My PM doesn’t tell me to do anything. Their job is to prioritize things on the backlog and give status updates. Very, very rarely do they tell me that whatever I’m working on no longer needs to be done at all.

Generally speaking, if I do get an interruption, it’s from the person above the Project Manager. And they’re more of the “shit hit the fan” variety of problems that need to be resolved.

My PMs are all about time allocation… yet they fail to understand what research is.

Pm: How long until you finish designing and implementing this thing?

Me: I cant put a time on it, weve never done this before and have no points of reference. So i could figure it out today or a month from today…i cant give you a time because its bever been implemented.

PM: Sighs in dissapproval… ill just say 5 business days. Hows that.

Me: if we are just making up numbers, sure

Sounds like you got someone with experience in hardware. They’re all about just shitting a date on paper.

The key to good PMs seems to be that they will make up the schedule without even talking to you. The schedule will be made up either way, so if they can not bother me that’s a ok.

My good PMs understood that their role was to attend meetings and create a buffer between myself (who understood what had to be done and was doing most of the work) and the higher-ups. The awful PMs were the ones who thought they were running the show and driving everything.

Our current PM gets involved in projects from day dot. Plans out vague technical ideas, makes up timelines, gets involved in meetings and suggests things to clients, totally rules the roost.

Shame she’s completely fucking clueless about any of the actual work, really.