Re:Ask HN: Coping when your client is an asshole?
by watwut on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:01AM
(#20028123)
> However if that abuse is coming from your stakeholder, you need to realise it's because they are receiving pressure
Some abusive people just believe that this is what makes them tough and effective. Has nothing to do with someone else pressuring them.
I used to give benefit of the doubt in these situations and think it is external, until I seen with such managers up close and it turned out it was them and only them begin source of their own assholery. The external parties were just enabling.
Re:Ask HN: Coping when your client is an asshole?
by was_boring on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:12PM
(#20036006)
I'm going to second this. I've seen on more then one occasion that some people believe it's their job to do this on order to be most effective. I literally had PM tell me (as head of engineering) that they thought it was there job to set unrealistic expectations and adversarial environment in the hopes that it created an environment where the engineers worked longer.
I'm reality it creates a hostile work environment where burnout is high, morale is low, and projects take even longer to finish. It sacrifices all long term gains for short term results.
My experience is there are few VP who can stand up a project with an outsourcing firm without some risk of their own (either in their review, or in an extreme case: their career).
If that abuse is coming from people who report to your stakeholder, or from other people in the firm, a quick chat with the stakeholder would probably smooth things over. You might either find that obvious, or believe that it doesn't apply if you're getting abuse from multiple places, but it's not their money, just their job, so if you're not making your abusers' job harder in some way, your stakeholder will be in the best position to do something about personnel issues.
However if that abuse is coming from your stakeholder, you need to realise it's because they are receiving pressure, and you would do well to understand it because you might be able to help him/her with what they really need. Your stakeholder's job is to operate a P&L including your project against some revenue, or produce powerpoint slides for someone who does that job. Do those reports suggest this project is costing more than anyone expected? Try to attack the real problem here: Give your stakeholder some justification to go after the money, or to respond to the delay. This is what they really need.