Project Managers Buried in Bureaucracy
Project Managers across various industries are struggling with excessive bureaucracy, unclear expectations, and a lack of training or support. They face rigid processes, unclear reporting requirements, and difficulty prioritizing work amidst competing demands and limited resources. This leads to frustration and a feeling of being overwhelmed by the complexities of their roles.
SOURCES (60)
“current job: third-level escalation point for audiovisual tech support at a large business with about 12 buildings and 300 systems. manages employees and processes as well. have my CTS-D and my PMP. no luck finding project management positions. i’m honestly sick of working with tech.…”
“Does your company have skill ladders? Hopefully managing multiple teams would be a box in that giving you leverage to push for a raise/promotion. If not then something “I’d be really excited to take this on, but this is an expanded role and I’d like the comp and/or title to reflect that” If they decline that then only leverage you can get is finding a new job offer”
“Separate browser profiles (Chrome) for every credential i use. It gets hectic as i work for an MSP so have a sep profile for every customer i work with, plus my internal admin account, plus plus plus plus....... it defaults to my normal account but then you select another account and its fine for the day.”
“You also just need practice. I've been on teams where scrum is fast and it took a really dedicated manager + a scrum master a month or engineers passive aggressively pressing a buzzer but eventually people do actually learn to give quick updates and push discussions afterwards”
“I have been a number of PMO manager's worst nightmare over the years because I've challenging this very notion of undue process being placed on those who can least afford it, the PM. I've had a standup argument with one PMO manager who tried to impose a process which turned out to be a PMO's functional responsibility, firstly because the PMO didn't understand the overhead of what the additional reporting carried for statistical data that the PMO wanted but already had access”
The same thing happened to me too. I’m now a Solution Manager.
“The biggest cultural split out there is between the government-backed scale-ups in Riyadh and the legacy banks in Dubai or Doha. In the banks, product is still largely delivery-focused project management wrapped in agile terminology. You are mostly shipping features dictated by business units. The scale-ups are trying hard to run a Silicon Valley playbook, but they often run into a talent bottleneck. Because the ecosystem is young, you get a lot of junior PMs trying to build complex platforms wi”
“Simplicity, visibility, documentation. Align around simple goal. Figure out what metrics to track to around that goal, and document all of it and progress.”
“Think of it as having a fleet of agents that can get stuff done if you keep them on the rails. So structure their output timing to be deterministic with scheduling, output content with skills/prompts and accuracy with context/connectors. Also, having it prune its own context is a powerful tool. Not usually a Lenny plug, but this guy has a great setup: https://youtu.be/p2qmX6TM0kw?is=JlOFXvpe_wAxKZiO”
“It seems like you managed to automate the 'easy' part of the job or maybe created a way to get direct feedback and bypass the communication hurdle - often times I get the feeling that RnD think product management is slapping features together and calling it a day. I'm glad you understood the value and can report on it”
“Being "heavily technical" is just PM speak for pausing mid sentence to make sure the answer is correct before the panel loses interest”
“It’s a mixture of both. Was a PM at Wise but left a while back, and they currently have 7-8k employees with plans to expand further. One thing about fintechs is PMs own a very niche domain, not usually a broad area. For example in Wise it’s by the region or countries you own, or KYC/KYB has a different PM from Onboarding. That’s why there’s usually a lot of openings because there’s no umbrella PM for a certain area, unlike how it might work in some MNCs. Things move faster this way imo, because”
“I've seen a lot of attempts at renaming the PM role, might need to add Product Developer to the list”
“In my experience there isn't a cookie cutter approach or template to follow. I would start by speaking with everyone in the product & engineering organization. Find out what they see as the pain points for better and more outcome focused collaboration. Then leverage your experience to identify the top things to change, and get to work :-) And as someone else mentioned, make sure to hone up on your change management and stakeholder management skills”
“I left my chaotic agency role to become a Sr Product Crisis Manager. The role is a consultant role. Effectively I'll be a mix of a PM and design system manager for successful products with scaling issues. Im a little nervous to start, but im very familiar with the usual trappings of chaotic product management. So, if you were dropped into an Org that had a profitable product, but had design and technical debt issues, a figma without a design system, learned helplessness devs, and an abysmal”
“Take a breath, don't rush to respond. Work out what is actually being asked, not just the keywords in the sentence If unsure, or even just every so often, ask a clarifying question to get more data or perspective, and give yourself some time to think Focus on the most important thing first. Let that land, sit with the answer in silence for a moment, then decide if you need to keep explaining Keep breathing, keep thinking, keep using small pauses to slow your brain and self down Learn to catc”
“In some organizations PMs are low to mid-scale technical. Maybe you're spending too much time on the technical aspects at the cost of the business aspects. If they aren't hearing enough of what they do in their day to day they might sense a misalignment, or think you're avoiding the business/market stuff because you're not comfortable with it. You have to prove you know what you're talking about in regards to the industry, the competition, the distribution, user feedback, pri”
“I've been working for this large company for five years. I started as a scientist, and I am now a group leader managing a team of 12 scientists. I have a PhD and almost 20 years of industry experience. I have absolutely hated this leadership job since day one. Managing the team and solving technical issues are easy for me; however, success in this position is all about how well you can deal with other managers, navigate office politics, and influence people. I don't have those skills, an”
“What reason for needing to "disguise" the title? So they can say "We don't have product managers" when they hire new people at a lower salary ranges?”
