“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

Human resource

Software Developer

Mismanagement is like playing ludo while thinking it’s chess.  You roll the dice...  then hire a cheerleader to motivate the dice  set the new KPI to win the olympics medal  and then yell "Howzat!"...

Welcome to Confessions's Private Community

Mismanagement is like playing ludo while thinking it’s chess. 
You roll the dice...
- then hire a cheerleader to motivate the dice
- set the new KPI to win the olympics medal
- and then yell "Howzat!" at the HR for no reason. Also invoke DRS
- and blame the goalkeeper for not doing the raider's job well in kabaddi
- and hire a swimming coach to captain the badminton team because diversity matters
- and then call for power play while substituting your best player with a water polo horse because it’s time to stir things up
- and serve a tennis ball in a basketball court then complain about the goal post is too wide
- and then wonder why the queen isn’t moving
- then blame the pawns for not knowing how to fly
- and celebrate when you land on a snake because change is good
- and promote the player who accidentally kicked the board over
- then have a team meeting to discuss why the ladder only goes down
- then invest in new engineers to manage the new tech stack that will be used to program the dice for outcomes cause now you somehow make more data-driven decisions
- and finally, host a town hall to announce that everyone’s doing great
... except they’re all laid off

Mismanagement is...

Mismanagement is...- Grapevine

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

If an employee in the team resigns, and stops contributing to work, delays tasks and misses deadlines. What should his/her manager do to resolve this?

Resignation and work

Software Engineer

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Do only alphas (jerks) excel in management consulting?

Program Manager

Welcome to Ask Grapeviners's Private Community

One thing that I did not know about corporate world before joining it

Product Manager

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

The job market has not been good for the last 12-15 months, but organisations around are offering good severance to their employees and aiding them for their next steps. But UC conducts "performance reviews" twice a year, which is basically a platform for managers to wage a personal vendetta against the "low performers"(read: people who don't suck up to them). And hence, they strategically 'ask people to leave', in return of making sure that terms like 'fired', 'laid off' would not be associated with them. So, people put in their papers, and serve the one month notice without working, and get that salary as their 'severance'. 

Leadership team goes on to boast the fact that there hasn't been any layoffs in the company. Well, fair, because one needs to own the fact that they've laid people off, and funnily enough one of the UC values is 'ownership', and managers do OWN the indifference to the sudden absence of a certain team member from meetings. 

Apparently, people perform fine till the time these half yearly reviews are conducted, because there isn't any concern about their performances in the regular one-on-ones with the managers, but cometh the review, cometh the concerns with performance. Managers nit pick over employees not responding within 15 minutes to their messages. Also, there isn't a 360° view of performance, so your peers, who work much closer to you don't have a say in your performance.

UC brags a 'meritocratic' culture, and rightly so, where ones merit is their ability to show their work as 10x of what it actually is, appearing to be busy with a completely packed calendar, and always saying yes to whatever manager says, even if it means bending over backwards for them. 

<Continued in comments>

Urban Company - A spineless org with hypocrite leadership & incompetent middle management

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

I'm working as an APM at a startup for about a year now. I work with another guy who happens to be my senior, PM and both of us report to the director.

Of late, my senior, i.e., the PM has been undermining my work when the two of us are working together, subtly taunting me that what I've done is pretty easy and non impactful business wise. He also disregards the decisions made by me, modifies the PRDs discovered and written by me and mails them as his own.

Eventually, he ends up adding me to the walkthrough calls because I had discovered the features but then concludes everything such that he had owned everything end to end.

Recently, both of us were given a documentation to be done by our manager, i.e., the director. I had completed almost 70% of that document, but in our call with the director he presented it saying that he had written that document and I had made a few changes to it.

This undermines my work and visibility of my capabilities. I don't know how to tackle this situation, my manager is usually busy and leaves it upto this PM to allocate work, which he unfairly uses.

How do I talk to my manager about this. I'm fairly new to corporate, just graduated last year and don't know how to handle all this.

But this thing has been bothering me lately, really looking forward to any advise my fellow grapeviners may have.

