes, but they're rare because of how much pressure they have to handle. It's an ungrateful job.
Acceptable ones aren't too rare, that is, ones that don't have negative productivity -- depending on the industry and company politics, in some places it's BS all the way down. Good ones are rare and stellar ones are unicorns as it's a dual mastery thing: You have to be good at both the technical aspects, as well as the people aspect, and neither of those two can be mere talent, it needs to be talent and education. Judging by Alice Cecile, being a systems ecologist is the right overall qualification.
Yeah, my team actually has a mix of great, good, and replacement level PMs. The bad ones either get let go or moved elsewhere. It helps that we tend to draw them from the roles that would be on projects they'd manage and seem to compensate them well enough that we retain all the good ones.
If an org can't find good PMs, the org needs to create them and pay them enough that they stick in the role. It's not easy, but it's not rocket science.
Nail on the head there. So many PMs are either outside the industry entirely or pulled from completely unrelated projects and it's just a disaster.
There are definitely some amazing PMs, but I've met way more terrible PMs who don't know shit about fuck and don't care to learn than good PMs.
You say that until the first time you join a team with multiple projects to accomplish and zero project or program management. It sucks. Badly.
I pine for very excellent PMs I’ve known.
I had a manager once with a powerful knack for hiring great ones. The only problem was that each and every one of them got poached for upper management in the business.
The current PM where I work:
- cannot figure out audio settings for teams
- cannot understand microphone feedback loops
- cannot ask you your status on a task without giving just enough time for you to think it's your turn to speak only to then start speaking again the moment you start explaining your status
- cannot understand that an explanation for the status of a task can apply to multiple similar tasks
- always second guesses decisions
Their only actual job as far as I can tell is to tell the suits what they want to hear in their fucked up little business language. But I haven't seen that, so maybe they're terrible at that as well.
It feels like they memorized and religiously practice the CIA's handbook for field sabotage.
They're only useless if they legitimately suck at their job or don't give a fuck.
A good project manager will go a long way to keeping things running smoothly.
Project managers keep me from committing acts of arson to our issue management system lmao
If a project appears as if it doesn't need a project manager, the project manager is probably doing a great job
The best PM I ever had was playing zone defense and just deflecting every possible thing that could disrupt the creative team. Let us cook for more than a sprint.
Bad ones are constantly coming up with new requests, mid-sprint adds, don't really have answers, and create more blockers than they resolve.
Ah ha ha ha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah. Oh wait, you're serious!?? ornery_chemist @mander.xyz English On the other hand a manager willing to yell at/stonewall the MBAs when they deliberately lie about misinterpret your recommendations and timelines is a godsend.
Who are you even replying to? What is this comment about?
It looks like you're both laughing at @HalfSalesman@lemm.ee but also quoting a different comment supporting his stance.
A Project Manager is someone who thinks nine women can deliver a baby in one month.
"Hellen, you were supposed to only do the left arm! What am I supposed to do with a whole baby!?"
A good PM will herd all the cats and attend all the meetings you don't want to. They're worth their weight in gold.
A bad PM will do none of the above and constantly drag you in to fight their fires. They're worth their weight in, well, you know.
Note I've seen the "protecting me from a meeting" backfire so hard.
One time for lack of headcount I did a bit of double duty as project manager including executive meetings. Then management found a project manager and instead of knocking out my part of those meetings in like 5 minutes, I suddenly had generally hour long prep meetings so my new project manager would be confident enough to engage in whatever random topic the execs tended to go into. After a quarter they demanded I swap back in to do the meetings instead, which I was happy to do.
Also, those meetings are my best chance to cut through some confusion so I don't end up with a mess of crap in the tracker.
As a PM who tries to not waste anyone's time, thank you. I've had pushback before from people who don't like to do the talking, but I would only call that person forward if it's going to prevent a ton of headaches all around. Sometimes it's difficult to explain that. Otherwise I have no problem being the punching bag on stage. It's my job.
I’ve literally always described my job as babysitting
I like 'herding cats', but babysitting is quite accurate.
project managers (or any types of managers/admins) who are forces of nature can really drive things forward. this person talks about the useless kind of manager which often tries to interject him/her self in everything slowing things down. They act like this mostly because otherwise they would be useless as that is their only skill and they got the position through mix of luck and network.
Project managers are essential for larger projects…
Please tell us what "essential things" they do.
Keep everyone, and I mean everyone including senior management and directors, on task, on track, and all pointing in the same direction.
Good ones keep scope creep in check, and make sure decisions made last week are adhered to today.
The problem is there are a lot of not great PM's, and a lot of management that run roughshod over PM's.
People who think managers are useless have either likely only worked for good ones or bad ones. Good ones make it look so easy it looks like they do nothing.
Quite often when I'm managing the work floor if we have a good week I have almost nothing to do on fridays. Sometimes the staff make comments about it and I always say the same thing "If I'm scrambling on Friday, it means I fucked up on Wednesday and we're all going to have a shitty Monday."
I don't have a project manager and shit can't get done because I don't have the authority to get other people to do their job but I'm still held accountable for its progress. My direct manager thinks I'm supposed to do it even though it's not in my job title. I'm thinking of finding another job.
What some PMs don't understand is they don't lead the team but instead they should be supporting the team so that the job gets done on time. Shuffle around resources, reverse manage upper management, protect the team from being derailed etc.
This is in construction, though, and I've no idea about how the tech industry works.
