I'm a PM in a customer facing consulting team, however I come from a data engineering background. My current project is aggressively understaffed by my newly hired line manager who I assume is trying to make his mark. Of course, the DE workstream struggled. Last Sumer, I made the mistake of agreeing to join a working session with one of our DEs to try and help work through some problems to help a team mate out. The manager started to assign me DE work "under the table" (verbal, never puts anything in writing). The thing is that I'm fractionally staffed on multiple engagements so although this one project does not take all of my time, I am more or less 85%-100% at capacity on a weekly basis. With the addition of these DE tasks I have been working 20~ hours on weekends and well into the evenings and sometimes overnight. In retrospect, asides from the pressure and veiled threats from the manager, I should never have agreed to this. This carried on for about 6 weeks with constant borderline harassment from the manager (texting for status updates 9pm - 11pm on weekdays and 12pm on weekends) until I told him I was not going to do it anymore. He said fine, however shortly after that started sending long, detailed emails of "performance issues." He identified several areas of improvement and started asking me to track my progress/activities against each area of improvement in a spreadsheet and report to him on a weekly basis. Aware that I was essentially on an unofficial PIP, I worked hard to meet his expectations and he stopped requiring me to do it around Thanksgiving. He had told me that he would add his feedback in the spreadsheet also, but ended up never doing it. I now assume it's so there is no positive feedback on paper for me. Fast forward to now, project is in red status again and my line manager is blaming me for the issues and escalated to HR. Every opportunity he has to frame something the worst way possible, he does and sends a lengthy email to reiterate my "performance issues." For example, we needed information from the customer about a certain piece. Customer did not have it. We informed the customer that since they couldn't provide that info, we would have to make an assumption if we wanted to move forward. Customer agreed, however the output was not what the customer wanted. There is a paper trail for the entire exchange, however my line manager sent a lengthy email essentially saying "yes the customer did not have the information and agreed to move forward with assumptions, however the outcome was not what the customer wanted. You made the wrong assumption and someone at your level should have made the right assumption." Or, customer asked for 5 reports. Team created 5 reports to spec. 1 report ended up not being as useful as the customer envisioned. Lengthy email from manager saying "efforts were wasted on 1 of 5 reports so customer is only getting 80% value realization. As PM, you should be fully aware of what the customer wants to avoid these situations." To be clear, nobody else is complaining about this. Customer fully understood they didn't have requirements and that the dashboards were experimental and may not have value. I'm now in the process of trying to join another team within the company but feel like all of these documented "issues" and none of my positive feedback ever being documented is going to make it impossible. I've had informal coffee chats and hiring managers and principals on the teams feel I'm a great fit, many of which I've already established rapport with on prior engagements. One principal specifically said he would like to work with me, he thinks I'm a great fit, and that he would endorse me if I applied, however he is not aware of all this drama. Here's the ask: if you had someone come to you with this kind of story, would you hear them out or stay away cause it's a dumpster fire? I assume the latter. Thanks for your time. #tech
Hey, this is a thing at Adobe where your manager has full power over you and can abuse it as there is no way to report him. Are you US or India based? Next steps depend on your location.
US based
Prepare to get fired at any time. Search in the internal Adobe channel for people in the US that got terminated for whatever silly reason their manager could make up.
Pretty common where managers get unilateral power. You would have to prove yourself until people trust you again. A bit hard but not impossible.
I am happy to help. Feel free to DM me. The tldr of what I will say is: Your manager is more interested in setting you up for failure than to help the business, customers, and employees. Not worth it.
I appreciate it. For some reason my Team Blind web account is different than the one in my mobile app, and I can't DM on the web. Sending you a DM shortly.
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1890
The end of Backdoor Roth?!
India
Yesterday
794
Modi is a legend, will be remembered for centuries to come
Working Parents
Yesterday
697
What do you think is wrong with a kid who got rejected by 9 colleges?
Tech Industry
Yesterday
2363
Quitting this Slave life
Tech Industry
Yesterday
267
Age recommendation for leadership role