This year, my quarterly bonuses are tied to my goals at the company. Last year, they were tied to membership sales goals and it frustrated me. I was only there to support sales, and I didn’t do any selling so it felt like meeting those goals was out of my direct control. Since they’re tied to me meeting tech deadlines and keeping projects under budget, I feel I have a lot more control compared to last year.

However, my job is to organize people and keep them on track so my goals stay on track. And everyone else has their own goals they’re trying to meet. While the products of my work benefits everyone else at the company, they’re not yet in the groove I need them to be to move forward smoothly. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing more babysitting of other people at work than I am doing much of anything else. But I think that’s just the nature of product management. 

Today proved to be more frustrating than usual. I’ve been in talks with our outside developer for a few weeks now confirming and reconfirming he would have code ready for me to review today. I have emphasized many times to said developer that I want to meet deadlines. He acknowledged. So today, expecting to have code ready when I came in and not getting it made me rather antsy. Around noon he checked in and said he was squashing some lingering bugs but he still hoped to have it up before the end of the day. End of the day rolled around and I hadn’t heard back from him yet. 

If this is the template for the rest of the year, I’m going to have a very disappointing year especially in terms of my bonus. Hopefully it’s a fluke.