5 Reasons You Don’t Want to be the Project Manager
Posted June 1st, 2006Categories: Technical, Corporate Life, Project Management
I’ve been on both sides of the Project Manager (PM) debate throughout my career. I’ve worked with them, I’ve been one, and I’ve had them work for me. On some projects I’ve seen way too much PM, and on others I’ve seen far too little.
One thing that gets me is the number of people in school right now that actually want to be a PM when they hit the “real world”. It’s a good living, and I laugh because I used to say the same thing. But I have to wonder if some of these guys know what they’re getting into.
The role has its purposes
There’s a purpose for the role, and I believe it is necessary for a successful project even if there isn’t a single person dedicated to filling the role. Someone needs to play the part. The need for a plan and to track the plan on every project is helpful for everyone to understand what the expectations are and how we’re meeting them.
However, it’s a part with a double-edged sword of responsibility. I laugh at the one phrase that sums up a typical PM’s role: “Are you done yet?” I think there’s some humorous truth to the stereotype given in such a generic (and to the people actually doing the work, annoying) statement.
So, you aren’t a total anti-PM extremist. Why the list?
I can think of some reasons why I like being a PM for a project, but the reasons I don’t far outweigh anything I can come up with. I was originally going to make a pros/cons list about playing the role of a PM, but the reasons I wouldn’t want to be one made me laugh too much to want to clutter it with anything else.
Reasons you don’t want to be the PM:
- You chance only being seen as valuable by other PM’s and/or upper management. On paper, you’re a gold mine. Everyone actually doing the work around you actually notices how little you bring to the table.
- You can be viewed as the lowest ranked position in the management hierarchy by upper management. (i.e. an expendable resource that couldn’t possibly have their upper-level insights.)
- You’re usually assumed being the least technically capable person on the team because you spend most of your time planning and tracking instead of actually showing others you can do the work you’re telling them to get done by next Tuesday.
- If things go wrong, the finger pointing from the technical side starts with your inability to plan the project well. If you really don’t know the low-level details of how things work, you can’t very well tell them they should have been able to deliver faster.
- Likewise, if things get heated up from the upper management levels, the “crap rolls downhill” theory kicks in and it usually ends up right at your feet.
Disclaimer
Now, I know this is pretty stereotypical of PM’s. I freely admit there are plenty of cases where some of these reasons don’t apply. However, I’ve seen each one of these reasons hold true for people they shouldn’t have even applied to. (i.e. a very technical savvy person being assumed incapable, or a very good PM being thought of as worthless just because even though other factors affected the project.)
At any rate, the list I came up with still makes me laugh mostly because I can visualize real scenarios where they happened. What reasons can you come up with that would make you avoid wanting to be a Project Manager?
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June 1st, 2006 at 8:55 am
I think PM is the most over-rated position in any company. Departments start producting MS Project files instead of software if they aren’t careful. What’s needed are clearly defined goals and a technical lead who can call BS on his staff if they are wasting time. Demos show proof of work and peer review keeps vaporware from appearing. The tech lead needs a solid resource manager to keep company politics away from the team and defend the tech lead’s back.
The PMP certification is just a way for non technical folks to justify leeching off of fat Fortune 500 IT budgets.
June 1st, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Well, since we are finger pointing…Kyle’s evident ignorance of how and why software is actually produced illustrates why we keep code monkeys in the basement. They just don’t get it. They think the project purpose is for them to self indulgently code until they achieve some level of satisfaction.
You don’t dare put them in front of clients, your own managers cant bear the sight of them, and they consistently bite the hand that feeds them – yours.
Grow up monkeys – you get to code because I generate sufficient client confidence that what our company produces will meet their objectives, not because your code is somehow “special and unique”.
Heck, these days, outsourcing to Eastern Europe for a quarter of the cost gets me the same production, without the aggravation. Sure, being coders, they’re silly monkeys as well, but at 25cents on the dollar the additional cost needed to resolve the seeming inability of coders everywhere to follow specs and schedules, or to communicate rationally, can be absorbed without increasing my heart rate.
June 1st, 2006 at 1:30 pm
GJones– How’s the personnel turnover rate in your department looking? I’d guess any coder worth his/her salt won’t stick around long when they realize what your attitude toward them is. They’ll go places where they’ll be treated like humans instead of monkeys.
I hope that Eastern European outsourcing is working well for you. I’ve heard a fair few horror stories.
June 4th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Comments 1. and 2. are two extremes of the same scale. KyleT is the coder from hell, and gJones is the management equivalent! KyleT: software development managers have to make budget & schedule commitments up the chain, to their own managers. And in order to do that, they have to require compliance down the chain, from their own staff. If you don’t understand that, I can only assume that you’ve never been personally responsible for bringing in a large project on time & on budget. gJones: Wow, all that “monkey” talk
I agree with Kia. That’s really offensive terminology in my opinion. Why not just call them all “dropout deadbeat shitheads”, and be done with it? You need an attitude update, IMHO! Just my 2c …
June 4th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Indeed this post was not meant to demean developers over PMs or vice-versa. Perhaps I should start a series on the importance of roles in a large project environment weighing in on the value of each one.
This particular post was simply intended to be a humorous list on why you wouldn’t want to be in the role of a PM. I’m sure others that have been in this role can truly relate if they’ve been a developer before as well.
October 6th, 2006 at 7:25 am
PM’s are an essential part of any successful project, I am a coder myself and would hate to be a PM it is just a bit of a horrendous job. When it is done well the PM keeps the project on time and course handles arguments with the customers / management better than a coder generally can do. I think they main issue with a PM is the title and the sort of people it sometimes attracts (thinking of you here gjones) - if the title was projecft coordinator instead of manager then it would attract the right sort of person to the role and cut out the occasional “god complex” personalities that some people get.