Redundant since Jan, struggling to find anything...

[wyson]

Lol, its funny you mention this, I’m always on the look out for solutions architects these days, to quiz them about stuff.

When will…
how long for…
who do I need to talk to about…

One of them has started to give me some side eye if he spots me in the company kitchen.

Could just ask the PM types before and they would do all the comms and come back with an answer previously.

Next time if side eye guy says he is unsure about a timeline, I’ll politely suggest he start a gantt chart

Edited by wyson on Wednesday 1st May 11:17

[mikef]

deserialisethis said:

I've got no formal SVPG training (something I will look into) but I'm all for the "build it light, build it fast, measure, improve" approach.

A good place to start would be with Marty Cagan's book Inspired from Amazon. If that resonates with you, there are other books in the series

My experience is that Product Management needs to be heavily involved in Agile - if Agile is just an IT thing, then at best you've got a water-scrum-fall bodge with big budget cycles, big specs up front and long validation against specs before release - with some iterative development in the middle

In product development (as opposed to in-house IT or doing customer projects), Prod Mgmt is still very much a critical role, unlike the other PMs, Project Managers - who nevertheless have a role where customer work is being done to fixed timescales and budgets (not a a good idea - ask Fujitsu)

I'm speaking as a VP of Software Engineering, who has also run global Product Management teams and PMOs. From the state of the market, it sounds as though I retired at the right time

[deserialisethis]

wyson said:

Next time if side eye guy says he is unsure about a timeline, I’ll politely suggest he start a gantt chart

Bonus points if there are external suppliers / vendors involved and you ask him what their timelines and highlighted risks and issues are, along with proposed mitigations.

Then give him my CV

Genuine question, in these scenarios where the SA (or some other techie) is taking this stuff on, are they also taking on all of the project reporting for budgets, resource requirement, utilisation, ETC / EAC etc? Are they also accountable / responsible for these areas?

Edited by deserialisethis on Wednesday 1st May 12:01

[Chimaera98]

Feedback from an agency is that the situation for Office workers/Professionals in the last 18 months has been “dire” with lots of companies making redundancies.

Companies that are employing have a large pool job seekers to choose from.

[geeks]

deserialisethis said:

wyson said:

Next time if side eye guy says he is unsure about a timeline, I’ll politely suggest he start a gantt chart

Bonus points if there are external suppliers / vendors involved and you ask him what their timelines and highlighted risks and issues are, along with proposed mitigations.

Then give him my CV

Genuine question, in these scenarios where the SA (or some other techie) is taking this stuff on, are they also taking on all of the project reporting for budgets, resource requirement, utilisation, ETC / EAC etc? Are they also accountable / responsible for these areas?

Edited by deserialisethis on Wednesday 1st May 12:01

In some instances yes, in others no.

[PurpleTurtle]

IT techie here, mainframe contractor.

I can only speak for my sector, but since the start of 2020 (around the pandemic, but not really related to it) we've morphed from a traditional waterfall environment to Agile. Every day is full of DevOps bullst bingo which, whilst great in the right tech space, is a rather large square peg in a round hole in my world.

Nevertheless we press on with it because it's what the CTO wants to hear, out are traditional PMs and BAs and in are Scrum Masters and DevOps engineers.

It seems to me (30yrs in IT next year) that anyway who talks the talk of DevOps manages to do well. If you're out there calling yourself a Project Manager and floating your Prince 2 qualifications that have stood you in good stead for years then nobody wants to know.

It's all Jira and Confluence in my world now, we've drunk the Atlassian Kool Aid and anyone who can wax lyrical in that environment does well. We have a bloke called a 'Release Train Engineer', nobody knows what he does but he just spouts pure Bullst Bingo, doesn't actually do any real 'work', but the CTO seems to think the sun shines out of his fundament.

This made me laugh like a drain! https://x.com/agile_memes/status/17820030061768952...

[rustyuk]

Nearly 1.7k Project Manager vacancies advertised on JobServe.

Take the SCRUM Product Owner and SCRUM master certifications.

[deserialisethis]

PurpleTurtle said:

It's all Jira and Confluence in my world now, we've drunk the Atlassian Kool Aid and anyone who can wax lyrical in that environment does well. We have a bloke called a 'Release Train Engineer', nobody knows what he does but he just spouts pure Bullst Bingo, doesn't actually do any real 'work', but the CTO seems to think the sun shines out of his fundament.

I'm already in that world. Have been for 6+ years and know the tools inside out, and they've been commonplace in my area (software development) for a fair bit longer.

rustyuk said:

Nearly 1.7k Project Manager vacancies advertised on JobServe.

Take the SCRUM Product Owner and SCRUM master certifications.

Yeah but try applying to any of them and see what you get back. I have CSM certs, as well as waterfall / stage-gate related certs.

[wyson]

deserialisethis said:

Genuine question, in these scenarios where the SA (or some other techie) is taking this stuff on, are they also taking on all of the project reporting for budgets, resource requirement, utilisation, ETC / EAC etc? Are they also accountable / responsible for these areas?

Edited by deserialisethis on Wednesday 1st May 12:01

Honestly couldn’t tell you. I’ve heard a lot of management guff and seen lots of slides, but no experience as yet of how it will shake out and work in practice. But I think the principle is, there will be one cross departmental set of pen pushers and gantt chart whippers, not each department having its own pen pushers and gantt chart whippers talking to each other. Hence a large reduction in ‘management’ head count.

Management guff link:
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/industrials-an...

