I hope you guys don’t roll your eyes the instant you see me post topics like this because I really don’t have anyone else to bounce this stuff off of.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself that might be career-limiting is that I push back when my workload gets too large. I’ve always been advised that if I see a train coming down the tunnel, as they say, it’s better to let my manager know asap. So I do that. But on the other hand, I’ve noticed that the people who don’t do that, and who blythely ignore the train and have tremendous grace under pressure while dropping balls tend to get praised and/or promoted.
To illustrate, in my current situation I’m on two teams and I have to take care of external documentation for five different products. My managers (two of them) know that’s too large of a workload for one person so they tell me I can delegate some of my work to other team members. That’s great, and I’m doing that. No sweat. Until
Until they assign me and a few other people to a high visibility project due in three weeks and we have about 10 weeks worth of research and writing to do for it. The end project is actually three days of presentation to our external customers, and because they didn’t start work on it until very late, the airfare skyrocketed and now they an only afford to send three of us to it. Which means that each of us effectively has a full day of presenting and facilitating discussions. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the other people on this project team have never done this kind of project before so they don’t perceive the urgency in getting their research done or just how time consuming it is. Well, that’s their problem for the most part except that we’ll all look foolish standing up there showing half completed research and not knowing what should be discussed.
I admit that I completely lack the grace to not care about such things. I can’t help but show that I’m under pressure. I hate that. (both being under pressure, and knowing that I can’t hide it and look like a rock star)
Try bouncing this off your immediate supervisor … then it’s not your problem and do the best you can …
I agree that only being able to do 10 weeks worth of work in three weeks is career-limiting … but I think your career opportunities doing six weeks work in three is still fairly broad … don’t worry about it …
Remember … if your presentation day goes well, and the other two screw-up … the customers are going to walk away from your company taking you with them … with a raise … [ka’ching] …
You absolutely need to tell your manager, and let them prioritize and tell you which balls to drop. You can’t do it all, and trying to do it all is a recipe for disaster (been there, have the t-shirt and the scars).
Whenever possible, try to do the project that is most important (AKA visible) to the most senior person, even if it isn’t always the most important business need.
In a situation like this, where you have a team working on a project with a hard deadline, you need to do a quick reality assessment. Is this executive team visible? Then you’re going to have to kick your team-mates’ butts, schedule meetings, co-opt their schedules, and do everything you can to make sure all of you are ready for the Big Day. No matter what happens with the rest of the team, make sure that you are prepped. If it’s a high visibility project, it’s not always enough to brief your manager on the cluster fuck. You must obviously have your stuff together when those around you do not.
As far as being flustered and feeling that you won’t come across as your best self on the day, the best way through that is practice. Do as many dry runs as you can schedule. Call a friend and do it over the phone. Present it to yourself in the hotel mirror. Do it again. Have a paper copy while you do this so you can make notes. Rehearsing will get you comfortable with the material, even if you feel a little silly doing it. On the big day, once you kick off into your material, you’ll be fine.
Sorry a bit of a misunderstanding, which is typical when I post in a hurry. I’ll clarify a few things.
I still always do let my managers know the instant I see trouble coming down the pike. The problem that I’m wondering is that I do it so much (because it seems like this crap happens ALL the time) that they think of me a rather a Chicken Little. What I’ve noticed with coworkers who don’t worry about stuff like that is that they may drop balls but nothing bad ever seems to happen as a result. So I report looming trouble, manager pats me on the head and says “there, there, just do your best” and otherwise doesn’t spend any more time thinking or doing anything about what I’ve reported.
For the presentations in the example I outlined, I’ll be ready and confident. When I said we’d look bad for not being prepared, I meant that I will be tarnished by association. I’ve never seen this scenario happen:
What I have seen happen in situations like this is more “man, this team from ACME Inc really sucks. They weren’t on the ball, AT ALL. Why did they waste our time like this?”
Still, that was just an example from my current stressful situation. I’ve also noticed that when they stack my plate with more work than I can handle, I start pushing back - just letting them know I won’t be able to finish it all. I may also politely ask for them to help me reprioritize. They seem to take it well, but because I never get the glowing praises for working all night to get the job done, etc. that they don’t really think well of me.