Senior taking credit for my work

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

I thought I was the only one frustrated with meetings until my colleagues also mentioned they were not able to get work done because most of the day was spent on meetings

Plus our boss (CEO) loves talking, anyway the meetings are agenda-less. He stretches 30 min calls to 2 hours and then has the audacity to question the productivity.

Cannot tell me this, he gets very touchy when feedback is negative for him. And then writes sarcastic messages.
Also, who wants to take up fights with person who pays your salary

What to do in this case? I'm tired of working 12 hours each day

Too many meetings, and our boss is one yapper

Founder

μmanagement

Welcome to News Discussion's Private Community

Can’t imagine a stronger sign that complete WFH cannot work

Business Development Manager

What are the unique problems that you faced working as a PM in a startup at various stages vs the ones in corporate?

Problems faced by a PM in a startup

Just an open ended question on why are layoffs happening on such a scale. I personally feel the skill to salary ratio has fucked up so much lately that the companies are having to fire people who are essentially useless to them. More of liabilities than just assets! What do you think?

Layoffs - who do you blame?

Software lead

So During our scum calls with client my manager  gives update for whole team himself and doesnt let us update on the task which we have worked on ourself . Mf just grabs all the glory  in pursuit for good feedback from client side   meanwhile he does nothing technical  and during internal meeting he says you guys should speak more with client  and ALSO he ask for everyone's update on task before scrum and then pokes why is it not done even on task whose estimated completion  date/time is far away. 

So annoying and frustating .

Just a rant from your average software dev . 
Do give any solution you might have . 🙂
Thanks for reading.

Down bad manager ! Glory hunter.

Data engineer

I've had the fortune of having worked in 3 countries so far. India is by far the most exciting place to be in 2024.
But there's something about our work ethic that just concerns me. In both white and blue collar.

In most other countries, I've observed people strictly sticking to the 9 to 5, working diligently in those hours - not wasting too much time on chai sutta breaks, instagram browsing, gupshup etc.

They work for 8 hours, then leave. And think about work directly the next day.

In India, most of us spend more hours - but very obviously very few of those hours are productive. In fact, I lately feel that too many people around me are doing even 2-3 hours of work on a good day.

We end up just staying around, passing time, and then go back home. When we could have achieved so much more.

Work ethic has fallen. Work hours have gone up.

We need to be more mindful of our actions, we need to work well at work, and then do well at home.

I think it's a function of being over populated. There are 1.5-2 people doing what 1 person should be doing, hence this effect.

Needs to be fixed, it's the sign of a major problem in the workforce. Thoughts?

Disguised unemployment in India - It's all around us :/

Corporate Strategist

There are managers who are paid close to a Crore Rupees a year for doing this.

Scene: Our team is working on it. We’ll get back to you.
Reality: I have no idea about what the issue is. I’m completely dependent on my team.

Scene: I have a hard stop now. Have to drop off.
Reality: I don’t care about the ongoing meeting. My “passive” attendance in some other meeting is more important than the ongoing meeting.

Scene: +team FYI 
Reality: Not my responsibility. Team must take a look.

Scene: Do you have some bandwidth?
Reality: If you say no, I will use this against you during appraisal.

Scene: Feel free to give feedback about leadership. Your opinion is important for continuous improvement.
Reality: Negative feedback should be worded with politically correct statements. Else be ready to face consequences.

Scene: The leadership team expects so-and-so from you.
Reality: I’m not capable of questioning the leadership team. I’m just passing the buck to you.

Scene: Can you prepare a deck by this day?
Reality: I want to show a rosy picture to my leaders. I will ‘use’ you to impress my leaders.

Scene: Who wants to work on this item?
Reality: I’ll judge employees who don’t volunteer.

Scene: I want you to complete this (bullshit work) by this weekend at any cost.
Reality: I want to save my ass in this job.

Scene: Do you have any blockers?
Reality: As if I’m capable of resolving them…lol

Scene: Taking a day off. Reachable on mobile.
Reality: Added the second statement to ‘show’ how important & flexible I am. I know you’ll not call me anyways.

Scene: Manager presenting something. Do you have any questions?
Reality: -silence-

- - -
Have you ever encountered Managers like these?

