I made that up at my toxic job (called it Father Brown’s Hat at first, but no one knew anything about English country priests’ hats). But here’s how it works:
A CEO who micro-manages everything, then everyone else. Theoretically, there were middle managers, but they were functionally at the bottom too, since the boss would sidestep them and come hover over your shoulder while you worked, changing projects minute-by-minute.
In addition, we also had Mood Of The Moment Management, Blame Everything on a Former Employee, and a lot of other Unique Biz Labels we made up to keep ourselves sane.
The best part about salesmen who agree to everything is they allow the equally clueless customer-side people they’re selling to to believe that your product is so magic that no decisions are necessary on their part either.
It makes all the biz types very happy to believe that; let’s go get lunch!
That’s PERFECT! I never had a name for it where I was, but that’s perfect. You 'da Man!
Dayum, I’m thinking maybe us SDMB grizzled IT combat veterans could start a project repair consultancy.
Sorta the equivalent of the oil well firefighters, where the first thing you do is clear away all the ordinary workers who allowed stuff to catch fire. Then you set off a large bomb in the middle of the fire. Then you cut away all the wreckage. Then you start putting the well back together.
And, like oil well fire fighters we charge a lot of money. Up front. And we take charge of the fire scene; no incumbent management meddling.
Well that’s another fine mess you’ve got yourself into.
Honestly, it sounds like a typical IT project. I’m an SME on two right now with two MSFT dev teams. That’s in addition to my SharePoint Admin/Architect duties for the same client. The objective is to build Dynamic365 custom solutions to replace three (or five, depending on the day) legacy solutions. The client can’t effectively elaborate what they want so I’m there to translate the requirements, explain the existing processes hosted on SP, identify gaps and process improvements. The MSFT dev teams is on their third iteration of staff because the first two tries failed for reasons I’m certain you can guess in three, all being correct.
Honestly, if I didn’t have my core SP role and all I had was the two MSFT dev projects, I’d be looking around for the lifeboats. So yeah, there is no fixing this unless you are prepared to wear multiple hats and become not just the PM but the business process SME, Test/QA lead, change manager, and a much much much nicer customer advocate and fluffer. Make them love you to make it harder for your boss to dislike you. Or you know, seriously consider abandoning ship.
LSLGuy‘s philosophy is extremely cynical, yet sadly not too far off the mark. I’m glad I’m out of the corporate world.
Personally, I think leaving before they get the chance to fire you is your best move here. If you’re so inclined, you might be doing your boss - and the next guy in your position - a kindness by explaining in great detail why you’re leaving and in what ways you were set up to fail. Will your boss listen? Maybe not. But if you have the conversation while still employed, you’re just a complainer. If you do it after getting fired, it’s excuses.
But “a good employee is walking away and here’s why” might - might - spark a come-to-Jesus moment.
Not that you need to care what happens after you’re gone, but this seems like the only shot at changing the culture.
If the boss is an idjit, you’re better off telling his boss; that’s the guy who needs to know he’s got an idjit in a responsible position. But the fact he’s got a direct report who’s an idjit that he doesn’t realize is an idjit is pretty strong evidence that your grandboss is an idjit too.
Sometimes it’s turtles all the way down and idjits all the way up.
I like to think I’m not cynical; just realistic. Made harshly so by the rampant human failings of IT as practiced these days. Had the OP writtin in when he first got the job to tell us about the cool projects & cool opportunities I’d have been full of congratulations, not cautions.
But ISTM that here in this thread the OP knows the awful truth; hell, he’s got more experience than I do in similar jobs. Like most of us he just needs a little supportive validation before resignedly and regretfully doing the thing he knows needs to be done. Validating; yeah, that’s the ticket. Or so I tell myself.
Yeah. Typically IT project run by management consultants.
Sure, I guess I could leave, but where would I go? Most likely just some other similar organization with similar “IT project problems”.
Maybe I should go into the sales side? I kind of feel like I enjoy meeting with the clients and talking about this shit more than I like making sure it actually gets delivered.
But becoming a salescritter does mean surrendering your mortal soul to the Devil. Are you up for that? It also means luscious commissions and expense account lunches. Once you get over that pesky “conscience” thing.
As the old saw has it: Sincerity is the key to success. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made!
I already feel like half my career has been spent rescuing someone else’s fucked up projects. It’s not satisfying work. Plus companies with projects that messed up generally don’t have the budget to hire a bunch of expensive troubleshooters. They always seem to prefer just grinding ahead with whatever it is they are doing.