At the moment, things are a bit rudderless, and the techies have become self organising to a degree. It will take a while for the new org to bed in properly.

Edited by wyson on Wednesday 1st May 18:23

[deserialisethis]

Ah ok, it sounds like some of the management stuff is being moved out of tech departments and into a consolidated PMO function. Not uncommon depending on the nature of the organisation to be honest, I’ve seen it before and worked in that sort of environment in the past (consultancy).

It can work but what it can result in is management that is even more wildly out of touch with the actual “work” of the project and how to best facilitate getting that work done.

That’s all project management is at the end of the day. I always saw my role as the umbrella that protects the team from all the politics and bullst.

[mikef]

deserialisethis said:

Ah ok, it sounds like some of the management stuff is being moved out of tech departments and into a consolidated PMO function

I’d say the exact opposite is true in modern software product companies. Many PMOs no longer exist and the management stuff is split between Product Management and Technology

[deserialisethis]

I was referring to the post above by wyson. In my world Product Managers are embedded in the teams building the thing, along with designers, QA etc.

Or am I misunderstanding what's being said?

Edited by deserialisethis on Wednesday 1st May 21:53

[wyson]

Yes, this is how it was previously. Lots of teams organised around ‘Products’, management for each team and management for each ‘Product’. I think I’m right in saying they expect the central project management function to be distant (it’s not actually called that!), hence the shift in emphasis on techies to do the bulk for themselves in the day to day.

It’s one way to downshift and cut costs. The big tech firm videos were saying that it reduces productivity because techies are multi tasking, and the ‘savings’ promised by the management consultants never quite materialise. I’ve certainly never spoken across so many teams and suppliers pre reorg.

Could also just be one of those cyclical things. I’ve seen it with outsourcing too. Perhaps the next CEO / management consultants will decide you do need more specialised project management staff to free the techies to do what they do best. And the CEO / management consultants after that will question why you need so many managers. I guess they need to be seen changing something to justify their salaries / fees.

Techie jobs still seem buoyant, I’m still constantly contacted by recruiters on linkedin, although the intensity has dropped off since the latter stages of the pandemic, when my inbox was on fire. Perhaps consider leaving the dark side?

Anyway, best of luck on your search. From a techies perspective you sound like one of the good ones. I’ve experienced far too many whippers, who will take what you say and come back with, the business says no, in half that time please, or words to that effect.

Edited by wyson on Thursday 2nd May 00:01

[JerseyRoyal]

Just had a check through indeed and linkedin, I’ve applied for 115 jobs since the start of March. All stuff I’m qualified for, one or two were ambitious punts but not beyond my skills.

I’ve had 2 interviews and no feedback, even when I’ve requested it.

Pretty demoralising tbh.

[rustyuk]

The issue I've found with LinkedIn is that the vacancy attracts a large number of offshore hopefuls and it's easy for the hiring manager to get overwhelmed with applicants.

I've had some success with applying direct via a companies careers portal. Especially with Public Sector work were they don't have budget for LinkedIn and Job Serve.

Good luck with the search!

[CoupeKid]

Since February I've had negligible interest from recruiters who see my CV online and no replies from applications, even for jobs practically written for me that I could bring lots of value to.

Also, I'm seeing the same jobs re advertised.

I'm starting to think it's because I'm male, stale and pale so don't meet the right diversity quotas.

On top of that I'm pretty sure lots of employers either consciously or without knowing it are just sitting tight and waiting for the next government.

I'm sorry I can't offer any comfort or encouragement but I'm sure you aren't alone.

Edited to say: On reflection the above is too negative. You undoubtedly have skills that are in demand and would be an asset to some company. The jobs are out there.

Edited by CoupeKid on Sunday 5th May 13:41

[JerseyRoyal]

I’ve got a second interview for an entry level thing tomorrow. Weird that it’s a bank holiday but I’m taking that to mean that they want someone in quick.

Still to negotiate salary but I’m expecting it to be a 10-15% cut from my last place.

They’ll get a bargain and I’ll get a goal for the next year

[brickwall]

The market is pretty rough right now - I know a lot of companies are on hiring bans and doing ‘stealth layoffs”.

The turnaround from 2022 is very steep.

[JerseyRoyal]

Took the job, ended up being closer to 20% for the pay cut which stung but is dictated by their internal pay structure.

The role could have been custom made for me so I’m hoping I can show my worth fairly quickly and get the salary up.

Good luck to the folk still looking.

[RustyMX5]

I think the tech space is going through a number of changes driven by fashion and ego. The last place I worked at went from Waterfall to Agile, then to Kanban before finally settling on Scrum. All the BAs (me included) were re-branded as Product Owners and were answerable to the Product Managers. We were expected to manage the Project Management side of delivering whatever features were being worked on within the sprint(s). The vast majority of Project Managers were axed and only a couple were retained for 'large deliveries'. It didn't take long before Product Managers became more hands off and shoved more on the POs. At that point I decided to move on but I kept in touch with some of my former colleagues. The POs all took voluntary redundancy and the Dev teams were expected to do all the PO work and deliver the same amount of work. Let's just say that it ended up with a number of devs buggering off elsewhere.

All of this was driven by a couple of CTOs who went to conventions where a lot of this streamlining was sold as being the holy grail. And guess what, a lot of this came from the big consultancies who have a vested interest in selling this to businesses. To make matters worse, the CTOs / CIOs of the world seem to swallow this BS despite everything their staff tell them.