22 ms·

> we hadn’t even received all of the specifications from the customer that we would need to complete the project > And then one of them said “It would be caree

by abeppu 4y ago

> we hadn’t even received all of the specifications from the customer that we would need to complete the project > And then one of them said “It would be career limiting if the client were to hear this.” > I’d met my responsibility to the company – and the company had threatened me as a result. The author interprets that they were threatened. But really, for whom would it be career limiting? Perhaps I'm being too charitable, but the manager could also be read to be making a statement of fact about the perception of their own performance. The author says there's already a project plan and a project manager, and the plan is clearly incomplete and the project manager was not aware for an extended period. Someone's career probably _should_ be limited. But the larger question is, did any of this matter? If the customer is not engaged enough to make clear what they want, is there perhaps an equal amount of dysfunction on the customer side? If they really wanted something delivered, wouldn't they be trying to deliver clear requirements as soon as possible? Or perhaps someone on the customer side is able to get promoted off of being the point person for a 2 year $60M contract before it finishes? Or someone is able to use the slowness and expense of the contracting firm to argue for building an in-house development team?

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
<<If the customer is not engaged enough to make clear what they want Tbh, I sometimes wonder if it is a question of engagement. I just finished a project. Major clusterfuck. And it is a part of a much bigger overhaul. Tons of people are involved and there is maybe one person hidden somewhere that understands how it all fits together ( but my real fear is that the project is so big that no one really knows what this monstrosity is supposed to do, how it is supposed to behave or even how it actually behaves ). People are engaged ( the ones doing the work anyway ), but there is just too many cooks and too many layers to information to be translated from English to English and from English to w/e contractors are from. <<Someone's career probably _should_ be limited. Probably, but based on my experience, there is near zero accountability in manager's circle. It is usually the sacrificial scape goat that gets all the blame and limited career opportunities.
karaterobot 4y ago
As a contractor, I was definitely on some big projects where, from the perspective of an IC in the trenches, it didn't seem like anyone was in charge, or that the people in charge didn't care about it succeeding. In the two examples I'm thinking of, it's been that the client stakeholder has a lot of pull, but not a lot of experience. For example, the top Sales guy decides they want to run a little tech startup inside the company, but they've never actually launched software before. Or, someone in a load bearing role, like the head of product, knows they are out the door (usually moving up in a different, more glamorous organization) and doesn't really care to devote 60 hours a week to this dumb old company anymore.
maxbond 4y ago
If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not really understood what it means to be a manager and what sort of power you have over your reports. Try to think of things from their perspective and imagine this coming from your boss.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    I mean, being threatened is a "cheap education" relative to being fired, sure.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    That's just a fractal version of this same problem. Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living, and not to role play palace intrigue. But certainly it's my experience that this toxicity comes from the top down and I have sympathy with managers who are putting their reports under unreasonable pressure because they are themselves under unreasonable pressure.
    - invig 4y ago
      "Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living" Miss-aligned goals do create all kinds of problems, don't they?
- duped 4y ago
  What do you think an IC is doing when they walk into a room full of managers and declare the project they're managing is horribly mismanaged?
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I wasn't in the room, and a lot of it depends on the vibe, facial expression, atmosphere, personalities, etc. But agreed - as read, my initial interpretation was not even remotely as one of the threat. Perhaps advice, or conclusion, or discussion. It depends hugely what else was said though - I doubt it was truly "and that was the end of that" in the sense that those words were the only ones spoken at that meeting, or outside of that meeting.
- MereInterest 4y ago
  I'd put it in the category of "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" [0]. There is no way for somebody with authority to express a preference without it coming across as a request. The same words that from a trusted coworker would be advice to keep your head down become an implied threat when given from an executive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Yeah, that's fair enough. I have been lucky to have had some managers in the past who were great mentors, very transparent, and have several times during my career actively coached me on what are "Career limiting moves". It is a phrase I have heard without it being sent or received as a threat. I have over-extrapolated and under-empathized though, and realize that in majority of situations for majority of involved folks, that would not be the case. (relatedly, I've also tried to internalize and implement the notion that I can no longer joke with any variation of "don't you know that's a fireable offence? :D" etc. )
    - MereInterest 4y ago
      Good point, and it very much depends on the pre-existing relationship with a manager, along with the context where a statement is given. I could imagine pulling aside a coworker and quietly telling them that they're about to hear about a new project, but that volunteering to work on it would be a dead-end and a career-limiting move. Something in private, informative for an upcoming choice, not a judgment of ongoing projects. That said, the context of the article, calling somebody out in a public setting based on a large amount of work that they just presented on, is very much the opposite of that hypothetical context.
TigeriusKirk 4y ago
I read the statement as less of a threat and more of a "we're going to all ignore this" message. In other words, it's bad for everyone in the room if the situation is officially acknowledged, and so it won't be.
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
Granted, “it would be career limiting” is an ambiguous statement. We can reasonably assume that the story as written omits various context clues, additional communications, body language, and other ensuing events that gave the author a more complete understanding of what the manager meant when they said that.
- lovich 4y ago
  It’s only ambiguous if you haven’t been exposed to corporatese. It’s as ambiguous as the phrase “as per my last email”. He was directly told he was done getting promotions/raises if that information ever made it to the client
  - P_I_Staker 4y ago
    We have a manager that says "like I said" a ton. Pretty sure almost all of them are benign. I don't know that these things are always obvious.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I've been threatened a number of times in my life. The only people who have threatened me directly and without any fig leaves, weren't serious about it; a man on the street once said he'd kill me, and being an dumb 18 year old, I just laughed at him. He didn't do a thing, and I don't think he ever intended to. He just wanted to scare me. (I'm not bragging, this was foolish and cavalier, and I wouldn't respond that way today.) The people who actually intended to make good on it, they were always circumspect and left room for reasonable doubt. Largely, I expect, to make the process easier on themselves; to create sufficient dissonance that they could think of it as giving advice. But of course the advice was, "if you do X, it will be bad for you, because I will respond with Y."

