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Mar. 1st, 2023 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelavmusing (slightly tongue in cheek) on the very subtle differences of employee critters since becoming A Manager(tm) and the value of putting stats in each rather than min/maxing.
* project manager - as much as the bean counters want to pretend that putting every project into janky software-as-a-service-enterprise-edition, or spreadsheets, complex projects Will Not get done if there are no owners. Owning means Responsibility, means you give a shit enough about a project being done on time if your ass not being fired is on the line. much like how I wouldn't trust a computer in a spicy RACK relationship. project managers prod and wheedle and harass on demand to keep the all-important deadlines firmly in order. they're usually the one to know all the little wrinkles of people like jimmmy usually takes friday afternoons off so if you're expecting translations to come back within 2 days it's really more like 3-4 days depending on time zones so that neat little "within two weeks" mentioned at the SVP touch base is a lie. it always is. a good project manager is unflappable and far-sighted as a pisces Seer. they will the future in order through black magic.
* people manager - their shtick is to be the buffer between suits and ICs. even in comparatively healthy organizations, c-suite suits have a way of corroding everything underneath simply by existing and giving marching orders. as moral mazes hammers in, their marching orders shape and warp the entire company. not intentional warping as much as, think how water as a natural phenomenon eats away at a lot of materials like rocks and metals. it's not malignant as ... just Is. in the sense suits will ask everyone to chop chop hop hop on Many Unrealistic Priorities. a people manager's duties are replying - you Fool. we cannot prioritize everything all at once .... but we can hire three contractors to do these social posts on the side while we work on [revenue projects]. they're the negotiators, and the ones to rally the troops when morale is flagging. the AOE mage, as it will. their capacity for influencing others is a 1:1 for how much of a respected leader they are, whether through fear, kindness, or both.
* IC (independent contributors) - the workers, my friend. the people who Make Shit, and who most insecure, immature managers are quite envious of, because something that the suits know crystal clear is that the middle managers are sometimes replaceable, but a core group of IC's are Not. you are what keeps the company running, if you're good at what you're doing and have a minimum amount of political savvy. people managers can jaw on about Prioritization and Alignment(tm) and project managers can bitch about the dates on a spreadsheet - but yours is what keeps the plodding lumbering leviathan moving.
i'd say, tentatively, when it's crunch and layoff time, people managers tend to get let go first. folks don't really notice the difference at First and if it saves the bean counters from having to pay 3-6 months of salaries during lean months, well. that's capitalism, baby. in addition, a healthy set of IC's have the default skills of being self-managing if they're veterans at the company, so *sometimes* that bet even works with minimum scarring. if the company is 'unhealthy' and the big daddy has a tendency to fire anyone who disagrees with him, good people managers also get fired first for being roadblocks. the third rule of corporate is you do not want to be known as A Roadblock.
the safest position personally, is if you invest stat points into all three, very carefully, starting with and with perhaps a slim majority in IC. having the skillz to Make Stuff carries over surprisingly far in other positions; it teaches you Why project managers are Like That, and it also teaches you how much you're capable of doing in neat little boxed segments of times which has a side product of making people managers worship you. a hybrid senior IC/manager doesn't always make sense at every company, but when it does, there's a tremendous domain knowledge that will serve you for a very long time.
* project manager - as much as the bean counters want to pretend that putting every project into janky software-as-a-service-enterprise-edition, or spreadsheets, complex projects Will Not get done if there are no owners. Owning means Responsibility, means you give a shit enough about a project being done on time if your ass not being fired is on the line. much like how I wouldn't trust a computer in a spicy RACK relationship. project managers prod and wheedle and harass on demand to keep the all-important deadlines firmly in order. they're usually the one to know all the little wrinkles of people like jimmmy usually takes friday afternoons off so if you're expecting translations to come back within 2 days it's really more like 3-4 days depending on time zones so that neat little "within two weeks" mentioned at the SVP touch base is a lie. it always is. a good project manager is unflappable and far-sighted as a pisces Seer. they will the future in order through black magic.
* people manager - their shtick is to be the buffer between suits and ICs. even in comparatively healthy organizations, c-suite suits have a way of corroding everything underneath simply by existing and giving marching orders. as moral mazes hammers in, their marching orders shape and warp the entire company. not intentional warping as much as, think how water as a natural phenomenon eats away at a lot of materials like rocks and metals. it's not malignant as ... just Is. in the sense suits will ask everyone to chop chop hop hop on Many Unrealistic Priorities. a people manager's duties are replying - you Fool. we cannot prioritize everything all at once .... but we can hire three contractors to do these social posts on the side while we work on [revenue projects]. they're the negotiators, and the ones to rally the troops when morale is flagging. the AOE mage, as it will. their capacity for influencing others is a 1:1 for how much of a respected leader they are, whether through fear, kindness, or both.
* IC (independent contributors) - the workers, my friend. the people who Make Shit, and who most insecure, immature managers are quite envious of, because something that the suits know crystal clear is that the middle managers are sometimes replaceable, but a core group of IC's are Not. you are what keeps the company running, if you're good at what you're doing and have a minimum amount of political savvy. people managers can jaw on about Prioritization and Alignment(tm) and project managers can bitch about the dates on a spreadsheet - but yours is what keeps the plodding lumbering leviathan moving.
i'd say, tentatively, when it's crunch and layoff time, people managers tend to get let go first. folks don't really notice the difference at First and if it saves the bean counters from having to pay 3-6 months of salaries during lean months, well. that's capitalism, baby. in addition, a healthy set of IC's have the default skills of being self-managing if they're veterans at the company, so *sometimes* that bet even works with minimum scarring. if the company is 'unhealthy' and the big daddy has a tendency to fire anyone who disagrees with him, good people managers also get fired first for being roadblocks. the third rule of corporate is you do not want to be known as A Roadblock.
the safest position personally, is if you invest stat points into all three, very carefully, starting with and with perhaps a slim majority in IC. having the skillz to Make Stuff carries over surprisingly far in other positions; it teaches you Why project managers are Like That, and it also teaches you how much you're capable of doing in neat little boxed segments of times which has a side product of making people managers worship you. a hybrid senior IC/manager doesn't always make sense at every company, but when it does, there's a tremendous domain knowledge that will serve you for a very long time.
