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Non technical Manager

 
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Have you ever come across this kind of issue and how you generally tend to respond to this situation ?

We have a manager who doesn't knows Java as much as a fresh college passed out knows. There is one senior person in the team who moves with my manager closely. For any project plans for the modules that we are assigned the manager speaks to the senior guy and I would say the PM depends on him for almost each and every action. No doubt that the senior guy is technically strong but he has got an attitude of hurting others and having fun out of it. When we are assigned project modules the senior guy ensures that our timelines are very much squeezed but he ensures that he gets nice time for all his modules.

When the project is ready for delivery the senior person ensures that we skip the deadline and in the meetings he escalates this to the senior management though he is not responsible for those activities. Initially I thought I was the only one suffering because of him but came to know with my team members that even they have the same feeling as I do.

He tries to ensure he grows in the organization at the expense of hurting others.

How do I handle such a person ?

The fact that cannot be ignored is the PM has got good impression from senior management and the PM heavily depends on this guy for all the decisions and doesnt understand what ever we say.
 
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"Sickness of the mind can not be cured" and your PM and the technical wiz kid are sick in the top floor.
If i was in your place, i would have just tried to change my project and when asked for reasons, i would have told the whole story. If this was not possible i would have looked out for a job.
Mental peace is the biggest requirement while working, if people above you are making sure to give you mental trauma every day, then whatever may be the case, it is always better to quit.
Of course, the above is my opinion and its very personal. Others may have different opinions.
 
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first of all when anyone other than me makes comments on how long it should take to get something done. the get the same response.

I am not an all seeing all knowing god. there are things that I do not know and cannot foresee. If something comes up that I cannot forsee. I will notify the managers and ask for thelp. Give me (.25 - 2) hours to investigate the problem. I'll get back to you.

When a developer says it should take. 2 hours to do something without any investigation. They always get

"sir; I should be estimating how long it will take me to complete some this work. You are not my manager. I will work as quickly and diligently as possible. Please do not dictate schedules to me. That is a conversation for my manager and me"
 
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Hi Santhosh,

I have gone through such situations. I tried to change situation by talking to person above PM. But unless other team members are with you, you can not change it. Best option is try to change project, if that is not possible, quit. That is my opinion.

What surprises me in lot of companies, they recruit non technical PMs. To survive, these non technical people go to any level. Better look for change in this case. When you see you are not learning anything from your seniors, you should try to look for new seniors.
 
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How do these companies hire non technical PM's at first place? I mean what questions they might as for them in the interview in java? They wouldn't have seen a singe line of code in their life. If there are some companies that does this (hiring non technical pm's) then it's their own fate of getting lost in this competitive world.
 
Sandeep Awasthi
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I worked with one MNC which has offshore development center in India. In my case HR had a target of recruiting some nos by some date. These non technical PMs show lot of IT exeperince ( which is not true ). They might have worked in some EDP dept of some companies on some other technologies. These people got selected very easily in the company in which I worked. Actually these people are supposed to be good both technically and in management. But what I saw the only skill they have is they are good game players. They will divide and rule the team and they were successful to survive even though most of the projects failed. Very few projects which were exception to failure were because of few technically sound people both at onsite and in India. After sometime, company decided to outsource projects and these non technical PMs used to manage vendors. People who are technically good and wanted to do work left the company. This is fact with lot of MNCs which they call it as offshore development center, is nothing but vendor management and vendor is some service company. If you try to complain about them to their senior, you are in problem because that senior had hired your PM and he/she know your PM is not competent. But they wanted to achieve target of hiring. Now Company outsource projects to vendors.

[ August 12, 2007: Message edited by: Rajesh Thakare ]
[ August 12, 2007: Message edited by: Rajesh Thakare ]
 
peter cooke
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Originally posted by Jothi Shankar Kumar Sankararaj:
How do these companies hire non technical PM's at first place? I mean what questions they might as for them in the interview in java? They wouldn't have seen a singe line of code in their life. If there are some companies that does this (hiring non technical pm's) then it's their own fate of getting lost in this competitive world.



Jothi, many older large non-software oreinted companies (health maintencance org, insurance companies, banks) have tons of non-technical project managers. Something they transitioned out of cobol from as they tried to be managers. Then once you work as a PM for several years, then you can keep doing it
 
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