by abeppu 4y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

<<If the customer is not engaged enough to make clear what they want Tbh, I sometimes wonder if it is a question of engagement. I just finished a project. Major clusterfuck. And it is a part of a much bigger overhaul. Tons of people are involved and there is maybe one person hidden somewhere that understands how it all fits together ( but my real fear is that the project is so big that no one really knows what this monstrosity is supposed to do, how it is supposed to behave or even how it actually behaves ). People are engaged ( the ones doing the work anyway ), but there is just too many cooks and too many layers to information to be translated from English to English and from English to w/e contractors are from. <<Someone's career probably _should_ be limited. Probably, but based on my experience, there is near zero accountability in manager's circle. It is usually the sacrificial scape goat that gets all the blame and limited career opportunities.

karaterobot 4y ago

As a contractor, I was definitely on some big projects where, from the perspective of an IC in the trenches, it didn't seem like anyone was in charge, or that the people in charge didn't care about it succeeding. In the two examples I'm thinking of, it's been that the client stakeholder has a lot of pull, but not a lot of experience. For example, the top Sales guy decides they want to run a little tech startup inside the company, but they've never actually launched software before. Or, someone in a load bearing role, like the head of product, knows they are out the door (usually moving up in a different, more glamorous organization) and doesn't really care to devote 60 hours a week to this dumb old company anymore.

maxbond 4y ago

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not really understood what it means to be a manager and what sort of power you have over your reports. Try to think of things from their perspective and imagine this coming from your boss.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  I mean, being threatened is a "cheap education" relative to being fired, sure.
- maxbond 4y ago
  That's just a fractal version of this same problem. Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living, and not to role play palace intrigue. But certainly it's my experience that this toxicity comes from the top down and I have sympathy with managers who are putting their reports under unreasonable pressure because they are themselves under unreasonable pressure.
  - invig 4y ago
    "Most of us are here to get work done and earn a living" Miss-aligned goals do create all kinds of problems, don't they?
duped 4y ago
What do you think an IC is doing when they walk into a room full of managers and declare the project they're managing is horribly mismanaged?

NikolaNovak 4y ago

I wasn't in the room, and a lot of it depends on the vibe, facial expression, atmosphere, personalities, etc. But agreed - as read, my initial interpretation was not even remotely as one of the threat. Perhaps advice, or conclusion, or discussion. It depends hugely what else was said though - I doubt it was truly "and that was the end of that" in the sense that those words were the only ones spoken at that meeting, or outside of that meeting.

MereInterest 4y ago
I'd put it in the category of "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" [0]. There is no way for somebody with authority to express a preference without it coming across as a request. The same words that from a trusted coworker would be advice to keep your head down become an implied threat when given from an executive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Yeah, that's fair enough. I have been lucky to have had some managers in the past who were great mentors, very transparent, and have several times during my career actively coached me on what are "Career limiting moves". It is a phrase I have heard without it being sent or received as a threat. I have over-extrapolated and under-empathized though, and realize that in majority of situations for majority of involved folks, that would not be the case. (relatedly, I've also tried to internalize and implement the notion that I can no longer joke with any variation of "don't you know that's a fireable offence? :D" etc. )
  - MereInterest 4y ago
    Good point, and it very much depends on the pre-existing relationship with a manager, along with the context where a statement is given. I could imagine pulling aside a coworker and quietly telling them that they're about to hear about a new project, but that volunteering to work on it would be a dead-end and a career-limiting move. Something in private, informative for an upcoming choice, not a judgment of ongoing projects. That said, the context of the article, calling somebody out in a public setting based on a large amount of work that they just presented on, is very much the opposite of that hypothetical context.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago

I read the statement as less of a threat and more of a "we're going to all ignore this" message. In other words, it's bad for everyone in the room if the situation is officially acknowledged, and so it won't be.

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago

Granted, “it would be career limiting” is an ambiguous statement. We can reasonably assume that the story as written omits various context clues, additional communications, body language, and other ensuing events that gave the author a more complete understanding of what the manager meant when they said that.

lovich 4y ago
It’s only ambiguous if you haven’t been exposed to corporatese. It’s as ambiguous as the phrase “as per my last email”. He was directly told he was done getting promotions/raises if that information ever made it to the client
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  We have a manager that says "like I said" a ton. Pretty sure almost all of them are benign. I don't know that these things are always obvious.
maxbond 4y ago
I've been threatened a number of times in my life. The only people who have threatened me directly and without any fig leaves, weren't serious about it; a man on the street once said he'd kill me, and being an dumb 18 year old, I just laughed at him. He didn't do a thing, and I don't think he ever intended to. He just wanted to scare me. (I'm not bragging, this was foolish and cavalier, and I wouldn't respond that way today.) The people who actually intended to make good on it, they were always circumspect and left room for reasonable doubt. Largely, I expect, to make the process easier on themselves; to create sufficient dissonance that they could think of it as giving advice. But of course the advice was, "if you do X, it will be bad for you, because I will respond with Y."