Episode 417: Should I tell my boss I'm checked out and how do I deal with a PM who has no idea what he's doing?

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey guys, love the show! (Insert joke here so you’ll read my question) Should I tell my boss I’m discouraged and have checked out? I’m the frontend lead for a project where I’ve recently gotten the vibe that the project isn’t really that important to the organization. The project is already over schedule and they have recently moved a few engineers off to other teams. Should I talk to my manager and try to work with him to get over these feelings, or should I just begin the job search? I’m 2 years into my first job, so it feels like it might be time to move on anyways. What do you all think? Thank

2. Hi! I’m part of a team of 5 devs with an inexperienced Product Manager who is in way over his head. He was a support agent who, during the acquisition of our startup, somehow convinced the parent corporation to make him PM despite the fact that he had no experience within Product whatsoever.

   The corporation didn’t give him training, he has no experience in Product, and it shows. Our features are single sentences copied from client emails, and our top priority is whatever the conversation is about.

   He is argumentative when we try to talk about it, despite the fact that all of us are careful to avoid blaming him. We’ve tried talking to him one on one, in small groups, as the whole team. No luck.

   The Engineering Manager is at his wits end on how to handle this situation because:

   1. EM has no jurisdiction over PM
   2. The org’s “matrix” structure means EM’s manager has no working relationship with PM’s manager
   3. After many chats we’ve had with PM’s manager, his solution was for dev to pick up the slack instead - at one point our whole dev team was made to sit in *daily* 2hr long “refinement” sessions, spec-ing out empty features and writing user stories to try to sort out our backlog and roadmap - for 6 weeks straight

   PM’s skip level manager won’t give us his time. How do we deal with this situation when our lowest-common-manager is the CEO of this ~2000 person company, and PM himself is completely closed off to any constructive conversation from anyone who isn’t above him in the org chart?

   Love the show! Thanks for reading :)