This time I’m actually asking for a coworker’s issue rather than mine!
TL;DR: She wants to change teams but her current manager (who is not really politically respected but perhaps protected by the director) is grasping to not let her team be divided up amongst other teams. Coworker is unhappy because the manager treats her like crap and only allows her to do administrative work rather than full projects as per her experience level and title. Need some suggestions she can try to “work the politics” to get moved to another team.
So more detail: Although things in the place that I’ve complained about here in the past are getting a bit better due to a organizational culture change supported by management and a shift to Agile/Lean practices and innovation, I still officially report to the crappy manager but unofficially (dotted line) report to one of the new product managers. The workload of the product team being pretty large, I’ve been able to distance myself from the crappy manager quite a lot and now work 100% on the product team and am being mentored by the product manager. Liking it so far!
My coworker is on the same old team under the crappy manager. They’re not getting along well (same issues I had with the manager) and the manager won’t let her take on assignments that she’s fully capable of. She keeps just giving her administrative tasks. This team is very dysfunctional and not embracing the culture change or new Agile/Lean product management approach so my coworker wants to be reassigned (even if only dotted-line like I am) to one of the product teams.
I know from conversations with managers that there have been talks about splitting up the dysfunctional team amongst the product teams. I think that is what ultimately will happen, but the manager and director above her are trying their best to not let that happen. Right now the other managers are respecting their wishes to some extent. Crappy manager has effectively “lost” me so any talk of “losing” another one of her team gets an instant unfavorable reaction.
I advised my coworker to let the product managers know she’s interested in working directly for them and then they’d have to work the politics on their end. I think that’s the best approach although it will take a long time. The product managers are in favor politically while the crappy manager is not. Is there anything else she can do that might succeed faster, short of quitting for another job?