"Are you don't yet? Why aren't you done yet? Help me update infinite plans that will be outdated in a week. Also, I just promised a bunch of stuff... all that stuff we already promised, I think you can do that faster."

When I was a dev, I once had a PM with no technical skills that decided he would "learn to program to help catch us up"... He did not succeed.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Hey, at least he had the right idea. He saw that the delay was due to a lack of skilled workers and tried to fix that problem instead of just talking more about the project. That's more awareness than most PMs have in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago

If a PM has enough time to try to learn programming on the side, then they are a shit PM. A PM should shield the team from unneccessary meetings, be the main initial contact point and the initial refinement guy. Those are 4 seperate jobs at once.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (3 children)

PMs act that way because people above them ask for updates regularly. Bad PMs don't know how to push back. If you need things done faster, the answer is usually "we need more resources".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

If you need things done faster, the answer is usually "we need more resources".

Like having 9 women to make a baby in a month?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"we need more resources" is bounded by the rate at which you can incorporate new teams members without absolutely destroying your productivity, or having a bunch of untrained fools running around breaking things (of course the later is standard at many places already, so I guess it doesn't always matter).

The right answer is usually : "No". Or at least "Prioritize". Or "This is what we need to get it done" at which point they might start to get software takes time to make decently, and they don't want software that doesn't work decently in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

"Sure! You just have to choose which of these other things you want deprioritized since we're already going at full tilt"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Calling people “resources” and the mindset that delivery teams are just a number that you can spend money to increase is a mark of poor project and personnel management, as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

"Are you don't yet?

Yes, I am don't work here anymore, good bye.