• AggressivelyPassive
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    -31 year ago

    You obviously never worked in a corporation.

    Let’s think of a simple example: you’re starting a new project, the current infrastructure is technology A, but one engineer proposes technology B, since it’s better in categories X,Y,Z. You can plug in anything you want here. Now, the engineers can give their opinions and estimates, but they can’t decide it. The PM can. It’s his job to weigh the risks and uncertainties and decide on the path forward.

    Again, as the guy above, you’re thinking way too narrowly focused on your small slice of the world. IT departments aren’t magical omnipotent collections of super smart people, revolving mainly around themselves and their superior technology. They’re just cogs, we are cogs, and our job is, to keep a machine running.

    • @FooBarrington
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      1 year ago

      I’ve worked in a couple corporations, thank you.

      Let’s think of a simple example: you’re starting a new project, the current infrastructure is technology A, but one engineer proposes technology B, since it’s better in categories X,Y,Z. You can plug in anything you want here. Now, the engineers can give their opinions and estimates, but they can’t decide it. The PM can. It’s his job to weigh the risks and uncertainties and decide on the path forward.

      This has absolutely not been the case in any corporation I’ve worked, the PM is not allowed to make these kinds of decisions. They are made by technical or solution architects. It’s also in no way a PMs job to weigh risks and uncertainties when making technical choices, since they literally can’t.

      Again, as the guy above, you’re thinking way too narrowly focused on your small slice of the world. IT departments aren’t magical omnipotent collections of super smart people, revolving mainly around themselves and their superior technology. They’re just cogs, we are cogs, and our job is, to keep a machine running.

      You’ve obviously never worked in a corporation if you think a PM is allowed to make this kind of choice.

      • AggressivelyPassive
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        1 year ago

        Then ask yourself: who is taking the risk? Who will get blamed, if the project fails? The architect? Or the guy who let the architect do his thing?

        • @FooBarrington
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          21 year ago

          Obviously the architect, and consequently the project owner. The project manager has no say in these decisions, why would they get blamed? I’ve never seen that happen, while I’ve seen the PO get blamed multiple times.

          I really think you’ve never worked in a corporation, because what you’re saying just doesn’t happen. The PM gets blamed if the project falls behind, but not if the technical decisions of the architect make problems. A “project manager” is not a manager in the classical sense…

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      Man, I didn’t agree with any of your comments before this one, but I could at least see your point of view, but this…

      You can plug in anything you want here. Now, the engineers can give their opinions and estimates, but they can’t decide it. The PM can. It’s his job to weigh the risks and uncertainties and decide on the path forward.

      You are either a PM yourself or are just making shit up to argue. The PM, at best should only be responsible for signing off on tech choices. If PMs were making decisions, then we would all be using Excel as an enterprise database, documentation tool, and version control.

      • AggressivelyPassive
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        -31 year ago

        I’m not a PM, but I can actually see, how decisions are made. You actually wrote it yourself without realizing: a PM signs it off. He has to take the risk. If it seems too risky, he won’t accept it.

        Just go to your PM next meeting and propose to rewrite everything in, say, Rust. Will he agree? Probably not. Did he make a technical decision? Probably not.

        Don’t kid yourself with technological grandeur. If your PM doesn’t want to do X, X won’t happen.