Exaggerated my responsibilities to get a Project Manager job and now I'm completely out of my depth

steampowered · 16 June 2021 at 9:39AM

TELLIT01 said:

This isn't a case of 'upskilling a bit'. The OP has said that they are totally out of their depth, not that they don't have all the skills required.

We are talking about project management here, not nuclear science.

I am sure it is entirely possible for someone who has only had experience on smaller projects to make a very good stab at this.

steampowered · 16 June 2021 at 9:58AM

Thrugelmir said:
Sounds a recipe for a car crash. Respect is earnt for honesty rather than bull****. The world is full of consultants who are all mouth and no trousers.

I think you are a bit naive. Not how the corporate world works these days - you are expected to puff yourself up at interview.

Honesty works two ways. If honesty was the value, the company would have said something like the following at interview.

"We want a decent project manager. But, we only want to give them a 6 month fixed term contract so they have no job security. Makes it easier to get rid of them when the project is up.

Plus, we don't want to pay the going rate. IR35 has come in and we now want to hire this role as an employee, but only pay a contractor rate. We are too used to tax dodging.

Yet we still want someone with decades of experience doing big projects. Sound good?"

Thrugelmir · 17 June 2021 at 12:41AM

steampowered said:

Thrugelmir said:
Sounds a recipe for a car crash. Respect is earnt for honesty rather than bull****. The world is full of consultants who are all mouth and no trousers.

I think you are a bit naive. Not how the corporate world works these days - you are expected to puff yourself up at interview.

From a personal perspective. Preferred to maintain my reputation. I knew my strengths and accepted my weaknesses. It becomes a small world after you've been around for a while. No time for puffed up egos. Such organisations are rarely dynamic.

Sandtree · 17 June 2021 at 1:07AM

steampowered said:
Honesty works two ways. If honesty was the value, the company would have said something like the following at interview.

I won't quote the rest because it makes no sense.

Both sides should be mature, after all contracting is a B2B relationship if the outside IR35 claimers are to be believed. Therefore the candidate/vendor should be aware of market pressure and decide how to react and any hiring manager/buyer will be conscious over those that over promise and under deliver.

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with FTC, personally I won't apply for them as the short term nature in itself brings no benefit for me but after 15 years of contracting with exactly 4 days of unplanned breaks in contract I can continue to be picky. If I was out of contract longer then I may become more flexible but both sides know its not my first choice. Next level up is day rate inside or umbrella only... personally don't have an issue with this if the rate results in a fairly equivalent take home.

The pinnacle remains outside day rate but even then some are leveraging the situation and slashing the rates they offer.

As to the OP... I've run projects for 20 years, my work has covered circa £17bn of spend and still I wake up often thinking I am out of my depth (google Imposter Syndrome). Project Management isn't rocket science, most of us did learn on the job. We do qualifications like Prince2 or MSP afterwards to back up the on the job experience. In most cases if you can talk the talk you can walk the walk as the walk is predominately talking or documenting the talk

sonofmerton · 17 June 2021 at 11:05PM

An interesting one.

If being out of their depth is as clear as Facebook user v computer programmer then they need to be upfront and honest. They can always say the job is much bigger than they anticipated.

If they don't have the experience then they have nothing to base what they do going forward. That helps no one and affects others.

Be honest and move on. No point trying to blag it if what you know and what you do are really that far apart.

girlagogo · 27 June 2021 at 7:46PM

I thought I'd update on here as I've really appreciated everyone's comments and input which has been really valuable in helping me to trust my judgement and make the right decision.

My decision was to resign. I spoke to my manager and was completely honest in saying that the project was much larger than I was expecting and I didn't feel I had the breadth of experience or the support that I'd need to successfully deliver. Needless to say he didn't take it well, worse than I thought, and continued to interrogate me on the reasons behind my decision, believing me to have received a better offer somewhere else.

Basically he implied that I was lying and, even though I remained as professional and diplomatic as I could he became quite petty and passive aggressive (ignoring emails etc.) whilst trying to make me feel guilty for resigning. I was also told not to speak to any of my team and to not attend anymore of the team meetings until leaving. I emphasised again that this was the right decision to make and by doing so early it was better than continuing unhappy, not doing the job properly and possibly putting the project at risk.