Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[trappedslider]

"Fire who?"

"Exactly!"

 

[CleverNickName]

Pro tip: you do not want to be a project manager.

You might think you do, you might have been led to believe that it's a rewarding career decision with good pay and reasonable hours and a modicum of respect but it is all lies. It is a trap, and everyone will be laughing at you behind your back if you ever agree to the role.

You do not want to spend countless hours of every day arguing with clients about every single hour billed to every single task on every single contract document. You do not want to deal with the bruised egos, the in-fighting, and the conflicting schedules. You do not want to hear about why Bobby the Intern got lost on the way to the job site and drove in circles for eight hours, then billed the mileage. You absolutely do not want to have to explain to the client why Billy the Engineer submitted an expense report for almost five figures, but somehow lost all of his receipts. And contractors [REDACTED] until the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with bandsaws and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and the backhoe they rode in on.

If someone asks you to be a project manager, even in passing, even if they're just dropping a hint, immediately flip the table and run. Run away as fast as you can. Run like the devil himself is chasing you, and don't look over your shoulder lest you be turned into a pillar of salt.

 

[prabe]

Pro tip: you do not want to be a project manager.

You might think you do, you might have been led to believe that it's a rewarding career decision with good pay and reasonable hours and a modicum of respect but it is all lies. It is a trap, and everyone will be laughing at you behind your back if you ever agree to the role.

You do not want to spend countless hours of every day arguing with clients about every single hour billed to every single task on every single contract document. You do not want to deal with the bruised egos, the in-fighting, and the conflicting schedules. You do not want to hear about why Bobby the Intern got lost on the way to the job site and drove in circles for eight hours, then billed the mileage. You absolutely do not want to have to explain to the client why Billy the Engineer submitted an expense report for almost five figures, but somehow lost all of his receipts. And contractors [REDACTED] until the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with bandsaws and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and the backhoe they rode in on.

If someone asks you to be a project manager, even in passing, even if they're just dropping a hint, immediately flip the table and run. Run away as fast as you can. Run like the devil himself is chasing you, and don't look over your shoulder lest you be turned into a pillar of salt.

But other than that it's a pretty OK gig, right?

 

[Ryujin]

Pro tip: you do not want to be a project manager.

You might think you do, you might have been led to believe that it's a rewarding career decision with good pay and reasonable hours and a modicum of respect but it is all lies. It is a trap, and everyone will be laughing at you behind your back if you ever agree to the role.

You do not want to spend countless hours of every day arguing with clients about every single hour billed to every single task on every single contract document. You do not want to deal with the bruised egos, the in-fighting, and the conflicting schedules. You do not want to hear about why Bobby the Intern got lost on the way to the job site and drove in circles for eight hours, then billed the mileage. You absolutely do not want to have to explain to the client why Billy the Engineer submitted an expense report for almost five figures, but somehow lost all of his receipts. And contractors [REDACTED] until the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with bandsaws and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and the backhoe they rode in on.

If someone asks you to be a project manager, even in passing, even if they're just dropping a hint, immediately flip the table and run. Run away as fast as you can. Run like the devil himself is chasing you, and don't look over your shoulder lest you be turned into a pillar of salt.

The flipside of that is you don't want to have to deal with a project manager. My organization seems to have a revolving door on project managers, most of which don't seem to want to do the task of managing a project. They keep trying to fob their job onto my coworkers, who handle communications infrastructure, rather than obtaining the information from them and, you know, managing it.

 

[CleverNickName]

The flipside of that is you don't want to have to deal with a project manager. My organization seems to have a revolving door on project managers, most of which don't seem to want to do the task of managing a project. They keep trying to fob their job onto my coworkers, who handle communications infrastructure, rather than obtaining the information from them and, you know, managing it.

Design management is where it's at. You are given a Thing to design, that's it. The Thing could be a water storage tank, a pipeline, a highway, a bridge--but it has a definite description and a definite schedule. You don't design some kind of nebulous, intangible Whatever, you design a Thing. Concrete and steel. Math and physics. So you run the calcs, and you make it happen.

Things have a starting point and an end point. They have mass, they occupy space. You can engineer them, you can optimize them, you can schedule and build them. Politics and egos and expectations, not so much.