Or… it’s just really hard to know where you stand in the corporate sphere. On the one hand, I realize that they’ve assigned me into a unique situation (the only person handling a difficult area of work) so they must think I’m capable. On the other hand, I never get recognition so I wonder if I’m just a doormat.
When I started reading your OP, my first thought was the old saying that it’s better to apologize than ask forgiveness. That could be what’s going on with your coworkers. They’re not saying ‘gee, boss, I’m not sure…’, instead they’re saying ‘sorry, I did what I could’ and TPTB are [apparently] okay with that.
My second thought was that when you tell the manager (before) that you just simply can’t do that much, can you change it a bit? Instead, perhaps you could say ‘I’m swapped this week, I’m going to have John take the lead on this project’ or 'I’m really busy, is it okay if I have Sarah help me out?" The former is telling, latter is asking, but in either case, you’re not so much telling them you can’t do it as you are telling them the necessary solution to get everything done. Your work hierarchy/dynamics/politics will, of course, dictate if this is a good idea. And, I did see in your next post that you delegate the work load, I’m just thinking this might help you get some extra help from other areas. Maybe you even add to that sentence ‘until we get the new recruits’ or ‘I’m spread a bit thin right now, hopefully I’ll be good when I get the new hires’.
I don’t know your exact situation and I don’t know a lot about corporate life, I’m just suggesting you go to your managers with a solution for your problem, not just a problem. It should probably also be noted that they’re clearly okay with things not getting done on time so status quo might be the way to go.
Experiences may vary, but in my experience in corporate life, everybody these days is working at minimum 1.5 full time jobs, and often more so that it’s “normal” to work 60+ hours/week for a full time (officially 40 hour/week) salary. This is likely what’s informing what’s going on here. And if the managers are working 80 hour workweeks just to keep up, they don’t have much sympathy for people like me pushing back against 50 or 60.
Because I work to live, not live to work and I only put in my 40 hours. Actually to be precise, I’m not a clock watcher, so my work time may vary anywhere between 35 - 45. But I don’t put in “free” overtime happily.
After my last post I was thinking about it, and whether you get rewarded for working unpaid long hours depends completely on your manager. Someone on another team in the company got a level 3 award in front of the whole company for working until 11pm to meet a deadline. On the other hand, one of my coworkers told me about how she worked all weekend to meet a deadline and then her manager made her change her timecard: remove the time charged to the project over the weekend and put the time down as PTO instead.
The thing is; it’s not your job to bring problems to your boss; it’s your job to bring solutions. If all you’re doing is telling them that the project can’t be done in time that doesn’t help. You have to tell the bosses what it will take to get the project done.
If certain aspects of the project are non-mission critical and can be moved to the back burner those need to be identified and the team can stop devoting resources to them. If you need additional resources for the mission critical aspects you need to let the bosses know that.
You started with a specific question … and now you’ve expanded this to the entire industry … maybe you’re working in the wrong industry …
Now it sounds like the company isn’t giving you too much work … rather you do not put in enough hours to get the work done … and as the least loyal of the team, you get all the shit work … management wants you to quit, so they can replace you with someone who will give twice as much work for the same pay, and not be as whiny …
I’m going to reverse myself here and buck the trend of this thread … I’m not saying you should do this, but you should at least consider it, perhaps with modifications it will be helpful (e.g. not a grain of salt, but the whole damn 10 lbs bag) … :
1] Stop complaining to the managers … you’ve spoken your peace, you don’t need to repeat yourself … do your work the best you can and absolutely stop worrying about everybody else’s work … the solution to every last one of your problems is to work 80 hrs/wk …
2] Seriously reconsider your career choice … this problem you describe is an old one … I believe laws were passed to prevent the worst abuses of this situation (jobs normal paid hourly (with overtime) being paid as salary (thus no overtime)) … is taking a cut in pay worth not having to emotionally dump on the internet? …
3] In the corporate world; there are sheep, dogs and pigs … choose wisely …
3a] Read Alice in Wonderland … apply to your workplace candor …
Here’s a tale for you, at the end of a 10 hours shift earning the overtime rate of $42/hr in 1994 … I loudly announced to the crew that it was time to go to my real job (wife and kids) and thanx for the vacation time here … my immediate supervisor went ballistic, like guys holding him back to avoid a fist-fight, about as angry as ever a man has been towards me, just for putting family before job … people who hate themselves will hate you for loving yourself …
Kind of a different annoying scenario… In my experience, those that try to juggle 18 balls but drop 17 of them and then mop up the mess get recognition for “saving the day” over those that never drop balls in the first place.
i.e. those that create drama get credit for dealing with the drama over those that don’t create drama in the first place (but still get things done).
