Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

IT PM guy here.

Your manager assigns you to a project that a PM Is running.

It's not a mystery.

If your manager doesn't know you're working on a project and a PM is asking you for something, that's on you to let them know.

Dotted lines are bad, but PMs are not dotted lines in that sense.

I've never asked for a manager to have "a talk" with anyone. Sometimes someone will tell me they can't get something done and why, and I'll ask the manager for more resources.

I may or may not get those resources, everything on a project is a negotiation, balancing the company needs against resources.

All that said, there are good PMs and there are nightmares. Learning how to deal with nightmares is one of the great joys of corporate life.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

PMs exist at every company, dude. And spans and layers is kind of pointless when the new ICs still manage their teams (including hiring and writing reviews/setting comp) through the new “boss”.

Reorgs are stilll happening. There will be more flattening or the org structures. Dotted line reporting is painful for the “lower” boxes since two “leaders” seldom have the same agenda.

Charlie is off of his game. Historically, this is when he jumps to the next su---r organization. He never did get traction here with his plans to cut and being a one trick pony, I’ll give him to March.

Study his past, you’ll see. When the going gets tough, the Schlough gets going.

I heard tech is affected

And then there are the "Virtual" dotted lines to Scrum Masters (or "Scrum-bags" as we call them).

Lot of IC's have multiple bosses.

Sometimes I get frustrated and say "you three managers fight it out".

You can go 3 down from Chuck in MN's world and see scores of examples of managers with 2 or 3 directs. There was some movement on this last year (including my team which was consolidated and 4 booted) but then, poof, seems to have stopped.

So my boss has less than 7 reports. Is my boss soon to be kicked out?

IC who was never a mgr but got dotted line directs in a reorg last year (can be seen in Teamworks). It's a manager in every way except having access to Staff Management.

Day to day management, reviews, comp planning, performance plans - yep, I do it all in templates, send to my direct mgr and they copy/paste it into whatever system it goes in.

Let’s call it the Wells Fargo Shuffle. It will all start all over again from square one when Charlie leaves in the next year or so. This is our future if we choose to stay. Just smile and say “Thank you sir. May I have another?”

Before spans and layers, I had a boss with three directs. After spans and layers, I got a different boss, who went from three directs to 10. Additionally, I became a dotted line to both my old boss (who became an IC) and another IC. Total cluster.

I don’t know who MV is, but there is a lot of re-orging coming up in Q1. Our group went through this a couple months ago. Hire new manager(s). They have limited reports, making everyone scratch their head. Then re-orgs come around and then they hire more people to report to the new manager. If they are snr manager, expect a bunch of managers to move under them, cut a few of them, keep who they think are the good ones and start juggling staff around.

Spans and layers is indeed enforced, but in practice the managers who were moved to IC roles are still managing their teams like before.

MV has opened up more manager positions and filled them. Most of those managers don't have seven directs. One has two directs. LOL! It's all a joke. I still can't believe anyone in their right mind would work for the one manager that has two directs.

Finally, somone who gets it about PMs

Spans and layers does exist and is being enforced. Minimum of 7 direct reports. Some lines of business may have higher than that. If you are a manager and have less - be prepared for more, or be prepared to be gone.