I actually have both an MBA and a PMI PMP certification. They are apples and oranges. An MBA is a two year masters level program consisting of courses in accounting, finance, economics, marketing, organizational behavior, strategy and so on.
A PMP certification is a 200 multiple choice test I blasted out in like 3 weeks of studying.
They are different much in the same way “management” is different from “project management”.
How is he going to throw anyone under the bus? His team built all that shit. The new manager can always be like “hmmm…that last guy didn’t do a good job with this stuff”.
The way you “bounce back” is you need to get better at building relationships with your bosses. “Manager skills” are all well and good, but to be successful, you need people supporting you. Someone who is your advocate at meetings you typically don’t get invited to where they decide who to hire, fire and promote.
A lot of engineer types don’t like doing that. They typically rely on their “work” to get noticed. They’re work may get them promoted to management or project management, but they might actually not have the skills or aptitude for it (it’s called the “halo” effect…it’s in the PMI PMBOK guide book).
Really a project manager’s job is not to produce. It’s to coordinate and manage the politics. It’s a full time job. I’ve done technical work and I’ve done PM work and I’m pretty good at both, but not both at the same time.
My advice is to do what I did years ago when something similar happened to me. Once you calm down, figure out what you really want to do. Would you rather have this guy be the PM while you take on a separate but equal “architect” role? Or do you eventually want to PM projects yourself? Whatever it is, sit down with your boss and discuss what you need to do to get to where you want to be.
And if you feel you can’t do that with your boss, look for another job. Because a place where you get replaced as a lead without any warning or your boss won’t work with you to help manage your career is not a “dream job”. It’s a shitty place to work no matter how cool you think the work your doing is.
I am not in your industry and I can’t speak to a lot of the differences between managerial vs technical roles, so that being said…
I think that you should feel lucky that they didn’t just outright let you go. If your relationship with everyone in the office is as good as you think it is, and no one has any personal vendettas against you, then your managerial skills were honestly probably lacking and the company saw you as a more valuable asset in other capacities. You’re lucky that they did that though instead of just letting you go entirely and replacing you with a new cog in the corporate machine.
Sometimes our dreams are really just out of reach for us. I would say that a dream of mine would be to be a phenomenal vocalist. But, I’m not a great singer. Decent, but not great. And I’m never going to make a career out of it so I better not make that my dream. However, there is hope for you in the sense that perhaps it is within your capacity to learn and grow and become a better manager, to fit into the role of Lead better than you did before, and you might have that opportunity again.
I would honestly sit down with your manager, whoever made this decision, and let them know a few things. First, thank them for keeping you on and allowing you to maintain technical control/influence over the project. Second, ask them what, if anything, you might be able to work on in the future to be a better Lead. Third, ask them why there was no advance warning, no chance to improve or do your job as Lead better than what you were doing (essentially ask why you were replaced surprisingly without warning).
Good luck to you and I hope it all works out in the end.
I’d like to go a little further on this and say that there’s something wrong with the picture of you get demoting for a lack of managerial skills when you’re higher ups are mismanaging. I can’t see a good reason for this rapid turn of events, or setting this up to make it look like a demotion. Obviously there are many details I don’t know, but this could easily have been done by creating seperate tracks that places the new guy on the same level as you, and any change should have been introduced over time. This will affect not just you, but everyone else who hears about it. If there was a problem with your managerial ability it was the mistake of your managers not to have done something about it before, and letting Johnny-come-lately jump rungs on the ladder that way will look bad to everyone. They don’t sound smart enough to realize how that could get bitten in their own asses down the road as a result.
I certainly hope everything works out for you, and who knows, maybe it’s all for the better. But in the end I suggest using this a motivation to find a new job someplace that values their employees more.
I don’t know much about the gaming industry, but I know a lot about the high tech industry in general. It’s not an industry that believes in “good management” in the sense having experienced, knowledgeable professionals direct long-term complex projects in a methodical way. Often companies are run by “serial entrepreneurs”, highly educated dropouts or former investment bankers and management consultants. Mid level management are often “account managers” no better than sales reps. And the actual “framework” employed on a project is “build all this by some arbitrary deadline” which typically requires working until 1am every night.
