this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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My PM doesn't tell me to do anything. Their job is to prioritize things on the backlog and give status updates. Very, very rarely do they tell me that whatever I'm working on no longer needs to be done at all.
Generally speaking, if I do get an interruption, it's from the person above the Project Manager. And they're more of the "shit hit the fan" variety of problems that need to be resolved.
My PMs are all about time allocation..... yet they fail to understand what research is.
Pm: How long until you finish designing and implementing this thing?
Me: I cant put a time on it, weve never done this before and have no points of reference. So i could figure it out today or a month from today...i cant give you a time because its bever been implemented.
PM: Sighs in dissapproval... ill just say 5 business days. Hows that.
Me: if we are just making up numbers, sure
5 days seems pretty reasonable to design and build most stuff. It's function and system/integrated test that takes time not to say there's not random bits of work that take months before anything testable can be produced.
*My experience is in giant systems processing mainframe class data. The programmers in my team use COBOL
Sounds like you got someone with experience in hardware. They're all about just shitting a date on paper.
The key to good PMs seems to be that they will make up the fake schedule without even talking to you. The schedule will be made up either way, so if they can not bother me that's a ok.
My good PMs understood that their role was to attend meetings and create a buffer between myself (who understood what had to be done and was doing most of the work) and the higher-ups. The awful PMs were the ones who thought they were running the show and driving everything.
Our current PM gets involved in projects from day dot. Plans out vague technical ideas, makes up timelines, gets involved in meetings and suggests things to clients, totally rules the roost.
Shame she's completely fucking clueless about any of the actual work, really.
I usually preferred male PMs, solely because my contempt for their lack of technical knowledge was never mistaken for chauvinism. Women PMs who stayed in their lane -- or even better were actually technically competent -- were A-OK with me.
Oh yeah, it's difficult to criticise her because it is a bloke criticising a woman and it just comes off poorly, despite my issues with her being absolutely nothing to do with her identity. I think I've had one or two mostly good PMs in maybe eight jobs across my career so far?
I used to tell my bosses that everything would take three months. I would then ensure that everything took three months, usually by fucking off for two and a half months and then blasting something out in the last two weeks.
Isn't that what story points are for? :p
https://youtube.com/shorts/PNqF1gCbWhA
Uh oh. Now you're expected to be done in 5 days.
just don’t you dare ever proactively prevent a problem
always gotta spend 5x on the current dumpster fire
Which is when I just do it I tell them afterward. I build it into my estimates so it doesn't put us behind.
There are still a few cans that get kicked down the road though, for various reasons.
i love i told you so too much
it’s usually the customers exacting fault
Nothing gets on my nerves more than when I fix something critical that's broken on a client site, and then get an earful from my PM because we didn't check with the client if they wanted it fixed, or they didn't have the support budget for that this month, or whatever else. I honestly think the management at my place want our client sites to be broken and stay that way, it's so weird.