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Attack is the best defence! I read my emails in the morning and figure out whether there's some action for me. When I go and get my second coffee, I drop by the PM's office and have a short chat with him.
Where I am in the projects, whether there's stuff from other tasks or unexpected actions, how long that might take, whether schedules are still OK, whether I need him to take care of some customer communication, these things. Usually less than 5 minutes.
The kicker is that he mostly doesn't interrupt me because I instead interrupt him - unless he is highly busy, in which case he just says "sorry, later", same as I would do.
It's a win-win because I can schedule the interruptions while he enjoys that he doesn't have to ask around.5 -
Your entire time with the company, be polite and cordial, don't say risky things, basically be a good boy. But importantly, stay social. Just politely social.
After several months of this, enough time that your fellow employees and management are well aware of your personality, go to the PM in private. Threaten them that if they don't leave you alone you're going to break into their house at night, sedate them, dislocate their jaw and take a shit down their throat.
The beauty of this is that they can't reasonably go to anyone over this, as it's totally unbelievable and out of character. And will be so horrified of what they just heard that they will leave you alone.1 -
I’ve found recently my PM gets scared by technical words, so when I need some peace I usually start throwing words around like prototypal inheritance and decompartmentalisation and he nods like he understands and walks away2
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Have a whiteboard next to your office position. Keep your To Do list there and update every day/half day.
PM can just pass and see status. Maybe ask for clarification. Never takes more than five minutes. Both me and him are pleased.4 -
PM's? Like private messages? No idea, still haven't figured it out. There's still idiots from technical chats sliding in, often with a question that belongs in the very same chat they came from. My Telegram name has now literally "(No PM!)" in it, and a bio that says in all caps "DON'T FUCKING PM ME", yet there are STILL people that don't get it. September never ended, did it?
... Oh. Project managers. -
In my previous work, when I was under pressure (very often, because we were to few people for all the work) I used to manage the situation in the following way:
PM: It's super-important and prioritary to develop < 2 days feature >. Sales really need that feature because they cannot work without it.
Me: Ok. I'll need from them < 2-hours-to-get data > and then I can leave what I'm doing and start with the feature.
PM: *... goes to tell sales ... comes back*
PM: Well, they say they can work by doing < some not as confortable way as feature, but pretty acceptable >.
Me: Ok, then I'll continue trying to prevent the systems break down inminently.
On this work I learned a lot, but clearly, we were too few people to mantain the site, and too much lazy sales people. -
It's like everytime you tell your PM that you need to be left alone to code their projects, it goes in one ear and out the other. I usually ignore them when busy coding, but then they start to blow you up on all forms of communication. Where are you? Why aren't you answering me? It's because I am coding away on all of your projects. If we sit here for hours talking, nothing would get done! Like was it necessary to message and call me on several forms of communication??
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So my boss wants me to build his portfolio website, and he says to me. "Yeah do whatever you want, just don't make it look like a blog." What does that even mean!? 😨6
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* vacation + flight mode
* being VERY clear thay each interaction with you will significantly prolong your delivery time, hence next time your estimates will be artificially increased to compensate for such disturbances [think like 2days to change a button color instead of 20 minutes] -
Put on big headphones, explain you are busy, or just show that you’re not in a good mood.
No seriously, i so don’t have a problem with PMs here. If i receive 2 emails in a day i can call it busy already. Including the daily standup then ofcourse.2 -
If they are a good PM just do your job, they’ll leave you alone. If not, just throw some of that micro management back at them. Tell them you need at least an hour of their time to show them how to properly hold a pencil, but that if they need to hold off on that it’s understandable as they have plenty of flaws to work on. That should make things fun
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I think my PM is happy when he doesnt see me, because I only come to him when we have a problem cant be solved by coding "a few" lines.
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When PM starts to annoy me I put my noise cancellation headphones on, telling them that I lost my hearing, due to many interuptions and unfinished tasks, and they should write me an email3
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As an android dev when I inherited a shitty project thats when I realized what really means to write readable and most importantly testable code. Codebase I inherited wasnt even really that bad it was quite readable, but boy it was not suited for any unit/instrumented tests. im talking spaghetti code.
Nowadays I refactor apps to make sure they are testable instead of spending weeks writing tests for a shitty codebase which was done without thinking about separation of concerns. Clients hate the extra couple weeks on top of request but what can I do, if they want tests they need to work with TDD approach or give extra time for refactors. -
I just learn to speak and explain stuff as humanly possible. Most project managers are like us, before we learned how to code. Just read some books on people management (like Crucial Conversations) and you will know how to manage PMs expectations.1
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By filling out their tracking tools in a language they can understand prior to their deadline of needing the data, being honest in their meetings, and being right about the time/complexity of the effort.
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Educate them about context switching and how bad it is for productivity. Also deliver high quality work, at the end you’ll earn their trust and it makes for a much better work environment.
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Its very simple to get PMs to leave you alone; have a good long talk with them about their goals, motivations, and methods. Try to understand their thinking, then preempt the visit to your desk with something to make them not come to your desk.
Or get a WFH deal and dont answer any comm requests.
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