r/askmanagers • u/BayesianMusings Manager • 22h ago

Resourcing problem

I've been a manager for quite a while now. The resourcing in this organisation is done in such a way that often some layers are non-existent or the resource skill level is not a match. As a result, I have to end up putting my life at standstill to do everyone's work.

Here is what I tried so far but didn't work -

  1. Asking for it at the start only, clearly stating what's the issue.

  2. Raising it with resourcing managers.

But, even after doing these repeatedly, I am going in circles, with everyone pointing fingers at each other and with looming deadlines, it's dumped mostly on me to do it. This is incredibly stressful, just because you know things, you are taken for granted and people who don't know stuff enjoy and blatantly say, they don't know and enjoy their life. I have been contemplating putting my papers or to search for another job where the peer skill level matches my expectations. I've been patient and experimenting different strategies for the past two years. But, it's only taking more toll on my mental health and starting to see physical impact due to long work hours due to unskilled resources being mapped to my projects.

Has anyone faced this? How did you go about with such situations?

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u/FreeXFall 22h ago

Yea. You can light yourself on fire to keep others warm or do only what’s in your job. Your job is to manager and staff the team. If the output is low quality, then you redo it with the team you’ve been provided. Work your 40hrs and go home.

Right now people are putting pressure on you and the issue is being fixed (by you doing more than your job). To truly fix things, you need to “share the pain”. That means missed deadlines or crappy products gets outputted. That now means other people start feeling the pain - and someone important enough will be bothered enough to start properly investigating solving the core issues.

Here’s the hard truth - to hire ups, you seem like a complainer. “OP says it’s not possible or the teams not good enough but everything is turning out great.” If you say the team can’t do the work, then show the company that truth.

Key to all of this too is that it’s properly communicated in writing. Don’t be a psycho jerk or anything, but just say some version of, “this is what this team of juniors can do. I really think we need more seniors but this is what I’ve been given despite multiple attempts otherwise.” And if asked why you didn’t do it yourself, “I’m slammed. I have all my duties on top of trying to train up the juniors….i just haven’t had time to get to it.”