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.
You definitely need to talk to the director and share your concerns . Possibly separate out projects and independently handle them.
Director taking credit for both of their work: 👀
Lol
Have a one on one with you manager to call out your concern. Have the proofs of the work you've done ready for just in case. Don't let this case slip through else it will impact your confidence more than anything else
This will work out negatively, I highly recommend what SevereTask8 has suggested in one of the replies above.
Shout out your work in public team channels, if you're using slack there would be a slack channel for your team? If yes then post your work completion there with meaningful highlights and link to the PRDs and research work that you have done.
That's how corporate works, blaming, complaining doesn't help anyone, neither you nor your senior. Broadcasting your work does. That's the only way.
Grow a spine buddy, if you let people take advantage of you they won't stop. Confront the guy about this bs behaviour and also let your managers know what he's doing with proof attached.
Start documenting the work on an e-mail enable version history on anything that remotely support version history. Keep personal tracker with evidence what you have done. Start adding invites inviting yourself and creating a time train on what you have done.
If it's sheet related lock the cells out on which you have worked. Start uploading the files to SharePoint it usually keeps track of the changes with timestamp as well.
Additionally start challenging this senior on calls if he taunts or something document it in a email sending it to him that can you emphasize how I'm not contributing enough and ask for his answer with proof by EOD and mention it's for my own learning. Start being micro manager to your micro manager.
Have done that usually those people stop or leave the organization and sometimes you get enough proof gathered to promote them as your customer.
Verry useful, thanks for sharing!
You need to clearly segregate parts you drive/lead with your PM in pre-during-post stages and maintain that in upward communications. Set these conversations early with these PM and make it around you having enough work to drive, grow towards whatever performance evaluation goals are.
Lead walkthroughs for stories you are driving and if the PM says no - then say you vocally that you should have stories assigned to lead and what do they need.
Bottomline - be a pain in the ass to this PM and folks upwards in a career ambitious way of wanting to do more good work and growth oriented.
If it is very early in your career, try to learn as much as possible from that other guy as well. Sometimes, it looks that other guy is taking full credit etc but usually managers also expect them to take full use of you. Many times it seems to us that the other guy has only given some ideas and hasn't done much work but sometimes that is what is expected from them by their manager as well. You should try to build ur relationship with the other guy to understand his/her requirements. Usually considering the experience for manager, the other guy would be more important than you and he would give him more credit even if he knows that u have done the all grunt work.
Don't compete with other guy, focus on ur learning, focus on presenting ur work directly. Block 30min 1-1 with ur manager in a week or once every 2 week. Explain him ur work, don't complain about other guy, but ask him how he can create visibility and trajectory for himself.
Start upward/horizontal communication on the doc itself for the parts you lead in terms of commenting out tagging gtm/biz/analytics teams asking for inputs ccing the manager and fellow PM. Whatever work you do in terms of aligning people, starting jotting that down also- as per discussion with teams(tag them) align on this etc. Comment out on figma. Bombard emails/slacks with sharing progress mid way before the doc is complete and presented.
Try talking to your manager and drop him an email. But still if things don’t work out try talking to skip level manager which is director but still in case if things don’t work out leave the place man because stakeholders and leaderships always trust managers. Hard to accept but that’s the brutal truth.
Escalate this to director. If it is continues then switch the company
Tell him ki "ghar aake maarunga, ye sab bakchodi ki toh"
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