Work

[Slapnut]

Bit of a weird work situation at the moment that I'm not sure how to handle.

I'm a team leader, and I've recently been given a team member to manage who is the same grade as me. This is uncommon within my department and only one other team leader does this with two of his team members, but he was managing them from entry level grades and they were promoted within his team so he's a lot more comfortable with it. The team member I've been given is newly promoted into this grade, and quite honestly I've been given absolutely no guidance whatsoever on how to manage him. Whenever I've brought this up with my manager, the answer has always been "you'll be fine, I have faith in you, and I'll support you". So far she hasn't supported me, and I'm not sure what guidance she's able to offer since she has no experience of managing somebody of her own grade previously.

Anyway, I've been told today that they are looking to reshuffle the teams and they are looking to put the two other people I previously mentioned into my team too, so I'll be managing 3 other people of my own grade, the only team leader in the department to be doing so.

Is this something you'd suggest I talk to HR about? Not only to question if this should be happening, but to also query if I should be on more money considering I look after people of higher grades than everybody else in my role. I'm not expecting HR to really give me any solid advice on this, they're notoriously rubbish at my place, but I'm a bit lost on what to do.

[westlondonmist]

Are you officially their line manager or more of what is refered to in my office as taskmaster. I don't think you should be managing someone at the same grade, if your senior enough to manage then be a manager.

Where I work you have people who have been here longer, probably earn more money giving stuff to newer staff to do and delegating but not official line managers.

In a previous job I had to lead people with the exact same title, go into meetings and explain what they were doing. I wasn't even called a leader but due to a restructure and moving the office from London to Berkshire I was one of few that went and in the new org one of few with any experience. It actually went okay as the people knew I was more experienced, I was training them so treated me as so. If the guy has just moved up I'm sure he will respect your experience.

[Slapnut]

15 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

Are you officially their line manager or more of what is refered to in my office as taskmaster. I don't think you should be managing someone at the same grade, if your senior enough to manage then be a manager.

Where I work you have people who have been here longer, probably earn more money giving stuff to newer staff to do and delegating but not official line managers.

In a previous job I had to lead people with the exact same title, go into meetings and explain what they were doing. I wasn't even called a leader but due to a restructure and moving the office from London to Berkshire I was one of few that went and in the new org one of few with any experience. It actually went okay as the people knew I was more experienced, I was training them so treated me as so. If the guy has just moved up I'm sure he will respect your experience.

I'm officially their line manager. I'm responsible for their performance, making sure their delivery of work is good enough, wellbeing, annual leave, and their appraisals at year end. I am their first port of call for virtually everything.

However, and this is where I really struggle with my job and where my department is utterly bizarre, I don't have the technical knowledge to do their job, nor am I expected to know how to do it. My team are basically project support for other areas of the firm, so all work requests are sent to us from elsewhere, and the majority of training and technical guidance is provided to them by the stakeholders. I have no real influence over this work, nor is it my job to contribute to it in any way - I have chipped in where necessary previously, but in most cases I would need to be doing the work full time for probably 6 months before I'm able to do it seamlessly. It's a really strange system and often leads to me feeling utterly useless in my role.

I have no experience with the work my new team member is doing, nor does anybody else in my department. He's been on secondment with the stakeholders he supports for the last 18 months, and rather than take him on permanently they just sent him back to us to do the same work, but it means they don't have to pay him as much as they would if they kept him and we pick up the bill. His work is far beyond anything I'm capable of supporting in, and I joke about it frequently but it genuinely seems like my only use is to approve his annual leave.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Slapnut

[SuperBacon]

Is there a senior manager above you that you get on well enough with to have an informal chat about your worries?

Whatever happens, just make sure you shake everyone's hand at the end of each day.

[Slapnut]

46 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Is there a senior manager above you that you get on well enough with to have an informal chat about your worries?

Whatever happens, just make sure you shake everyone's hand at the end of each day.

Yes and no - yes, there is somebody I could talk to, but no I'm not particularly close to them. Either way, from experience I'd almost certainly get the exact same answer my manager has already given me.

I would shake their hands, but I almost exclusively work with balding Asian men so that's obviously an issue.

(I hope everybody has seen that thread or they'll think I'm insensitive racist)

 

[Tamura]

On 7/10/2023 at 8:20 PM, gmoney said:

Good luck! Just remember, shit on their time, not in your breaks. 

In the past I certainly haven't been shy in standing my ground when it comes to my rights as an employee, at the last place I probably caused the HR department to expand in order to deal with my last year there. However my financial situation and my unemployability (at least on paper) has caused me to think a bit more pragmatically about things. It's been good so far, today my boss (who wasn't the person who gave me the job) "promoted" me so now I have to deal with the health and safety checklist every day, saying he saw potential in me on the first day, and he sees me as a long-term asset compared to the staff he's currently got who are mostly easily replaceable unskilled workers. So I'm thinking at the moment I'll stick with being a model employee, as it's working out a lot better than years of fighting the system ever did.