So oddly enough, on our last all-hands call, the head of my group seemed to recognized that both of my projects are exactly the sort of projects we don’t want to be doing as a company:
Project A - Fast paced death sprints where we are handed a bunch of requirements and unreasonable start and delivery dates, told “BUILD THIS!” and then set the team in motion without any sense for whether it CAN be built in that timeframe.
Project B - Large-scale projects with unsophisticated clients where we sell them the world, then expect them to direct us what to build without any guidance or support from us.
Sort of like strapping the team to a rocket (A) vs inviting the client to build their own rocket before launching the team on it (B).
Yeah. Which is why a) my suggestion is facetious, and b) your experience in your prior consultancies is so poor. Businesses just can’t seem to admit they’re on fire even when they obviously are.
Ref the rest of your post …
It is very interesting that your group head has started to smell the smoke. Is that person your boss or grandboss? Do you think their clue-bird arrived from below, from above, or from their own insight? Which of those it is will matter hugely for the future trajectory of these projects and your role
I guess technically he’s my “grandboss” now. He assigned another Director to be my manager since he apparently realized he can’t be direct manager to 80 reports. Technically he’s my peer, but he’s been with the company 2 years so he knows who everyone is and where everything is (which is what I need).
I suppose it’s encouraging that the head of our group is recognizing some of the gaps and is taking steps to address them. Unfortunately the way they seem to address most of them is with 30 page Powerpoint decks and long Excel checklists.
Problem seems to be they can’t decide if we are an advisory consulting practice, a product-based professionally services team, a digital agency/UX design ship, or project managing custom software development. I’ve worked in all those places and feels like they are trying to do all of them at once (but without providing me with business analysts, technical resources, UX designers, or any of the other people who would be working in those agencies. Got plenty of salespeople and middle managers helping out though.
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You’re playing the game at a larger scale with more experience than I have. So my “insights” are probably obvious to you.
But the classic failing of small-minded business, even if they have some scale and a batch of money behind them, is inability to focus. Every time my sales-centric uberboss saw a bright shiny object, that was what we were going to specialize in, starting right now. In addition to, not instead of, the specialties we’d been given yesterday and the day before and …
Unrestrained corporate ADHD is a real danger to worker’s sanity and the company’s survival. Whether that is due to one charismatic ADHD person in charge, or it’s an emergent property of too many otherwise sensible people dashing in too many directions a la Chinese firedrill all shouting “Faster to market! Faster to market!”
This might be the time to drop this kind of stereotype. It’s right up there with ‘Indian giving’. I’m neither Chinese or Native American yet these make me cringe. As does ‘old wives tale’.
And no, this is not merely political correctness. Words hurt and perpetuate harm.
To me the term connotes something silly that American high school kids did/do. What they named it back in the day and why are another matter. It’s certainly not a statement about modern fire response practice in the PRC / ROT.
It’s a combination of a bunch of different factors. “Tech unicorn syndrome” where they have lots of startup money and lots of press so everyone starts believing their own bullshit. They are growing so fast that not only are they outgrowing themselves, they have a lot of really junior people in positions of responsibility they shouldn’t be in simply because they’ve been loyal employees for the past few years. And they seem to hire a lot of young ex-consultants, so everyone has this overinflated sense of doing more important stuff than they are really doing.
I’m positive now. I’ve only been there a few months, but I absolutely hate it. I mean I expect a certain level of corporate nonsense with any job. But now I dread every call because I feel like each one just opens a brand new can of wormshit. Nothing here seems to work the way I would expect it to, or how anyone who works here tells me how it’s supposed to.
I’ll bet you anything that within the year your company will require you all to do the 212:The Extra Degree training. For those that haven’t had it, the training boils (ha-ha) down to: you need to work harder so the company, stockholders and upper-management can make more money.
Thought it would be fun to revisit this thread 4 months into my new job.
I have come to the conclusion that in an organization of over 400 people and half a billion $ in funding that can’t define job roles and responsibilities, has no processes (formal or informal), can’t even provide reports on normal standard project metrics (like how much my team billed last week), where everyone’s project is out of control, and basically can’t even consistently tell me what clients and projects I should be leading is probably based on a system of appearing excessively busy and covering one’s own ass.
So I think my first goal for the New Year will be to find a new job.