Your post is a bit confusing. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or just … tough-lovie. Anyway I think you may have hit it on the head with this part. I suspect that I may be perceived as disloyal because I don’t quietly accept every task tossed my way. I do take on a lot, though. One thing that’s missed in their perception is that I’m a very fast and efficient worker. Given the same workload, I consistently finish in 4 hours what all my coworkers finish in a day or two. Given that, if I quietly worked all unpaid overtime asked of me, I’d probably be running the company single-handedly!
(I’m being a bit flippant, but I actually do run a company single-handedly in my personal time… the one that I launched a couple years as a side hustle.)
Is your manager directly pushing the other people on your team to show the urgency you know is required? Sometimes a worker has the clout to get a team moving, but sometimes you can’t offer either a punishment or a reward. The manager doing it - maybe in a 5 minute meeting at the start of the day - proves the job is important.
Don’t ask for the manager to prioritize - give your best guess at what can get done in time. She may change stuff, but most of what you propose will get accepted. Certainly go for finishing everything, but it is better to toss one topic off the plane to lighten the load than have them all unfinished.
Is your manager aware that the job is impossible? Did it get dumped on her? Maybe you won’t get penalized for not finishing if she can push back on the idiots who started late. I assure you that management is not a unified entity.
And for a technical suggestion, if the three of you are up to it, go for slides with lots of pictures and few words, which will save you time in writing and proofing the slides. But you have to be up enough on the material to say more or less the same stuff for a slide with two bullets as one with 6.
And of course, schedule in relatively more discussion and less presentation. A lot less writing, more feedback for you, and I’d hope more involving for the customers. The hardest part of these things is often cutting off discussion, but if you need to stretch it that won’t be an issue.
Having worked at places where people literally work 60, 80+ hours (which means 6+ days a week, 8am to 9pm or even later), my advice is to seriously consider whether you want to continue working in that sort of environment. I’ve seen plenty of other companies where people skip out at 5. Because here’s the thing about companies where they expect their people to put in crazy hours - they also tend to not want to hear about how you have “too much work”. They want to see you putting in those extra hours to meet that deadline.
They also tend to want you to WANT to put in those hours. A lot of those types of companies feel that they are giving you an incredible opportunity to be there. Or they just want you to STFU and do your job without complaint.
I don’t know that infuriating your boss does your family any favors.
JcWoman’s correct. Typically the customers is going to look at how the entire team did, not single out one star to bring with them when they take their business elsewhere.
Too true. I worked at one place that served dinner and expected you to stay until 9 pm not because a lot of work got done, but because the managers wanted to make it look like they were really pushing the project hard - though it was a disaster. Though staying for dinner was supposedly voluntary, the one person who left at a reasonable time - not early - got an unsatisfactory rating.
I split. Best thing I ever did.
One of my best managers told me: “I expect there will be people who tell you that you shouldn’t talk about seeing problems ahead.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve spent my whole life hearing that little girls look prettier with their mouth shut.”
“Well, one of the reasons we gave you this promotion is because you see problems others don’t. Another is that you dare mention problems others see but don’t dare mention. So please don’t listen to the people who call you a little girl.”
Managers who are ok with people dropping balls so long as those people look unstressed (that is, managers who are ok with people who don’t give a shit) aren’t particularly good at tracking, to put it mildly.
In all fairness, usually I’ve had to push projects hard because they have hard deadlines and are short on time or resources. I don’t think I’ve worked anyplace where so much effort was spent on making projects appear as if they were being pushed hard.
I have worked at companies where management (including myself) didn’t do jack shit all day. I’ve also seen a lot of managers who really are incapable of providing anything resembling leadership. Often it’s an organizational issue. i.e. your “manager” is some person you maybe met once (or nonce) who works in some other office halfway across the country.
There’s plenty of organizations where that wouldn’t fly. I’ve told this story before, but we had an first year engineer get fired for suggesting that people be allowed to work four ten-hour days. The mill manager explained; “If he’s not already working five ten-hour days he’s fucking me.”