Inefficient Managers

Software architect

I have been talking to a few companies, across different size bands.
Only Indian startups seem to obsessed with full week WFO/Micromanagement.

A few years back, startups were known for being more flexible, now it just seems to be the reverse.

Why are Indian startups so obsessed with Micromanagement? i.e. WFO

To all the people here, I have observed way too many posts on salary checks based on experience.

I can pretty much guarantee you, your salary or pay doesn't depend on your years of experience. Your salary or pay depends on these factors primarily -
1. Location of the company (city / country)
2. The impact you have created in past (very highly dependent)
3. The impact your hiring managers believe you can create once you are on boarded (again, very important)
4. The kind of company you join(can they afford to pay high salaries)

That's all that matters! There could be definitely more factors, but these truly are major ones!

For all those who are doing salary checks across their years of experience, figure out if those are really unique years of experience or doing same thing year on year! 

For those who think some people are overpaid, or people this young shouldn't deserve this salary or that these people just got lucky, that's not the case.
When you are good, you make your own luck!

Next time you evaluate your salary, see the impact you have created. Then figure out what you should earn as a salary for the impact you have created and ask for it! Higher the impact, higher the reason for great pay!

Anyone agrees?

Setting the record straight!

Consultant

Somehow in india all the product startup’s have adopted the most toxic and worst translation of what it’s being like as a product manager and engineering management. Both these roles have become nothing but fear mongering, power grab, and most being extremely bias towards almost everything. 

So your success is very much dependent on how your manager is and the opportunity that they provide. So if you want to avoid toxicity sooner, it’s the right step rather than stick and fail in the long term. Once again, I am talking based off of my 10 yoe. You may have a different experience and I’d definitely wanna learn more.

Toxic Leadership in Engineering and Product

Can you grow your career by displaying honesty at work?

Do you think manipulative people are most successful at work?

What category do you think you come under?
Honest or Manipulative?

If people at work, force you to be manipulative, would you accept it for the sake of your own career growth?

Honesty at work.

Welcome to Data Scientists's Private Community

What has been your experience in MMM?

I know DS are asked to use Bayesian to get any random explanation that you make the sales spending look valid?

Many cases see them manipulate data to generate this as well.

Almost every DS I met hated it. What's your experience?

Marketing mix modelling: Is the most unethical work a data scientist might be asked to do?

Sales Manager ab se PM. 
On a serious note, how many agree with this. Pls no hate for any job function, yu to har cheez imp hai wrna kuch bhi nhi hai

Thoughts?

CEO vs so called "mini CEO"

Associate Product Manager

Micromanager bosses are like overly attached parents who decide your diet, tell you what to eat and when and also give you instructions on how to chew. 
But it also has its BIG wins:
- You will never be alone.  You’ll never feel lonely. Your micromanager will be your constant shadow. Going to the meeting - he will be there. Writing an email, he will be in cc. Going the restroom - he is behind you. Having a date - he will stay on the call. Getting cozy with someone - He is right there.. in between you and ahem ahem. Thinking what to do next - He will be there in your thoughts, even before the thought of "I think" hit you.
- No more decision making. Who needs to make decisions when every choice is made for you? Whether it’s the font size on your presentation, angle of your desk chair, your hair color, your last name, your baby's name, your heart rate, your BP, your death time - your micromanager’s got it covered.
- You get free cardiovascular workout (Dhuk Dhuk.. lubdub lubdub.. you get the hint)
- You will be one of those few who will experience the joy of meetings about meetings for those meetings that were not required
- You will be trained to live in real-time surveillance conditions, where all your activity and movements is monitored and what you say is captured - you could be a contestant tomorrow on BIG BOSS OTT if you like
- You would be the elite few who will get to experience New, follow-up emails, reminders, and gentle nudges tags on an email all within 5 minutes of each other
- By the time you leave, you’ll have a black belt in stress management
- By the time you leave, you would have lost weight
- You will see increased commitment to work: You will sleep less, You will turn up to office on time, will work more and for extended hours
- You'll save money - no weekends = no social activities and outings
- With constant micromanagement, you’ll soon wonder "who are you" "why are you" "why are we" "why is everything" - first step of higher level consciousness

Mismanagement is...

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