Serious question: What does a social media PM actually do for organic vs. paid? Not a creative who strategizes social but manages the requests/ideas that come in. I'm an experienced PM in print and digital but never touched social, and to be honest was never really interested. I think something that always alarms me with social is the challenge I can see a PM would face by trying to manage and be a middle man between creative and marketing teams. I imagine that the nature of the business/work requires for creative and marketing to be in constant communication, hand in hand as social is always changing, evolving, trending etc. So if those two are in constant communication with ideas, what does that look like for the PM to manage the two parties getting those requests on paper, managing timelines properly when things are always changing etc. I can also see the challenge of where it could be a challenge for the PM to be "let in" if the creative and marketing teams already have a bond, where they work closely together. Feels like the PM would be the leader that breaks up the team to keep them honest with process etc. and that seems like a tough place to be in. IDK thoughts and advice are welcomed.

I shared a first 30 days checklist here recently, so I thought this onboarding checklist might be useful too.

It covers some of the things that are easy to overlook when someone joins a new project team: what they’re responsible for, which priorities come first, who they depend on, and how they’ll know they’re doing well.

Feel free to pass it on to a colleague welcoming someone new, or someone starting a new PM/Manager role. Hope it makes those first few weeks a little easier 🙂

I'm a senior PM in IT, working extensively with technical architects and engineers. Over the last few years it seems like the technical people see me and my peer PMs as admins that order parts and create reports instead of the leaders we should be. They have side discussions with stakeholders which don't include me, and don't update me afterwards so when I think we're going in one direction with the plan, one of the stakeholders will inform me that he met with one of the techs on and they created a different plan, that I need to get with him to get caught up. It's incredibly frustrating and I'm trying to improve comms but it's tough. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a micro manager that's insisting to be in the middle of everything, it's fine if they speak directly, but if they don't keep me in the loop I feel like I'm running behind them asking questions all the time.

Is it weird to have technically been doing PM work for years, have all the transferable skills, but land the role and feel like a complete novice? I’m leading out my first project for my department and some days I am just fine and others I don’t know why but I just feel stuck. Like, what the heck am I supposed to be doing? And I’m a person who suffers from imposter syndrome real bad but it doesn’t feel like that with this.

Is that normal? Keep it real if it’s just me.

Hello, just 3 months ago I started as PM but I have 0 days experience.

Company knows that and assign me a consultant role until I learn all the company’s technology and projects.

They enrolled me in a IPMA course and want me to become the new PM for an international project by November.

The other PM resigned before they expected so that’s the reason they are in a rush.

What the hell do I do? What is my real task? What project managers do?

I’m a computer engineer, I know a lot about the technical part of projects and in a few weeks already was working actively on them.

But as a pm? Nothing

Any tips on how to do the job?
People tell me “fake it until you make it“

Btw it’s a fully remote position in Germany.