Careerchat II

[Datepalm]

What the hell goes on in your industry?! Why would people bring up - with names? or at least at a level of anonymity so low you have no trouble identifying the names - details of affairs and workplace drama/toxicity, at an interview with a competitor? Hell, I work in a really, really small field in a country and an industry both noted for their informality and close personal ties and social context of everyone involved, and when I had personal issues drifting through my employability, which I would say were both more relevant, and less grossly intimate, to my professional capabilities (mental health issues related to situations of difficult field conditions, lets say) THAT was handled in much more oblique, careful, sensitive ways, with everyone careful to name no names and say nothing direct, and this between various referees and potential employers all of whom were close friends and not really competitors, not rumors about 'those guys over there'. Dynamics of relationships and toxic environments and stuff? Flat out off limits under professional circumstances.

[Iskaral Pust]

I don't want to defend it because I never sought that information and it was uncomfortable to hear it but if several people mention it as a significant reason for leaving an employer then the (perceived) situation has presumably crossed over from being a personal relationship to being a problem in professional conduct.  

No-one (should) cares who's in a relationship with who.  Employers should care about any situation that causes successful employees to depart en masse, regardless how sensitive the topic.  The turnover at that competitor firm in the last three years has been very, very high.  There seems to have been a weird toxic stew brewing and I doubt I know all of it. 

[Datepalm]

It just seems way out there that this is something people would even discuss under the circumstances. I'll give a frank - no names mentioned - assessment of a place possibly being stressful, or toxic, or with a tendency to under invest in their junior hires, or any of that kind of thing to, say, a friend looking to work there, off record over a beer. To a competitor at a job interview? What the hell? Just...never. Reasons for leaving? *mumble mumble looking for new opportunities/well, they fired me*. Nothing more ever.

Seems like a massive breach of basic collegiality on the part of those 4 people. There better turn out to literally be a dead body and suitcase full of Swiss Francs in swamp somewhere that are part of this situation that they would be talking about it, otherwise it just sounds like random inappropriateness.

[baxus]

 

2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We'll proceed now like any other candidate and this won't be shared any further.

This would be a good advice to follow from the get-go in the future.  

2 hours ago, Datepalm said:

What the hell goes on in your industry?! 

What industry is it in the first place?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I don't want to defend it because I never sought that information and it was uncomfortable to hear it but if several people mention it as a significant reason for leaving an employer then the (perceived) situation has presumably crossed over from being a personal relationship to being a problem in professional conduct.  

No-one (should) cares who's in a relationship with who.  Employers should care about any situation that causes successful employees to depart en masse, regardless how sensitive the topic.  The turnover at that competitor firm in the last three years has been very, very high.  There seems to have been a weird toxic stew brewing and I doubt I know all of it. 

Glad you spoke to HR and cleared it.  Does sound like there is something going on over there.  Any chance that the folks you have taken on have imported some of that culture or is your corporate culture resilient enough to overcome it?  Would bringing more over from the culture be harmful in general?  We have a lot of lateral hires here and there have definitely been some cases where some of the toxic learned behavior comes with.

[Iskaral Pust]

I only hired one of the prior 4 interviewees from there.  He's been here three years with excellent performance and an exemplary team mate.  I set a very high bar when adding people to our team. 

I have a tough job ahead to make it viable for him and her to be in the same team after this (if she does join us), but I think we can.  I've already chastened him for his contribution to this but told him it doesn't negate his three years of contribution to our team.

I'm always reluctant to judge character anyway.  Most unfortunate behavior is situational rather than inherent.  Repeat bad actors or unrepentants are usually easy to spot.  Sometimes people learn a lot from their screw-ups.  

[sperry]

8 hours ago, baxus said:

I don't think it's a grey area at all. If I were to have a sexual relationship with my coworker, it would be none of others' business, for as long as we handled it in a responsible and adult fashion. If we started throwing tantrums and getting into some high-school drama, making everyone uncomfortable in the process, that wouldn't be a grey area either. It would be inappropriate behavior and we should be reprimanded.

Any way, I agree that checking with HR would've been wise.

 

Coworker, sure. Boss or Client, no, that's a big issue.

[baxus]

23 minutes ago, sperry said:

Coworker, sure. Boss or Client, no, that's a big issue.

