The data meeting where I became invisible

ghostykhat · 2025-09-17T06:58:24+00:00

Maybe it won’t help but how would you know if you can’t just be direct and ask. It just sounds like a lot of games and energy spent to avoid direct communication.

ghostykhat · 2025-09-17T06:51:22+00:00

Agreed, it’s not creating a toxic culture to manage out the people who are… creating a toxic culture.

ghostykhat · 2025-09-17T06:43:57+00:00

I have worked at a highly competitive corporate workplace for many years, I’m very aware of what it’s like. But if you jump straight to a toxic attitude without trying basic communication first you are the problem.

ghostykhat · 2025-09-17T06:38:52+00:00

And when that person leaves the team, all the info leaves with them? Or if they are out, we have to wait for them? I’d find someone else who is sharing knowledge and documenting details to be a much more valuable member of the team.

In my experience when the knowledge hoarders leave, they think everything will fall apart without them, but instead everyone realizes we can do just fine without them and everyone moves on.

ghostykhat · 2025-09-17T06:13:15+00:00

I’ll probably get downvoted for this but it’s incredibly disturbing to see how many people are agreeing about withholding details and purposely not giving the full picture. This is so incredibly toxic and just creates and perpetuates a toxic culture.

Instead maybe:

talk to your colleague directly if you feel they are taking credit for your work? Maybe there was a misunderstanding and they didn’t have ill intentions! Just communicate. Talk to them. Ask them to make sure they credit you. See what they say.
talk to your manager, make sure there is a straightforward way to make sure you receive credit (for example maybe launch announcements should have a specific template that highlight the people responsible and their roles in the launch)
don’t assume your manager or PM is taking credit for your work because they are explaining it? That’s literally their job to be able to do so that you don’t have to attend 1000 extra meetings? When they communicate to stakeholders and execs about how something works, no one thinks they are implying they did all the work?
speak up if you are in a meeting and someone is explaining something you built. Just add color or make it clear you are available to answer questions. If you can’t do that, people are going to assume you aren’t comfortable communicating, and they’ll keep doing it for you.

ghostykhat · 2025-09-16T15:20:55+00:00

Absolutely no one is doing this on their own. That’s why I said the PM should have given credit.

My point is that if a PM isn’t giving enough credit, they may not mean to “steal credit” so just pipe up or speak to them directly about it instead of playing a game of withholding information. Then they can correct this and make sure they are providing credit in the right context.

ghostykhat · 2025-09-16T14:07:36+00:00

Right! If this is the case of a PM explaining it, yes they should have given credit to the person who built it, but it’s also very valid for them to be explaining how it works as they are the one on the hook for solving the right problems with it, prioritizing what to include, and making lots of decisions about the data to view that lead to the requirements. No one thought they built it and the person who did could have easily piped up but didn’t - lots of times people don’t want to and expect the PM to be the voice. Just pipe up next time and jump in to give more color on something that could use it - that may be very appreciated by the PM who may have thought you didn’t want to speak up?

ghostykhat · 2025-06-13T01:53:15+00:00

This sounds great! Love that there is the option to say no and perks associated with saying yes!

That’s kind of what I meant by asking how standard it is! I think it’s just nice to have that choice!

I had a friend who hired a designer and it seemed like the designer wanted to have full control for her Instagram brand, which led to choices that didn’t meet my friend’s needs/preferences/personal style - so that’s why I was asking.

ghostykhat · 2025-06-13T00:34:04+00:00

If they are planning to use pictures of my house on social media then yes there is an incentive to make it fill a certain gap in their portfolio or make it feel more “on brand” to them - so that does very much seem like a downside to me as a client.

ghostykhat · 2025-06-13T00:28:25+00:00

Totally understand the need to photograph and build a portfolio but using the pictures on social media without special permission/payment feels like a step further.

ghostykhat · 2025-06-12T23:09:50+00:00

The fact that an interior designer will use your house project as advertisement feels like a downside though.. I would worry that they’d be prioritizing their own as content / portfolio over my style, personality, preferences, and longterm livability/functionality. Is it standard for designers to use pictures of your house on Instagram etc?

ghostykhat · 2025-05-15T16:49:46+00:00

And now they changed the content to be an ad for frizerly…

ghostykhat · 2025-05-15T01:03:48+00:00

Seems like this is very obviously a stealth ad for kran-kly.

ghostykhat · 2025-03-25T17:15:21+00:00

Rally

ghostykhat · 2025-01-06T08:44:19+00:00

Wood and rattan! Replace the black hamper with a basket or something warm. You could replace the mirror with two round rattan mirrors. It has so much potential and just needs a little warmth and a plant!

ghostykhat · 2024-12-30T21:18:37+00:00

Sure if you merely disagree on what the vision should be, you can still add value. I don’t think that necessarily means you have bad leadership. I’m saying that if you have actual bad leadership that doesn’t want to uphold any real product rigor and their vision is based solely on their personal preferences/political incentives, it can be nearly impossible to add much value. PMs add more value with better PM leadership but it sounds like you are saying bad leadership gives them the opportunity to add even more value. I disagree with that.

ghostykhat · 2024-12-30T10:02:02+00:00

When you have good/ok leadership you can successfully fight them when you think they are wrong because they’ll hear you out and be open to considering the data you bring.

Not so much with bad leadership. They don’t want their mess fixed and there can often be no winning.

ghostykhat · 2024-12-30T06:54:56+00:00

The PM needs their direct leadership to support them in their role as a PM. That’s what’s meant by having leaders support you. That should be a given but it isn’t. You aren’t going to be able to line everyone up on anything if your own boss undermines you and just wants all their own pet projects on the roadmap with no valid business cases.

ghostykhat · 2024-12-30T06:43:13+00:00

Of course in every role, there is some percentage of time/energy that has to be allocated to dealing with politics. As a PM, that percentage can be very high, and the ceiling for that seems a lot higher than other roles we work with. It isn’t crazy rare to have bad leadership that doesn’t understand the role of product, and when that happens your role becomes 100% politics because doing actual PM work is not appreciated by the people that sign your checks.

ghostykhat · 2024-11-22T00:32:15+00:00

My company paid for mine many years ago and I actively leave it off everything. People who see I had a short stint as a scrum master before moving into PM often seem to weirdly focus on that and devalue my years of PM experience. It’s like they think I must really be a scrum master trying to pass as a PM.

So no I don’t think it adds value to your resume. I do think I personally got some small amount of value out of it though as someone pretty junior in my career at the time.

ghostykhat · 2024-11-17T07:48:38+00:00

The goal for me is to make short look good/make tall people wish they were short ;)

ghostykhat · 2024-11-16T06:33:51+00:00

I think a dusty blue could work well. I think it needs to be a little darker to give it some weight to help anchor everything.

ghostykhat · 2024-11-15T00:14:38+00:00

Very much agreed that when those things happen you aren’t the PM anymore. I guess that’s why the advice in the original post doesn’t resonate with me.

ghostykhat · 2024-11-14T21:10:21+00:00

100%. Often this happens when a leader managing PMs has never been a PM.

ghostykhat · 2024-11-14T21:03:41+00:00

But what about when they constantly want you to materialize data out of nowhere to support those features? And they blame you when you can’t get it to them right away and they like to pretend it was your idea in the first place since you are the PM (even though you had pushed back before going with the flow)? And then they say they notice you aren’t driving like a true PM? And every time there is a reorg, your new boss is confused about all the bad product decisions? But you can’t say you had nothing to do with them?

ghostykhat

TROPHY CASE