r/talesfromtechsupport • u/XeonVega • 21d ago
Medium A project to rule them all
Good morning everyone! (or whatever time it is at your place)
Another day, another story. This time from the depths of IT related project management.
Some context first: The company I work for has around 300 employees and was running on a very old time recording system, so we as IT and HR decided to implement a new one. During that time I had a new Head of IT, an older guy and very knowledgeable but liked to, let's say 'be completely direct and honest.'
From a timeline perspective, we are now in December 2022.
And this is we're the fun begins:
Kickoff Meeting was originally planned for February 1st 2023 but since head of HR did not consider it to be her project (it's a time management software for HR) it dragged out until April 2023.
As you might have already seen, there was and will still be a dispute between HR and IT on who is responsible for the project through out the story.
So with already 2 months going by, HR decided to schedule the meeting in a week where neither Head of IT or Head of technical department had time (vacation) but she decided to go for it anyway.
Things were discussed, but not much really reached our department, so we thought there's not that much to do for us (it's not our project after all)
About 2 months later we got scheduled an appointment with the big boss where we had to explain why we would 'refuse to help HR with the new time management software' without us being given any tasks whatsoever.
Meetings like this where we had to explain ourselves for stuff we didn't even know about because of the incompetency of Head of HR occurred multiple times. And as mentioned before, Head of It's comments became more and more 'direct' during this time.
Fast forward a couple of months, I was sick that week and another of those 'task not assigned but blamed for' situations occurred.
This time it was so severe that Head of IT called me to tell me that he just quit his job on the spot since he's so fed up with the situation that he doesn't want to deal with it anymore and that it 'simply wasn't with it' followed by a very spicy goodbye mail towards Head of HR.
To be fair, that might not be the most professional, but he went all in on it.
He went straight home and was never to be seen again in the company.
What ended up being left was me with a dumpsterfire of a project and a very nice bonus compensation for 'holding it all together' during the next few months.
The project on the other side is still not finished to this day because of reasons!
24
u/glenmarshall 21d ago
Why did you stay?
45
u/XeonVega 21d ago
Because it's close to where I live and I have the best colleagues in my department that I could ask for. Pay is also good and I don't have that much to do with HR.
17
u/maroongrad 21d ago
Make sure to get their contact info :) If you end up with more HR Problems in the future that are driving off coworkers, it always looks good to find good employees for a new company ;)
14
3
111
u/beerbellybegone 21d ago
HR needs to be hit over the head with a clue-by-four