This happens to a PM friend of mine in a different company. Now sure how to help her out: "A dev colleague of mine keeps directing me to do tasks. Starts of with an undermining task (open a ticket) and then reflects on the font color of my email. Maybe, I am overreacting , but being a PM, it's slightly offensive that your dev lead colleague has comments about everything you do and keeps directing you to fix it. I have lost confidence in whatever I do. If I get requirements , I get asked so many clarifications and then told to arrange meeting with stakeholders for all calls, in which he directly leads the conversations bypassing me. If I arrange a meeting in time X, he says change the time. If I or someone directs him, he says no that's not how we do it.. I asked him not to direct , and he laughed it off saying - I just asked you to change your font in the email because it's light and I couldn't read. I told him that the email is going out to 100 people since last 2 years and no one complained. His response was no one reads it. I told him that isn't true because a few responded a couple of times. " He goes off to challenge that you can check with anyone (including our technical boss). He hand twists the boss because he actually builds things(dev power) and boss relies on him completely. Being a dev with all visibility, they have the control on how to deliver, when to deliver Do you guys have similar workplace stories and how do you deal with 1 million different situations , but slightly similar patterns? #officelife #politics #productmanagement
I don't really know but I get that both report to the same boss. I would consider A) ask the boss clarifications about the pm role and if given the insistent requests from the lead dev a personal assistant to the lead dev should be hired : it's a strawman proposal to say you shouldn't work as a PA if what is required is a PM. B) just let him give orders and do not execute. If he asks where is his coffee you can say that there was no agreement about you bringing him coffee to which he will retort "I told you to get me coffee" and at that point you can have a conversation about him giving orders and his behavior being neither appropriate nor acceptable. If he is not your boss he is not supposed to assign you tasks, you may discuss tasks together and may agree on tasks, he may ask your boss to assign you tasks. If he does and the boss play it on his side go to C). I am an engineer and I have a very demanding product manager that, if allowed, may abuse my availability/generosity/naivety to get me to commit to more work. My manager and my skip level negotiate with the product manager what are our targets for the quarter but then product tries to undermine the plan by pushing freebies on the side. So my answer is usually "yeah sure, let me discuss it with my manager" with a smile, then I go to my manager and relay the request and I get told to ignore it, no follow up needed. Your case is different though : in my case I can say that if I were to accommodate the tasks being requested I would shift priorities that have been discussed and agreed by higher MGMT, in your case it's more about your sense of autonomy in what you do. C) if he can hand twists the boss he is the boss and you have been thinking it wrong the whole time. Let your skip level know about this because your formal boss is powerless and your actual boss is not going to be accountable for the responsibility he bears on other people's work. This path is likely to lead you into looking for another job.
Very well thought.
PM is a hard role, dev leads sometimes take over PM functions/tasks when they think the PM role is gapped out. It sounds like this PM and Dev lead need regular 1:1s to talk about program gaps and how to solve them. This dev lead may be a bully and hard to work with, but they might be trying to highlight key problems that need a PM to sort out. If the PM doesn’t understand why they should work to figure that out.
Can you please tell us what the font is and size and color? Not trying to be facetious but sometimes it helps to know what other people find hard to read.
Agree. She builds good UX for ecommerce platforms. Her text to leadership conveys gentle color and optimal size. Even if black does not go with grey, which I find hard to fathom - 300 people had no comments and one does - how do I justify that logic. He thinks bold black headline goes with black . Font is calibri and sans serif for headlines. Besides it's not his job. UX designers are creatives.
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You are dealing with a bully. Plain and simple.