Generally, unless you project is in trouble, replacing the project manager with someone who was just hired three months ago is a terrible idea. And I would suspect that the only “management experience” that he has that you don’t is that he was someone’s roommate at Stanford or they were in the same start group at Accenture or something like that.
I agree with all of this except for what seems like an assumption that the management style you talk about doesn’t recognize this kind of problem and try to avoid it. This is something happening mid-project, changing horses is usually avoided unless as you say, the project is in trouble.
Not my experience at all. In my 32 years in high tech I’ve never been managed, at any level, by nontechnical people. I’ve had a couple of losers, who moved from other technical areas, but the vast majority have had really excellent technical skills. Sometimes more technical skill than management skill, true. But the biggest disaster I was ever a part of (for a mercifully short time) had professional project managers, but the bean counters did not cause the problems.
However I’ve only worked at A level companies; it might be different for smaller ones.
I’d say his description fits the majority of tech companies, which are B level or below, though it’s a little overstated. For instance, management often has technical background, but may have been promoted out of technical work because they weren’t all that productive that way, or they haven’t kept up with technology over time.
The A level companies are at that level for a reason, but it’s not a matter of size, the management style is a big part of it. With good management today’s B level company may be tomorrow’s A level company, and without good management today’s A level company often is no longer in the picture tomorrow.
That’s kind of the point. Lightnin’ just mentions that he’s not as good at the management aspects, but not exactly what he meant by that. Could be the stuff you got from your MBA, or the more exact project management stuff. PMI pimp just gives your certification, but it’s supposed to validate your actual project management experience; as you know, it’s not (supposed to be) just knockin’ out a test, it’s also a requirement for the PMP to document working as a PM and do continuous renewal of skills.
My sense, from what he wrote, is that he might benefit from both*, but the PMP or even just the CAPM might be quicker to get and add as a credential. He’s in the best position to assess this.
*might, but a traditional MBA is a big commitment or time and money and could also be overkill
It is just gonna sting a little for two weeks, is all.
It is much easier for upper management to lay off someone then to demote them. Cleaner. Easier to explain. If they demoted you, that is actually a huge vote of confidence in you. They expect you to bear it gracefully, stay positive, and that you will even be able to work well with the new guy. And they value your skills so much that they wanted to keep you, even if it made for an awkward situation for everyone. (Keep in mind that this is also awkward for management. They made a dick move and they and everyone knows it. You’re the one getting the sympathy. Management and the new guy get the raised eyebrow.)
I was leading an application packaging team, delivering good results with really tough deadlines. However, the project as a whole was in crisis - daily meetings, too much urgent work and overtime. I lost track of one of my team members because I was personally too busy, and he was running up chat line bill on company phones. In the end, the Project Lead brought in a new team lead to replace me. It hurt, but it was also a recognition of a truth I didn’t want to admit - I was the best technical member in the team, reviewing other work, guiding process, managing the environment, dealing with the hard problems. I wasn’t so good at meetings or managing other peoples time. So it was better that someone with more skills in those areas managed the team aspects, and I handled the technical aspects.
What it did clarify for me was that I had created a niche for myself, and it was going to be really hard to move up in the company, because I was too good at what I was doing. So a few months later I left, and have been contracting for 8 years, with no interruptions.
I wouldn’t say “overkill”. I would say that the time and investment are definitely worth it if you plan to make management your career. But a PMP certification is definitely a much cheaper and more immediately achievable goal.
One of the advantages of an MBA is that you work on a lot of group projects and presentations. That’s like 90% of project management. It’s really the experience working on teams that is the benefit.
Also FWIW, I don’t believe in the “Peter Principle”. At least not what it has come to mean. In reality, the Peter Principle warns us that people who are great individual contributors may not make great team leaders and great team leaders might not be great executives because each has different skills sets. But most people interpret it to mean that companies are all full of idiots because people rise to the point where they are too stupid to rise higher. In actuality, I think there are a number of reasons for organizational incompetence and people aren’t static in their ability to learn new roles.