[Jazzy G]

Has anybody had a look at those freelance subtitling jobs? They look pretty interesting, although it could be tricky to get myself into a routine for it. A little extra money could always be handy. Doing my own taxes could be tricky as well.

[Fatty Facesitter]

3 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Has anybody had a look at those freelance subtitling jobs? They look pretty interesting, although it could be tricky to get myself into a routine for it. A little extra money could always be handy. Doing my own taxes could be tricky as well.

Couple of things to keep in mind for this chief - 

Editing software like Premiere Pro now has auto-transcription software. It doesn't always come out brilliantly (it almost always needs tidying up and fixing afterwards), but it's easier to go back in and fix bits rather than doing a full transcript manually or paying someone else to do it. This is swallowing up a lot of transcription work. 

You're often at the mercy of tight deadlines. So if you were to get some work and produce them for someone, they might relentlessly hassle you for revisions and you might be out at work in your regular job etc. 

Certainly not trying to discourage you matey, if you can find bits and bobs on projects that aren't time sensitive for a client then you could still be on to a winner. But just a couple of things to keep you on the straight and narrow 

Edited July 15, 2023 by Fatty Facesitter

[Jazzy G]

I don't have a regular job at the moment, but it could be something to do for a little extra cash, and so I'm not just sat watching crap on YouTube in the morning or the evening. 

[Fatty Facesitter]

1 minute ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I don't have a regular job at the moment, but it could be something to do for a little extra cash, and so I'm not just sat watching crap on YouTube in the morning or the evening. 

Go for it bud. One thing on the plus side is that video is so dominant at the moment across multiple platforms, so there's a market there if people haven't worked out how to auto-generate their captions. 

One thing to possibly look into is adding the captions onto videos yourself - that might open up more potential options. You shouldn't need to do any physical editing in terms of chopping up an existing video, but if you can work out how to add and apply subtitles to a particular video, that might open more doors. If you look at free video editing sites like Open Shot, there's tons of tutorials on YouTube and it's a piece of piss to master. 

[Slapnut]

I hate my job. Hate it. If it wasn’t for the good wage, there would be absolutely nothing keeping me there at all. My role is, for the most part, completely pointless, and it has turned into the most sickeningly corporate environment and just an all-round miserable place to work.

So fuck it, I’ve just accepted a huge pay cut to go and be a trainee TV edit assistant. Massive risk but I can’t put up with it any longer, and it already feels like a huge weight has been lifted. For the first time in my life, I genuinely feel like I’ve taken a job which will set me up for an exciting career rather than something to just pay the bills. I’m absolutely chuffed to bits.

[SuperBacon]

That's amazing @Slapnut

Nothing better than doing something you enjoy. Best of luck to you and keep us updated as to how you're getting on. I would love to hear about it.

I've just been made project lead on a programme supporting Ukrainian refugees into training and employment (alongside the 400 other projects I help with) and I couldn't be happier in my job (he says as he sits listening to an online presentation on Healthy Streets. Actually quite interesting as it goes) 

It's incredibly rewarding doing a job you enjoy.

[Keith Houchen]

Congrats to Slapnut and Barry!

[BomberPat]

first meeting chaired by our new manager today, and he was just an absolute management wanker. All buzzwords and metaphors.

One of the issues I've had with this team since I joined it is the amount of superfluous meetings, and he's proposing that we do a short meeting every day to check in on "how we're feeling" and what our "challenges" are for the week. As an example of what those meetings could look like, he asked us to answer three questions about "how we're feeling" - the first was how we would describe how we're feeling about the week ahead if it were a weather report, the second was "what animal do you feel best represents you today?", and the last was one of those "which of these photos is you" memes.

So I'm sat there - wearing a T-shirt of a zoo I used to work for - and I haven't written anything for animal. I don't really think in metaphors, nothing came to mind. It comes to my turn to speak, and he's all, "just say the first thing that comes into your mind". Well, no, because the problem is that nothing comes into my mind at the suggestion of what animal I might feel like. I could try and explain to you that I dislike anthropomorphising non-human animals, or about the impossibility of ever knowing another animal's mind, so the fruitlessness of saying you "feel" like a particular animal, but what's the point? You just want me to say that I feel like a sloth because things are moving slowly, or somesuch. It's the payroll deadline today and we've got a shitload of work to do, why are we wasting our time with this bollocks?

 

He then sent us all a link to a "user manual" to fill in, about how we prefer to work, receive feedback, communicate, etc. I wonder how long his "don't worry, there's no wrong answers" approach will last if I fill it in to say, "I hate team meetings, I work best by being left alone to get on with my job, and I'm a very literal person who doesn't think or communicate in metaphors". 

[69MeDon]

Absolute nightmare, @BomberPat. I had a manager a few years back who made everyone take "cute" online tests that, after you'd filled it out, would proclaim you are like such and such an animal, and they'd give you a stuffed version of the animal for your desk. Except they were also using it to find out people's personality types and, when my test results and animal indicated that I was introverted, this dude literally threw a book at me about being an introvert in my particular field, and seemed like he was actually mad about it. Like I'd duped him in the interview process or something.