This right here. I have worked with a dozen PMs in 30 years, only two were any damn good. One managed an IT team, and she didn’t know tech worth squat, but God damn, did she keep the flow going and know how to get shit done without being an ass about it.
On the other hand, I faught with a PM once because he didn’t understand the concept of priorities or how to manage a crisis. “You want me to fix the outage or attend a meeting about it?” “Both.” “Pick one. You have a choice. I can fix the issue in the data center, or join a blame session in the meeting room. Which one?” “BOTH!” I got to the meeting room, and he demanded we put down our laptops and pay attention. He invited EVERYBODY regardless of whether they were needed or not. Twenty seven people all bitching about the outage and not a single person fixing it. No meeting moderation. Just chaos until he had a panic attack. Just useless.
I got a project now that doesn’t have one and you can definitely see it. Stuff is being missed left and right. All the different companies aren’t talking together. A few months back I just straight up recommended that they bring a PM to the lead scientist and they weren’t interested. So far I would say they have made a total of 90k mistakes on a 850k project.
Of the 30-50 PMs I’ve worked with in my career, I’ve had 2 actively contribute to the success of my team’s work. I’ve had a handful scuttle projects because they couldn’t manage the clients, the rest just kind of hung out and collected a massive paycheck.
The highest performing teams I’ve been on had the lead developer play that role.
Say you don’t work in tech without saying you don’t work in tech.
I’m a dev. Love them or hate them, PMs are vital to success of projects.
Good PMs are vital to the success of projects, and bad PMs are vital to their failure.
This right here. I have worked with a dozen PMs in 30 years, only two were any damn good. One managed an IT team, and she didn’t know tech worth squat, but God damn, did she keep the flow going and know how to get shit done without being an ass about it.
On the other hand, I faught with a PM once because he didn’t understand the concept of priorities or how to manage a crisis. “You want me to fix the outage or attend a meeting about it?” “Both.” “Pick one. You have a choice. I can fix the issue in the data center, or join a blame session in the meeting room. Which one?” “BOTH!” I got to the meeting room, and he demanded we put down our laptops and pay attention. He invited EVERYBODY regardless of whether they were needed or not. Twenty seven people all bitching about the outage and not a single person fixing it. No meeting moderation. Just chaos until he had a panic attack. Just useless.
haha, I’ve seen people try to have a root cause analysis meeting with all of the parties involved, prior to any cause being identified.
I got a project now that doesn’t have one and you can definitely see it. Stuff is being missed left and right. All the different companies aren’t talking together. A few months back I just straight up recommended that they bring a PM to the lead scientist and they weren’t interested. So far I would say they have made a total of 90k mistakes on a 850k project.
Of the 30-50 PMs I’ve worked with in my career, I’ve had 2 actively contribute to the success of my team’s work. I’ve had a handful scuttle projects because they couldn’t manage the clients, the rest just kind of hung out and collected a massive paycheck.
The highest performing teams I’ve been on had the lead developer play that role.
The role is vital, the PM it’s self is not.
Completely agreed that the role is vital. For me, my PM is a life saver as my workload is simply too much to also handle PM duties.
That’s said, I also agree that there are many useless PMs. But a good one is worth their weight in gold.
Heh…if your workload is that intense, then you probably have a bad PM.
I’ve worked in tech for 20 years and can count the number of Project Managers I’ve met on one hand. It varies a lot depending on the company.