“If everyone is really annoyed with you, you’re probably actually doing your job well.

”
I'm seeing this quote being shared on LinkedIn as a piece of advice for PMs, and I just wanted
to vent how much I hate this culture that tries to justify shitty behavior as a magic key to
unlocking results.

You can paint it as "a good PM is always challenging the team, pushing for great quality" etc,
but from my perspective, you can do all this without being a prick.

If your team finds you annoying, it's more likely to be associated with the form (how you
communicate) than the content (what you communicate).

/rant

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anotherbozo
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1d ago
If everyone is really annoyed with you, there's only one reason: you are annoying to work with.

If you're a leader and think this is good, there's only one reason: you have a toxic culture in your
company.

I can't think of any real reason why anyone would be annoyed at a PM if they were doing their
job well. Winning people and stakeholder management is literally a massive part of your job as
a PM.

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u/fishythepete avatar
fishythepete
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1d ago
I take it as more of a “you can’t make everyone happy, but you can try to make sure they’re all
evenly unhappy” - not every stakeholder is going to get what they want.

In a perfect world you’re so persuasive that you can get a disparate group of stakeholders with
competing interests rowing in the same direction, but in my personal experience getting them to
understand and at least begrudgingly accept the direction you set is like the MVP of stakeholder
management.

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u/Hajile_S avatar
Hajile_S
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1d ago
I agree. I think the sentiment just needs a little tweaking. You should be doing things that could
annoy people. Because a large part of the role is managing the push and pull of groups with (at
least somewhat) opposing desires. But your goal should be to do this in a way that doesn’t end
up annoying people. For instance, by thoroughly explaining the need for annoying feature “x,” or
by transparently sharing the roadmap that’s delaying desired feature “y.”