Wonderland

It's been a tumultuous bunch of weeks here in Wonderland. I haven’t been able to have a quiet thought, or give two minutes to ranting about it.

Two more project managers packed up and left, and one was let go. Still the same horrendous amount of work, with the same impossible drop dead dates, and no plan to back-fill the vacated positions.

Why all the upheaval? My guess would be that you cannot have a PMO comprised with nothing but contractors. Full time employees have a sense of permanence, a future of sorts. Contractors owe the company nothing more than an honest days work. There was the promise of eventually going perm, but so far well after one year, only one person has brought into the hallowed arena of a FTE (sound of angels singing).

I work on very high profile special projects. Not short bus special; but high visibility reporting to “C” level douche-nozzles. You know, the projects that have all the special issues of “if not completed on time, the company will not make security compliance or federal compliance or the hair will fall off the CIO’s left sack, if not done NOW!

To add insult to injury, my so called director intimated that maybe I shouldn't claim more than forty hours per week. Sure, that will happen, when I see a flock of pigs zooming past my third floor window! I'd love to put in only forty hours per week, but if I did, that drop dead date would go whizzing by my head like shots from a drive by shooting gone bad. So to get just the absolutes done I'm doing almost 60 hours per week. Yeah, I'm billing an ass load of time and making a ton of money, but spending a good amount of it on antacids and aspirin. I think I am beginning to hallucinate…

I can think back in 'the day' when project management was fun. Challenging, but not demeaning, and you'd never have to justify yourself. You were hired because you were a proven professional and the corporation let you to do what you do best.

When something went south in the project, you owned up to it, and when you did pulled the magic rabbit out of your butt and saved the day, the corporation knew about it. How? No horn blowing of course, but a single congratulatory email to the whole team, mentioning the high point of the project. End it with well wishes and the hope that you will work with them again. Add your signature and viola….

Okay, so all of that is not was I'm pissed off about. It's fucking so called PMO director. He knows very little about project management. So little in fact, that if it were represented by pinto beans, he couldn’t even manage a small fart! He has he never even successfully run a project. He's just a big bag of wind, taking up way too much space in the universe. His just walking through the PM rabbit warrens asking inane questions and trying to sound important. It makes by blood pressure jump to uncivil levels. Why such a reaction? Mostly because he's taken credit for some of my best work. Project managers by their very nature are possessive when it comes to their project. That's not to mean they micro manage or refuse to delegate. They manage in every sense of the word, and someone taking credit for their work fucking pisses them off.