I've been on multiple projects at my current workplace and am wondering if other people have the same signs that a project is sunsetting. Note: I'm not a lead, so I'm one of the ones that only officially knows day-of that I'm being reassigned.
Common themes from my past projects:
- The PM gets another team and blows off your meetings in favor of theirs
- Possibly includes other shared services style people like scrum masters, lawyers, marketing, customer service types, that sort of thing
- Recurring meetings are updated regularly to extend the end date another month
- The pressure to have a fleshed out backlog of work eases up
- Note: you must still maintain the appearance of a backlog to not make the grunts suspicious
- Whether or not things are fully vetted (and whether or not anyone higher up cares) before being marked ready is the larger indicator
- (on a ridiculously large team) Multiple people are being spun off in waves
And my possible one from today which prompted this post: One-off events that are taking time away from engineering are not to be rescheduled for after the release because of Reasons. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.
People who have been through multiple reassignments or project ends, what have you noticed as a trend?
Top comments (10)
Here's some I have seen in the past...
My post about breaking the login is exactly this 😬
Heh, sounds like most of my projects were doomed from the start ;)
Great discussion! I don't have a lot of big org experience, but from freelancing in my past, communication tends to get less frequent until they basically ghost you.
Startups:
Oh man, I just saw on LinkedIn a CEO/founder I know added being CTO/Founder of another startup to his profile. RIP my friends at his old place.
Yep. I've had that done when working as a contractor. It's pretty dumb since I was a contractor. Why not be up front about it?
As an employee, you get sidelined doing support and doing nothing, like they hope you'll just leave. Or else, they'll figure out a way to "reduction in force" you like giving you a bad review or the like. Once again, a dumb and often dishonest way to do things.
I've experienced PMs being reshuffled but also finding out from other employees because upper management didn't bother being upfront with contractors 🤔🤣
I've also worked on absolutely pointless prototypes because market research wasn't done and then when the truth caught up it was suddenly not a priority anymore ✌🏾
In my experience, it was any of these
From an agency-perspective it is a good indicator your company is being phased out by a client when they hire other agencies/freelancers to work on the same thing.