It is a bit different in that case but the basic principle is the same - separate the professional and personal aspects of it. Failure to do so should have consequences. Sure, it may prove to be a bit more difficult to enforce when it's a client but that doesn't mean that it's that different.

[sperry]

1 minute ago, baxus said:

It is a bit different in that case but the basic principle is the same - separate the professional and personal aspects of it. Failure to do so should have consequences. Sure, it may prove to be a bit more difficult to enforce when it's a client but that doesn't mean that it's that different.

 

The basic principle is not the same, because the power differentials inherent in those relationships completely change the dynamic and make it 100% inappropriate.

[baxus]

I was assuming that the sexual relationship is voluntary and no one side was pressuring the other.

[Datepalm]

But the telling by a third party to a fourth party in a professional context is just as inappropriate.

[Inigima]

Work is putting me through a project management class, which is lovely as it's a skillset I want to have. One thing has stuck out to me: in the class, we were told that most projects don't meet their budget or schedule targets. Can someone explain to me why exactly we use a methodology whose proponents freely admit it doesn't work? 

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

Work is putting me through a project management class, which is lovely as it's a skillset I want to have. One thing has stuck out to me: in the class, we were told that most projects don't meet their budget or schedule targets. Can someone explain to me why exactly we use a methodology whose proponents freely admit it doesn't work? 

A lot of time it's not the methodology's fault but other factors such as talent, leadership and/or their commitment, sense of urgency, scope creep, poor requirements from the business, lack of communication with the business, resources, etc. It's how a project manager deals with those elements that helps determine the success or failure of the project, not necessarily the methodology. And it can be hit or miss on how good those project managers actually are.

Also, what I see happen a lot is they have the wrong talent for the right methodology. For example, they have developers and leaders who predominately know waterfall but have them in an agile environment or vice versa. Or they use the wrong methodology for the project (i.e. using agile for what should be a simple design/build project or using waterfall for what looks like an iterative build with lots of added components). 

Finally, the change management aspect of a project is ALWAYS underestimated or completely ignored and that is one of the biggest driving factors of a successful project. This, unfortunately, isn't within any of the methodologies so it tends to get ignored by Project Managers.

[Inigima]

Interesting. Currently I do some light project management, but I'm not really a PM. I don't know if I'll ever be in that role formally, but I'm interested in people's thoughts about what separates good PMs from bad.

Currently we have a PM whose job is a mainly coordination and tracking. He doesn't do much of either, we mostly end up doing both because otherwise it doesn't get done. I asked him for a scope of work for a not-yet-complete job we contracted out and he didn't have it.

[Mexal]

A few things I've noticed when working with PMs that determines how good they end up being.

• Problem solving. How quick are they to solve an issue when it arises? Do they know who to contact, how to solve it, how to get the right people on the phone quickly to work through it and then make a decision on the direction you need to go? Issues crop up all the time and the ones that have their fingers on the pulse, understand what is a big issue/small issue and are able to correct it quickly tend to have more success. If you wait too long to escalate, can't get it fixed, need additional approvals, schedule is thrown off.
• Communication. How close are they with the members of the team, whether that's development, business leadership, testing? The closer they are, the faster they communications out to relevant parties on what is going on, the better off they tend to be. Also, how good are they at articulating what the project is, what it's going to accomplish, how it's going to help users/business? This helps get more of the right people involved in the design and testing which helps the development actually create a product/system that people will want to use and bring the appropriate business benefit.

Too often people think that Project Management is just about managing a project plan, tracking risks/issues and status slides and I think that misses a lot of the point of what a good PM can do. To me it's about bringing the right people to the table to design, build and test whatever you're trying to do and keeping people excited about what is coming. Not sure if it's taught that way but having worked in Change Management and been a PM in a previous lifetime, the better ones tend to treat it that way.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

42 minutes ago, Inigima said:

Interesting. Currently I do some light project management, but I'm not really a PM. I don't know if I'll ever be in that role formally, but I'm interested in people's thoughts about what separates good PMs from bad.

Currently we have a PM whose job is a mainly coordination and tracking. He doesn't do much of either, we mostly end up doing both because otherwise it doesn't get done. I asked him for a scope of work for a not-yet-complete job we contracted out and he didn't have it.

 

28 minutes ago, Mexal said:

A few things I've noticed when working with PMs that determines how good they end up being.

