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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3866 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 14, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It's fine as long as you stay away from project management.

Why's that?

It's boring and stressful. You're essentially an administrator getting yanked in a million directions with little to no power.

Of course this can vary between sectors, organisations and projects but project managment being a kind of shitty gig consistently been my impression from my own career and those of my friends and acquaintances.

This is mostly in the Nordics and UK mind you.

That's an interesting perspective. I've never been a project manager, but I've enjoyed the project management I've done in other roles, and I've considered switching to be one. Yes, project managers are somewhat impotent. I view them as little extension arms of the higher level leaders, to be their eyes and ears on the ground and report back. But I guess if you have a good mind for organization and setting up mechanisms, you don't want to do anything too technical, and you want less power and less responsibility, I feel like it could be alright.

You're not really going to get less responsibility, only less power.

Well truly, I never really understood why anyone wants power at work. Who cares if you have power? It's a paycheck. As long as I'm doing my job and getting paid for it, that's all that matters to me. If I don't get to command anyone, that's just fine with me.

The only way I'd feel differently is if I had a true passion for something that I needed to see done, which I've rarely ever felt about work. And I get the feeling most others feel the same way. We pretend otherwise, since there's an unspoken rule that you need to pretend that you're really passionate about work, but to be honest, it's hard to always be truly passionate about whatever work throws your way, and it's hard to maintain passion for so long when work grinds you down so much.

This is like saying "why do people want money or status?". Power gives you the ability to accomplish things, whether that is furthering your career, helping people, grifting, avoiding work, furthering a cause etc.

What you don't want is responsibility. Power frequently comes with some responsibilities and you have to weigh whether the power is worth the responsibilities, just like you have to weigh whether paycheck is worth the responsibilities.

Well, if you're defining power so generally, why do you feel that as a project manager you get less power but just as much responsibility? Can you indicate the context for what you mean by that? What sort of responsibility are you referring to?

There's a difference between being the manager of a mission-critical project that directly reports to a C-level exec and the manager of a project that is one of many projects your company runs to categorize capital expenses better.

The former has a lot of power, because it's basically a "Head of X" position that you can transform into a real "Head of X" position when the project is over. He or she can yank the best people from existing teams to work on the project full time and doesn't have to worry about their compensation or covering their absence.

The latter doesn't even get his own personal fief like any line manager does. He or she has to go to existing teams and beg for estimates, resources, commitments and results. Any piddling team lead or section head can brush him or her off, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that by Friday. We've been fixing a production incident and you know Barry knows the system better than anyone, that why he's been assigned to your project, but this incident means he's busy until next Tuesday. Oh, and the vendor we've sourced the driver from has raised its prices, so we'll need you to approve additional $15k. No, how can I negotiate with them? I'm not procurement. And you might want to take it up with Larry if you want Barry to work on your project instead of fixing production issues, Dave. I'm just following the priorities I've been given."

So poor Dave goes to Larry, who explains he's the fifth PM he's seen today. No, there are no resources. Look, here's the meeting minutes from March when the resources were assigned to projects. It's written right here under "Risks": overbooking likely if system stability doesn't improve. And guess what, Dave? We're overbooked. Yes, I can tell Harry to ask Barry to work overtime. Can you pay for it from your budget? Oh, it was the first line item that was slashed? Guess what, HR has slashed our overtime budget, too."

What do you mean? I'm using the standard definition of power.

the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events.

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