 

[Staffan]

It hasn't dropped off the Front Page yet, but I gotta say this: That word is not a possessive unless you're Abbott and Costello.

 

[Ryujin]

Design management is where it's at. You are given a Thing to design, that's it. The Thing could be a water storage tank, a pipeline, a highway, a bridge--but it has a definite description and a definite schedule. You don't design some kind of nebulous, intangible Whatever, you design a Thing. Concrete and steel. Math and physics.

Things have a starting point and an end point. They have mass, they occupy space. You can engineer them, you can optimize them, you can schedule and build them. Politics and egos and expectations, not so much.

Our project managers are typically managing a project like the reconstruction of an office space so that a new group can move into it, after another group has vacated it. They also manage the construction of new buildings, on campus.


One of their favourite tricks used to be to alter the schedule of deliverables, after we had already begun having network infrastructure installed, then telling us that what we had done "wasn't in the budget", thereby shifting the cost to my department from the original budget. "Look how much we saved on the project!" That got cut down very quickly, by telling them that we would no longer complete work for them without our portion of the budget being transferred ahead of time.

 

[Gradine]

Pro tip: you do not want to be a project manager.

You might think you do, you might have been led to believe that it's a rewarding career decision with good pay and reasonable hours and a modicum of respect but it is all lies. It is a trap, and everyone will be laughing at you behind your back if you ever agree to the role.

You do not want to spend countless hours of every day arguing with clients about every single hour billed to every single task on every single contract document. You do not want to deal with the bruised egos, the in-fighting, and the conflicting schedules. You do not want to hear about why Bobby the Intern got lost on the way to the job site and drove in circles for eight hours, then billed the mileage. You absolutely do not want to have to explain to the client why Billy the Engineer submitted an expense report for almost five figures, but somehow lost all of his receipts. And contractors [REDACTED] until the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with bandsaws and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and the backhoe they rode in on.

If someone asks you to be a project manager, even in passing, even if they're just dropping a hint, immediately flip the table and run. Run away as fast as you can. Run like the devil himself is chasing you, and don't look over your shoulder lest you be turned into a pillar of salt.

Man real jobs sound real friggin weird

 

[RealAlHazred]

Pro tip: you do not want to be a project manager.

You might think you do, you might have been led to believe that it's a rewarding career decision with good pay and reasonable hours and a modicum of respect but it is all lies. It is a trap, and everyone will be laughing at you behind your back if you ever agree to the role.

You do not want to spend countless hours of every day arguing with clients about every single hour billed to every single task on every single contract document. You do not want to deal with the bruised egos, the in-fighting, and the conflicting schedules. You do not want to hear about why Bobby the Intern got lost on the way to the job site and drove in circles for eight hours, then billed the mileage. You absolutely do not want to have to explain to the client why Billy the Engineer submitted an expense report for almost five figures, but somehow lost all of his receipts. And contractors [REDACTED] until the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with bandsaws and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and the backhoe they rode in on.

If someone asks you to be a project manager, even in passing, even if they're just dropping a hint, immediately flip the table and run. Run away as fast as you can. Run like the devil himself is chasing you, and don't look over your shoulder lest you be turned into a pillar of salt.

But how does it pay?

 

[payn]

Pro tip: you do not want to be a project manager.

You might think you do, you might have been led to believe that it's a rewarding career decision with good pay and reasonable hours and a modicum of respect but it is all lies. It is a trap, and everyone will be laughing at you behind your back if you ever agree to the role.

You do not want to spend countless hours of every day arguing with clients about every single hour billed to every single task on every single contract document. You do not want to deal with the bruised egos, the in-fighting, and the conflicting schedules. You do not want to hear about why Bobby the Intern got lost on the way to the job site and drove in circles for eight hours, then billed the mileage. You absolutely do not want to have to explain to the client why Billy the Engineer submitted an expense report for almost five figures, but somehow lost all of his receipts. And contractors [REDACTED] until the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with bandsaws and [REDACTED] [REDACTED] and the backhoe they rode in on.

If someone asks you to be a project manager, even in passing, even if they're just dropping a hint, immediately flip the table and run. Run away as fast as you can. Run like the devil himself is chasing you, and don't look over your shoulder lest you be turned into a pillar of salt.