a fine mess

I don't plan on changing jobs anytime soon. I enjoy my position and I love my kiddos. I love advocacy and believe in it so much, so in the future I see myself in a job that involves more advocacy for children/adults with disabilities.

Jerry D

Tomorrow. His boss is a total jerk and a dictator and he makes my boss look like an angel in comparison. His boss is coming into town to criticize him and us for not getting our bids out fast enough, so once they have their meeting, my boss will meet with us and pass on whatever his boss wants us to do, and he'll start riding us more. After a few weeks though things usually return to normal.

That's wonderful Michelle. I'm really happy for you.

Jerry D

That's wonderful Cece.

secretk

This sounds awesome Cece! Glad that you enjoy your job!

secretk

Ah this sounds awful Jerry! Why is his boss being this way? Glad that it gets better at least at some point. Why do you think they have this expectations that your team is not doing enough? And do you think that it's like that?

I am asking because of course something similar happened with my boss. I am sure that someone from above told him you need to do more, but he failed to assess what stops the team and decided to blame the team member themselves. I guess he did not want to accept that what's causing the inefficiency is something that he and the jerk started 2 years ago and did not finish and now we all suffer from it.

So do you think that something similar could happen with those two? They know their mistakes, but they do not want to admit them so they ride you and your team.

Michelle you are lucky to have great job and a great boss! That unfortunately does not happen always. My best friend has similar issues with his bosses being non existing for the work, but on the front line for the title.

jediwands

Got it, that's so great! I was just wondering if your job title would change within your current position due to getting an advanced degree (Masters) in Special Education. I love the field you're in. I considered it back when I went to school. I have a Masters in Clinical Psychology. For me it came down to Counseling Psychology (working in a school), Special Education, or Clinical Psychology (focus on Research Psychology). I went the Research Clinical Psychology route. Special Education is a fascinating, terrific field. What you do is priceless work helping people with disabilities.

jediwands

Jerry, that sucks. Sorry about this meeting between your boss and his boss happening today and how it will be passed down to all of you. How often does your boss meet with his boss? Do you ever have direct interaction with this guy?

Thanks, Jerry. I definitely feel blessed having this area of my life without much stress. I know I might not get paid as much as I could as a Clinical Psychologist (since research at a University isn't going to ever make you rich) but the perks are worth it.

True, Koni. I definitely picked this area of work in Clinical Psychology so I could receive the relaxed atmosphere/independent work and all that comes with working at a University. I could never work in a highly stressed environment. I know my limits for sure.

secretk

Your job situation is just pure awesomeness .

I am now putting aside the other project I am working on for 1/2 days while working on another. I am doing some research.

I just realized that I am no longer project lead. I am product lead. My project is now a product and there are a lot of projects and initiatives around it. I am currently working on at least two.

Jerry D

His boss is a jerk and he's all about numbers. They want us to be 90% on time with bids to the customer's due date, and we're at 88%, so to his boss, that's not good enough and he wants to look at our "processes" and "analyze" our reasons for being late as he thinks they're too vague. Whenever we're late on a bid, we have to put down the reason why, but most of the time it's because we're distracted doing other things or because the bid deadline that the customer asked for was unreasonable. So his boss comes into town once a quarter or so to give my boss a hard time (they're meeting for 5 hours today and my boss is calling it an Inquisition) and then in the next day or so my boss will meet with us to tell us what we need to do to "improve." All of us feel that no matter how hard we work it's never good enough, and we're all very frustrated.

Jerry D

Usually once a quarter or whenever he's in town for some other reason. I very rarely have direct interaction with my boss's boss, which is really fortunate, because he's a tyrant.

That's wonderful Michelle. I'm very happy for you.

secretk

That is just terrible! There are however bosses like that. I must admit I do always want to improve things, but try to find real issues to remove and not things like that.

jediwands

Thanks! I designed it that way. Like I said, I will never get rich but I don't care about that in the least.

Cool job title change.

jediwands

Thanks!

Where does this guy live? Good that you don't have any interaction with him!

Jerry D

He lives in Connecticut so we don't see him too often fortunately.

secretk

Well I just changed it myself . Basically the CTO once explained the difference between product and project. Project is an application you have that is not productively used. Meaning no customers are paying for it. Product is when customers pay for it. Out of all of the projects my team is working on, the only one they are paying for is mine. So this means that my project is actually a product. And now we have different projects related to that product for adding new features and functionalities.

I am currently assessing new project initiative and trying to see whether the initial idea would be feasible as well as how much time/efforts we will need because we need to start working on this in April.