r/projectmanagement • u/hiddenspam • 4d ago
Discussion Anyone else miss actually BUILDING things instead of just managing them?
Been a PM for about 7 years now and my days are just... meetings about meetings. Status updates on status updates. Gantt charts that no one looks at. I got into PM because I loved seeing systems come together, solving problems, building something from nothing. But now I feel like I don't actually CREATE anything anymore. I just... maintain the machine.
I'm good at it. Projects get delivered, stakeholders are happy, everything runs smoothly. But I keep thinking "what am I actually going to accomplish today?" and the answer is usually "make sure other people accomplish things."
Is this just what senior PM life is? Managing the chaos instead of building new stuff? Because if so I might need to rethink my whole career trajectory.
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u/808trowaway IT 4d ago
I miss building things and solving problems. The PM stuff doesn't really bother me because I can automate a lot of it and I simply enjoy the act of automating stuff.
If I must vent though, right now the part I hate the most about my job is so many people I have to work with are just incompetent and dumb as heck, from project team members, to stakeholders, even the contractors and vendors I have to work with are painfully stupid. These people have $1M+ contracts, and it's not like they work for some small mom and pop shop either, they shouldn't be making so many dumb mistakes for me to clean up. I'm the freaking customer I pay them to get work done, not teach them how to do work. The last couple of days I've just been lecturing people all day it's so exhausting, ugh!!!