Struggling with Project Managers (who are former devs)
Posted by sociallydeclined@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 18 comments
I fully expect to be downvoted with this complaint, but I keep running into issues with project managers who were former junior devs. I want to emphasize "junior" because the type of project managers I am referring to always mention that they disliked or weren't "good at" being a developer for the short time that they were.
I've been on different teams and have had wonderful project managers who seem to understand our product(s) from multiple lenses. My business seems to think though that having a technical background contributes to being a good project manager. This sounds correct in theory, but in practice, the type of project managers I refer to are often downright rude, egotistical, incompetent coworkers with control issues. A lot of them skip over understanding the purpose of a ticket and will focus on counting story points instead. I am frustrated as I work cross-functionally and this is the third time I've run into this.
Does anyone have advice? Can anyone relate?
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
I think the previous dev thing is a coincidence. It just sounds like a bad pm to me.
The pms I know who used to be devs have all been great. But I’ve had lots of pms that are crappy in these ways.
Pleasant-Database970@reddit
They are bad PMs. But the fact that they were once devs, gives them reason to believe that all their bad choices are justified. Ppl like this are the worst. But like you said, it's not all of them.
rayfrankenstein@reddit
I honestly don't know how much of it is ego and how much of it is the system that developers from what the business incentivizes and disincentivizes.
Here's a important question you need to get the answer to: **are your team's story points staying within the team or are they being funneled up to upper management and shown to them as some kind of performance metric?** If the latter and your skip-level manager is getting a big Excel spreadsheet with all the story points of the teams compared, then that means your manager is incentivized to squeeze the team hard to produce as many story points as possible. And your is probably only going to be looking at that, as opposed to the quality of the work or its innovativeness, because it's those story point numbers that get him a promotion or a bonus.
DualActiveBridgeLLC@reddit
I had 14 years dev before being asked to become a manager for the last 3 years. Most management problems are not technical problems. Having dev experience as a dev engineer is valuable for (1) relating to developers (2) understanding what positive development experience and negative experience looks like (3) every so often having to slap your dick on the table against 'ideas' guys (4) Finding/fostering talent
That said, most of why people say I am a good manager draws very little from my dev experience. Shielding developers, negotiating with stakeholders, positive 1x1s, interviewing, motivating the team, fighting for salary increases. Most of that comes more from customer facing technical support. Well...and being happily married for almost 2 decades, and being a dad for half that.
People that were juniors and then made managers do not have a good foundation for 1-4. They are also what I call climbers, where the pride in the work & people is not what motivates them. They probably 'focus on counting story points' because they think that is was makes them the best manager. That could be because of a personality defect or messed-up systemic issues.
If you are running into multiple people like this it sounds systemic. To fix it you need to have a lot of money where you can buy a controlling position in the organization, and then you let go the people causing the organizational corruption. I assume you do not have that, so I have no solutions other than looking for a different company.
WesolyKubeczek@reddit
Excuse me sir, but it seemed like you said you were slapping your dick on the table.
travelinzac@reddit
You described my current "manager" to a tee. Lacking experience, sees themselves as a delegating dictator. Obsessed with loading more points onto the board. 1:1s are pointless if I don't drive. Her calendar is just all the same meetings as the team + 1 leadership update Mon morning. Cool I can show up to that to give updates and still be a top contributor? So why do they exist? They don't keep business noise away. They don't keep stakeholders expectations in check. They don't provide any value whatsoever. Infact I'd say they're a net negative, actively dragging down the output of every dev around them. When they leave for PTO suddenly things are a well oiled machine. I wish it could just stay that way.
just_anotjer_anon@reddit
A good takeaway here is that it does add something to your palette that you're having previous dev experience.
The idea of shielding development teams, is something you'd both have tried and not have tried if you're having 5+ years of experience. And honestly, it's a world apart.
I'd expect any project manager with 5+ years of dev experience, would be more clear on this particular idea than most other project managers will be.
It should give the baseline of knowing what's nice to have project managers do. But if it's someone that was a dev for a year and a half, then went PMing. Then their experience could have been all in one project with anything from a very good PM they didn't notice and have no clue why was gold, or a very bad one which they're trying to copy one to one.
ForearmNeckDay@reddit
The creampie is definitely incredibly relevant!
troymclure696@reddit
Whoa that last paragraph took me by surprise...it's so nonchalant. Even if OP had the money, the shareholders might not even wanna sell
KosherBakon@reddit
Great answer that few people will truly appreciate. Hopefully buying some gold for an award will get this more visibility.
TimMensch@reddit
Most of the best PMs I've had in my career have been ex-junior-programmers.
I find the theory that they would be good to be correct.
That doesn't mean that every junior developer will make a good PM, as your experience shows.
Honestly is sounds like they're jerks. If that's a pattern, then I'm going to guess that your company doesn't have a sufficient "not a jerk" filter in their hiring process. Which frankly reflects poorly on management, since the folks most likely to approve of and hire jerks are themselves either jerks or pushovers. You can't be tolerant of negative behavior in the workplace.
So it's more of a problem with your company than with ex-programmers.
sociallydeclined@reddit (OP)
That's what the consensus seems to be.
With the pattern that I've been seeing, I've formed some sort of immature narrative in my head that these coworkers just have ego issues. Regardless of this, you're correct in that my company does not have a good hiring process for weeding out jerks.
Regular-Active-9877@reddit
Delete anything on your company computer that isn't work related. Forward any HR emails to a personal address.
HackVT@reddit
Just simply ask to discuss a challenge offline and say “I didn’t want to bring this up in front of the group but what you suggested doesn’t work in 2024 for the following reasons based on technology changes x, y, z. I really appreciate your sight and willingness to help here but I need you to trust us “.
cachemonet0x0cf6619@reddit
it’s not the PM you have issue with it’s the process. I’m like you, i don’t like story points, they’re a joke. I also don’t like time trackers but find them useful for helping me estimate tasks.
it could also be a culture thing. Are you able to kick back a story to ask for more details? If the story is unclear ask for clarification.
CalmTheMcFarm@reddit
Story point can be useful, but the team must agree on what they are ranking. For my team, when I joined them they were a mess, and estimation was even more of a crapshoot than I'd experienced elsewhere. I insisted that we approach story points as an estimate of complexity only, not time. I also insisted that as a team we go back through old work with estimates and find exemplars for each value. Over the course of a few sprints the team got comfortable with both estimating and their relative skill levels.
I think in OP's position there's a need to push back on the project managers, remind them that not every developer is equally skilled or confident, so counting story points as a sprint goal is the wrong way to do it (where "it" is everything).
If the project managers are displaying little in the way of actual project management skill, then OP should go to management and forcefully request that the PMs get the training that they clearly need in order to be better at their jobs.
just_anotjer_anon@reddit
Also the fact story points really tries to advocate for simpler groupings. Instead of 1.5 days, 3 hours etc.
It speeds the process up, especially once the team gets a hold of it. I've never liked estimating time, but sometimes I'm asked to. But one the few teams at which we were allowed to use story points - it always worked out quite well after a 3 or so months.
It's only an instrument to gauge an idea, at the end of the day - a good release cycle is agile and non important tasks can be moved to the next release.
TopTraffic3192@reddit
Yep , this is what we got to ad well ,measuement of complexity. As it always seems to longer , goes across sprints or another scenario that was discovered.
The goal is to deliver the function and meet the acceptance critiera. And yes , we get estimate wrong , quite often....
Really enjoyed reading your post, thanks.