This is my expereince, a good PM manages expectations and pushes back on the builder from trying to forge ahead with construction when the staging isnt right or areas arent ready, instead of being yes men and cracking the whip to make tradies get things done to appease their superiors. And they will negotiate cross-trade eith other PM's or tradies to see what arrangements will make mutliple parties happy when there are clashes and try keep things uninterrupted so everyone can keep ticking away at their own tasks.
A lot of places park people who can't cut it doing the actual work in the project in project management roles instead of moving them on. They think, ohh they have intimate knowledge of the project and the working parts they'll be great.
It happens a lot for regular management as well.
A properly trained, proficient project manager can get more done with less people, defuse situations before they happen and cool the jets of higher ups making unreasonable demands.
Of course, some places are just shitholes run by assholes to which none of this applies.
This may come as a surprise to some, but project managers exist outside of software as well.
Hold up. Projects exist outside of software?
That was my title at the prototyping shop I worked for. Sounded more white collar than "foreman".
The PM's job is to stop those doing the project from getting derailed. Literally manage the project. This means holding the stakeholder's feet to the fire. If the steak holder agrees to the terms they need to accept the repercussions of changing requirements, and their own misunderstanding.
Bad PMs don't hold the line. They don't signal early when bad things may be coming soon. They let all the shit derail productivity.
This is why systems like Agile were created. By making derailment a ceremony it became acceptable to remove the onus of the stakeholder to really make sure the project is ready and worth it.
edit: i should read over my dictated comments a little better
"Steak holders" lol, autoincorrect got you, but at least it's funny.
And I agree - good PM's are incredible. Bad PM's are useless.
When I go to a restaurant, I look for the steak holders.
you mean we aren't talking about working in a kitchen?
Sadly the only thing I am missing from deGoogleing my android phone was the good voice dictation.
The worst PMs are people-pleasers who don't set realistic expectations and promise things to clients that can't be delivered reasonable.
But those are also often the people who get promoted because those making the decisions like a "Yes" man who tries to make people happy with great "customer service."
I understand the sentiment, but I had the pleasure of working with a great PM on a high profile project in my company and it was really good. The more moving parts and stakeholders there are, the more you're going to need someone to manage the stream of information, set expectations, keep the focus on the end goal. It was very good and I learned a lot from them.
That is what a Principle investigator does. Some who’d been a PI for 30 years does not need a project manager.
Fuckin' preach. I've worked with a single pm worth their salt, and they got driven out by the useless cunts that couldn't MANAGE to get from their desk to a toilet without a meeting.
In my career most of the actually competent PMs actually got poached so we're left with the scraps.
Mine is the incompetents blame the competents for THEIR fuckups, and the competent ones don't put up with that shit.
In my experience it's because the terrible PMs are happy to shift their blame onto someone else, whereas the proficient PMs don't shy away from their mistakes. The good pm gets fired for taking someone else's responsibility and the bad ones stay piling their shit onto others. Good PMs can't survive.
I worked as an academic and supported and got funding for my programs for decades. I was a higher level GS employee for the feds and I ran new product development for a couple small to medium biotech firms. The last firm I worked for got bought by a giant multinational company which rhymes with Spargill. They changed the way we did things and suddenly, I had a "Project manager", who didn't know anything about the project I developed and managed. Nor did they do anything else I could figure out other than call me on the phone and ask what I was up to and how the projects, which I developed and was PI on were going. I swear to god I have no idea what these people did, but EVERYONE who was a scientist got at least one of these useless managers. And I can bet those "managers" got paid more than we did. Anyway, the only thing I could figure out was that project managers were positions given to people who couldn't do any real science anymore but had played the game and needed a reward. So their reward was to call up people like me every once in a while and ask me how things were going. Were there EVER a more useless job I can't imagine what it might be.
Shit take. Do better
I think a super important thing people forget is a good PMs ability to always know where the data is that's been received. Can't tell you the number of times there's been conversations "we're waiting on x from the client" and the PM being long it's right here in the standard location. How they remember everything I don't know.
On the other hand having a manager willing to yell at/stonewall the MBAs when they
deliberately lie aboutmisinterpret your recommendations and timelines is a godsend.I fucking hate comments defending PMs like “you hate PMs if you only worked with bad ones”
Fuck no, they’re the idea guys of tech, they’re useless. Their entire existence depends on engineers not giving enough fucks about the product. They’re the result of a broken team structure. They’re annoying and have no real skills, which is proven by their excitement about AI nowadays. Every PM I’ve came across is hyping up AI, most of them vibe coding, whatever the fuck that means.
ITT: People who don't know the difference between product, program, and project managers.
As a software guy, I love this. People building and running software products don't need project managers. We ned product owners/managers. It's a product, it has users, it doesn't have an end date.
Look ain't saying I agree with it
But they're right up there with Scrum Masters. Guides whatever
Management is needed, you let ppl do whtever they want and nothing gets done in any reasonable amount of time
Bullshit. I managed my projects and grants just fine when I was an academic. And until Giant Corporation bought our small ag biotech firm I ran my new product research and development just fine. When giant Corporation bought us I got saddled with someone who did fuck all besides irritate me by telling me what I already knew. As far as I could see they did fuck all. But probably made more money than I did or anyone else in my crew.
This fairy tale still lives? Sheesh, some people really are dense. Like, neutron star kind of dense
venture capitalist
that's not useless, that's actively harmful
