Just curious within the circuit if your group leads are any good. Several years ago we had great group leads that would and could answer any technical question and take whatever time needed to explain how things worked and provide any advise you asked them for. Everything from career path to relationship building. You could trust him. Nowadays the group leads are taking credit for work, now it’s like they can’t or won’t do any of that anymore. If it’s not self promoting or some pet core function they have no interest. Most of the engineers I work with are relying on each other because the overpaid GL makes himself scarce and runs from any site issues.
Bummed out in Baton Rouge.
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What is a group lead now? Is that tech spine?
I agree with the OP.
Group leads at least in my discipline ARE part of the problem. SELF Serving is an understatement in Baton Rouge.
Also in BR. I found a one note with all the work the group leads are taking credit for in our discipline and saw what they were reporting that they were working on. Looks like a pretty good gig. Take credit for others work. Contractors and engineers. It was gut wrenching but it makes a lot of sense now. I agree with the poster that said it’s the lowest form of life there is. I’m not staying in this pitiful place much longer.our group lead only cares about a chance to go to core engineering. I saw him answer an engineers question with a question. Reality is he didn’t know but used this holier than though attitude essentially telling the youngster go find the answer yourself. Pathetic but the prior toxic manager put him in the position and that was a big azz mistake
The group lead needs to be in the trenches. Servant leadership is what is required by a group lead. They also have to manage upwards to their SLS/DH and covey complicated information in a simple manner.
A group lead needs to be a resource and advocate for everyone on their team.
Group leads need to be giving opportunities they encounter as the face of the group to their team members FIRST so they can develop and shine.
Do the extracurriculars on on your own time at the end of the day.
My supervisors have been good in most cases. The narrative that only as-----s become supervisors is bullsh-t.
History lesson: Every management position gets filled with admin, power points and ‘managing up‘ in this company. They do no mentoring or team building.
Every 10 years or so, it is identified (usually through consultants and employee complaints) that there is no one managing down (ie mentoring, in the trenches, leading their people, etc.)
No one wants to change behaviors. Ie: Two levels up, the managers are not willing to give up their ‘supervisor lackey’ who is doing their admin, creating their power points etc. They don’t want to get rid of the low-value-work that is needed to let their supervisors concentrate on their TEAM development. So they come up with this brilliant idea! ‘Let’s create another layer that is supposed to actually manage down.’ And so Team Leads, Business Team Leads, etc were created.
Another layer of pseudo-management is added, but at first they are told ‘’Your job is to do real work , in the trenches, with your team.” This happens for 6mo to 2years……until the Supervisor starts seeing an opportunity to trickle his admin and power point cr-p down unto the Team Lead. It is usually done in a way that adds more admin, to make the supervisor look good. Ie: I don’t understand such and such but our Manager wants to know if there is a correlation. Can you look at it for me so that I can explain it to my DH? …so now the Team Lead needs to decide between making his boss look good by managing-up (because his boss doesn’t know Jack sh-t) or spending his time developing his team.
This is a cautionary tale. You can either be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Stop growing management layers with imaginary work that hides company problems.
If something isn’t working, fix the problem at its source. Oh wait…. To any upper-level manager reading this, middle management (and how you staff them) is the problem. Stop looking for lackeys and pick managers who have success growing their teams. And pick managers who can answer their own dang questions….and don’t have knowledge gaps where every question turns into a study to make the manager competent enough to answer.
Also in BR, but my group lead is awesome. Guess it depends on if you've got somebody that's in the trenches with you or just somebody passing through trying to rush up to SLS. I'd be pretty disappointed if I were in your situation, but maybe they'll move on soon and you'll get somebody better. Hang in there!
The team lead assignment is where the most rotten toxicity in EM begins.
If I had the power to change anything in EM, it would be to eliminate the position of team leads.
In EM, the team lead position is seen, sadly, as the first step in the race for hi-pos to the executive ladder.
Thus, the team leads are "supervisors in training".
Their job is to operate as the supervisors deputies, wiping the supervisor a$$es, agreeing blindly with every $tupidity the supervisor utters, and to abandon all technical duties to turn into project management and sourcing and to claim as their own the accomplishments of the individual contributors they "lead".
Got a cr---y project and you supervisor puts you in PIP? Blame the team-lead.
Someone is passing the supervisor negative rumors about you? Blame the team-lead.
Your PPTS are being used in whatever management strategy meeting you have not been invited to? Blame the team-lead.
Your colleague has been assigned your dream project and passed on you? Blame the team-lead.
They have complete autonomy and authority to $crew your life over as they please with no accountability.
Team leads are pathetic entitled parasites. Those who succeed at this first assignment are the one who will become later in their career, the most hat3d, incompet3nt and ultimate expressions of this hated toxic culture.
By the way, if you are a team-lead, FK YOU.
I work in downstream and if it was my job or their job on the line during performance assessment I’d give up my place for them. There are still amazing people that work for this company and many group leads are still around who, despite all of the messed up things going on in this company, do the right thing and care about the core skill that set XOM apart and ahead of competitors back in the day… ENGINEERING