• Problem solving. How quick are they to solve an issue when it arises? Do they know who to contact, how to solve it, how to get the right people on the phone quickly to work through it and then make a decision on the direction you need to go? Issues crop up all the time and the ones that have their fingers on the pulse, understand what is a big issue/small issue and are able to correct it quickly tend to have more success. If you wait too long to escalate, can't get it fixed, need additional approvals, schedule is thrown off.
• Communication. How close are they with the members of the team, whether that's development, business leadership, testing? The closer they are, the faster they communications out to relevant parties on what is going on, the better off they tend to be. Also, how good are they at articulating what the project is, what it's going to accomplish, how it's going to help users/business? This helps get more of the right people involved in the design and testing which helps the development actually create a product/system that people will want to use and bring the appropriate business benefit.

Too often people think that Project Management is just about managing a project plan, tracking risks/issues and status slides and I think that misses a lot of the point of what a good PM can do. To me it's about bringing the right people to the table to design, build and test whatever you're trying to do and keeping people excited about what is coming. Not sure if it's taught that way but having worked in Change Management and been a PM in a previous lifetime, the better ones tend to treat it that way.

Part of it also is having the right people on the team.  A good PM (which is basically what a good M&A attorney does for a deal) knows when to delegate and when to break the plan, etc.  You need big picture people and detail oriented people on the team, but at the end of the day, part of what a good PM does is make sure that team effort is focused towards the goal of the project rather than the steps of the project and that the actual project management itself (e.g., status slides, issues lists, etc.) doesn't become the project itself. 

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Inigima said:

Work is putting me through a project management class, which is lovely as it's a skillset I want to have. One thing has stuck out to me: in the class, we were told that most projects don't meet their budget or schedule targets. Can someone explain to me why exactly we use a methodology whose proponents freely admit it doesn't work? 

Depends on what you mean by 'doesn't work'. 

It doesn't predict the perfectly accurate budget or schedule targets.

It DOES usually get pretty close to them, reveals complexity in the planning, sets broad expectations, and is a measurable goal that allows you to hopefully recalibrate and get better. Those things are valuable, and therefore should be done, even if the precise targets cannot be reached.

If you want to make the system so that you absolutely hit your budgetary and scheduling plans, you'll get a lot of waste built in. You'll get really bad, broad estimates with a ton of padding that will miraculously be hit perfectly every time, and you'll find that your budget is exceedingly huge and somehow everything is spent. That is decidedly not what you want. You want to mitigate risk and start conversations about how things will go.

[Inigima]

That's a really good point.

[Iskaral Pust]

Good points by Kalbear.  I don't think empirical inaccuracy invalidates PM, but I would test the size, predicability and bias of inaccuracy and consider the direct and indirect cost to improve.  Untempered optimism or never anticipating large potential problems, possibly from lacking experience or not thinking beyond narrow experience, are usually flaws of the individual PM rather than of the process.

I had PM training early in my career that contained a much bigger red flag: the external PM consultant leading the training and proposed re-org claimed that all corporations are massively wasteful and would be much more efficient and profitable if 90%+ of their activity was PM.  Somehow this got adopted by our PM champion group and they started drawing up plans to pursue that business structure.  This was a huge global actuarial consulting firm with 40%+ gross margin and highly routine core services.  I told the guy to his face that if we shift to a model where 90% of our activity is PM, we'll be bankrupt in a year.  He was so obviously preaching his own interest.  I don't know why it needed a junior consultant to point out the inadequately attired emperor, but this was back when business culture fads were still like cults.

[Kalbear]

Also, keep in mind that one person - a PM - being responsible for estimates is incredibly stupid. The PM is almost always the person least able to understand the overall complexity of a problem, least directly capable of solving it, and least connected to the people working on it. They have, in short, the least information of anyone to estimate. Why would you expect them to solve it best? No one would. That's insane. The people that are best qualified to estimate how long something is going to take are the people who are directly working on solving the problem. And they'll be bad at it too, but there are a lot of easy ways to either determine how precisely they'll be bad (IE, they always estimate by a factor of 2) or get them better at it and get better at figuring out how much they can actually do. These are things that humans suck at, but they are also things that people get better at with time. 

My personal view of a PM is that they can be excellent at liasing with customers in a more dedicated way, they can be good at coordinating work with multiple groups of disparate people, and they can be good at the reporting part. But leave the estimating to the workers.