“Hi! I just started as a new PM and I’m hoping to gain a little insight on how to help with my overwhelm. I’ve been in the industry for a little over 2 years, I’ve worked in corporate, leasing, as an APM, in student housing, residential…. I was only an APM for ~3 months before I started at my current company (better pay!) but here’s the thing - my current company is a little weird with the structure whereas they call the PMs “APMs.” so I thought I was going into the same position, not moving up t”
“Resident Cassandra. I'm always spot on with how things are going to play out, what the workable timelines actually are, and what the critical path risks & dependencies are. For every major project we've had the last two years, at kick-off my prediction for release to prod has always been within one week of the eventual delivery date. It just so happens that my timelines are 3-7x more pessimistic than the kumbaya let's please the CTO timelines the team initially commits to. But no”
“The wrangler. Stakeholders/requirements/people trying to circumvent the development process and talk to my engineers directly? Don't matter, ya gettin' wrangled and dealt with.”
If you’re anything like me, 2 of these titles are relevant at all times.
“None of us were there so none of us are I. A position to definitively answer your questions. Project communications, call cadence, update push/pulls should always be tailored to the needs/capacities of the work and stakeholders. If the client wants to cancel verbal comms in favor of email pushes all you can do is adapt to that. If that leads to less oppprtuinies for them to visually witness you owning the scope and prodding their stakeholders then that’s an outcome. I wouldn’t worry so much abou”
“Our product team has been dissolved. New role for a few of us is basically a product manager in disguise on paper. Sucky thing but is what it is. We will get input to retitle the roles from some garbage HR came up with as an interim title. submitted by /u/Alarming_Egg4171 [link] [comments]”
“It sounds like the plan is to fully dissolve it and hope the Product managers will naturally pick up the cross product work streams and individual fixed term/scope delivery items as just another backlog item”
“curious, are they actually dissolving the PM function or just renaming it? because sometimes orgs do this rebrand where delivery managers become "product ops" but do the same work. thats less scary than genuinely removing programme management for physical builds”
“I think it really does depend on the sector more than anything. There are some sectors like PM for Research Labs or AI GPU Infra, where if you are not technical alongside sector experience, there is just no way a PM whos done PM at a consumer product product like Fair would be chosen or even perform the job properly.”
Go read "results without authority". There are a lot of ways that you can get people to do what you say even when they outrank you or are on another team. You…
“Which job is safest to go on with rn? New APM here in a middle scale startup.”
Do you have an engineering manager/ project manager as well?
“I’ve been in the pharmaceutical manufacturing space for 6 years and am looking to make a switch. I’d like to do something that is more fulfilling. Anything that you would recommend exploring education or career wise that where my project management experience might translate? submitted by /u/polarbearnuggets [link] [comments]”
“To me, I would say you were more a PM with a PO title. If you are doing discovery work and are responsible for the outcome, then it would - to me - be more relevant with a PM title.”
“it needs just ONE product manager. this industry is bloated with people who should just be one person in a role”
“It isn't good or bad, it just is. When there's <60 people at the entire company, having 3 people do a job that 1 can do is pretty unreasonable use of headcount. I still only work 30-40 hrs a week.”
“staying aligned on the why and maintaining that strategic alignment through the what and how should dictate priorities, but no tool maintains context over time across teams effectively enough. thus the need for human experience and product taste.”
“We definitely don't have a lack of project info, if anything there's too much of it lol Tasks are tracked, deadlines exist, requirements are documented, meeting notes are somewhere but somehow half of every planning call is still spent figuring out how everything connects I'm starting to think we need a visual layer for priorities, dependencies, risks and the roadmap rather than another task tracker Any remote teams working this way? what actually works without creating one more thin”
“Frankly, this is a VP of product level issue and an org structure issue. VP of product should be spear heading this and getting executive buy in as you plan out key objectives over the next year and what performance metrics you’ll be tied to. Then, if things change or pivot you would then pitch it to the ELT to make a decision and allocate resources as necessary.”
“unfortunately you don't understand how common this is, especially right now. Not saying you cant find a place that actually follows better practices, but... good luck finding a place that does”
“Hey I'm glad it helped. Sounds like you have a good runway to go interviewing too. I'm in a similar pickle. I'm an IC PM at a PE owned company and been through multiple acquisitions and restructures. It wears you down.”
As people have mentioned, you are only 3 weeks in. Just be patient