Hi All I just joined desk company in USA. It is one of the topmost IT company in India. I work at client site. It's been very few days that I joined. I have two managers in my team and I am the only subordinate at onsite. One of these managers is my line manager. My line manager is kind of ok with me. But the other manager is getting on my nerves. He keeps on budging me. We are snatching project from other desi company and it is in transition phase nothing is lined up. Till now I didn't have my mailbox set up also. I got yesterday. And he or my manager was supposed to look into raising requests with client to grant me proper accesses. This manager keeps on bothering me that you do this and that. I didn't have proper access till yesterday. I was chasing for the accesses part. Yesterday he did heights. He also complained about me to his higher manager that I am not doing anything. I was paranoid. We are still in transition phase and we are supposed to extract all knowledge from other desi company people. I used to do that till now. I used to sit with other desi company people and see what and how they work. In spite of all this he is creating troubles. It's not even a month and he is trying to make me portray wrong in front of his manager. I don't know what kind of politics is this. Please help how to deal with this.
This is a very general answer without knowing the specifics or personality type. You have to start bugging your manager. I used to do this in my previous jobs ( including the first job ). When I see my manager, I will give my status before he asks me. If something is the bottleneck, I will ask him how to move forward. I will find the manager at least once a day and do this. So, my advice is, be proactive. Every morning find him and tell him where you stand and what you need to move further. Ask for help and say you need this or that and what the bottlenecks are. If he doesn't help clear the bottleneck, complain to him the next time that your time and effort are getting wasted. My email client is not setup. Can you please help? The team members from the client are not giving enough time, can you please look into this? How does this impact our target dates? Is A a higher priority or B? If this bottleneck doesn't clear by end of day, what should be done? Give this same information to the manager B but less frequently and tell it in passing that manager A is aware of it and is working on fixing but its been slow. When you are on the case, your manager will start hiding from you. Don't worry about what he might have already told to others. Take control of the situation and keep going strong. Success or failure, this is a situation to learn from. Good Luck.
This is a reflection of poor management at ur workplace and sadly seems to be a rather common state of affairs in most bloated organizations. Too few resources and too many managers. At one point..I had to interface with a guy in india who was managed there by 3 managers and 2 leads . Poor guy he used to tell me its like having 5 MsIL In any case talk to ur line manager. Get clarity and in writing...about ur priorities /deliverables and deadlines. Typically this is done during ur weekly 1-1. Stick to that and learn to push back on any tasks that come ur way ..when they are outside the scope of this. Common strategy I advise is cc ur line manager and say...hey ** this has been brought to my attention..what is the priority of this task vs the other one I am working on. If I do take this up ..it will add x man days . U automatically transfer the responsibility to ur line manager which is what he is paid for. Never say no .Just keep it professional ..list tasks in hand... highlight impact to deliverables. Always works. Dont make it a personal issue even if they do.
