[anamax]

> I just had an extremely annoying experience the other day with a VP in my company. Long story short, he decided to question what I was spending my time on and why client engagements took more than a 45 minute meeting

Ask him to do a client engagement and let you observe so you can do better in the future.

One of you will learn something.

[elblanco]

It's an interesting suggestion. However I perform execution end of deals (system integration, analytical methodology development, etc.) while he handles the paperwork behind the scenes. If he spends 60 minutes in direct contact with a customer it's amazingly long for him. We also do not have interchangeable skill-sets. As much as I'd like to do the "let's change places for a day" exercise, it just isn't plausible.

I believe I respect him when he says part of his job was particularly challenging and time consuming (like getting contracts executed). I don't particularly feel respected when I say something took a lot of time and effort and get asked, "like what?".

I'm not sure that's a bridgeable gulf.

[anamax]

> I'm not sure that's a bridgeable gulf.

He thinks that it is. In telling you that you're taking too long, he's also saying that he has some constructive ideas about how to reduce that time.

He may need some help to "show you how it should be done", but you should insist that he do so because he has pointed out that this is an important issue.

You really don't want to argue about his competence.

[elblanco]

Actually, I was thinking about this again today. I'm thinking of giving him some non-technical menial task that sucks up dozens of hours of my time every month and see if he can't get it done in 45 minutes. Not in a snarky way, but in a "you wanted to know what I do, here's a small sample" kind of way.

[anamax]

> Not in a snarky way, but in a "you wanted to know what I do, here's a small sample" kind of way.

I think that that is too abstract and too small and likely to be irrelevant to his concerns. (If he cared about whatever task you're thinking of, he'd have mentioned it.)

He's given you a specific case that he thinks is a big deal. Why won't you address it?

This isn't about you. It's about him.

BTW - If he thinks that something can be done better, it doesn't matter if said thing is technical and he's not. Again, stop questioning his competence.

[elblanco]

> I think that that is too abstract and too small and likely to be irrelevant to his concerns. (If he cared about whatever task you're thinking of, he'd have mentioned it.)

I think the problem is that he is simply ignorant of what people actually have to do when creating complex technical things. I think he honestly thinks that he can go do a couple of client meetings, get some paperwork signed for some custom work and there's vending machine in the back that spits out custom software. The thousands of hours of mind numbing things like, looking at trace logs, or defining a controlled vocabulary so that your team and the customer's team can even communicate on the same level, are absolutely not within his sphere of understanding. In those matters he's as incompetent as I am in his arena. The difference is that I know that and don't disparage him when he says things like "executing this NDA really took a huge amount of effort." I have no idea if executing an NDA involves anymore than 5 minutes of actual work and lots of thumb twiddling or if it's an active, engaged process one can spend hundreds of hours on. I know that he thinks that when he does a 30 minute deal closing meeting, that he did all the work to make it happen and should get all the credit. Never mind the last 6 months by our engineering team working nights and weekends to fulfill a custom customer requirement.

> He's given you a specific case that he thinks is a big deal. Why won't you address it?

I'm not quite sure I follow. The way I see it, I have relatively few ways to address it:

1) Tell him to go F off, which I'm not sure does anybody any good.

2) Do the "let's trade jobs for a day" thing. But the only things that he would be able to do, because mine is a job that requires lots of domain knowledge in nearly every task, are the most meanial and time consuming ones. I'm not sure it'll provide the right kind of impression if I give him a task like "here's a list of 20,000 numbers, find all the ones with a non-numeric character in it".

3) Reorg this part of the company so interactions are limited. This might be the only direction that prevents undue internal conflict and keeps us in our respective lanes.

4) Ignore him and hope he learns to respect other people's work. In my experience this doesn't happen since this kind of behavior is largely ego driven.

5) Openly confront him (different from #1). This is the direction I'm presently going, but it's annoying and time consuming. I don't particularly feel the need to justify or explain the details of my job to him (especially when he won't understand the details anyway), senior mgmt already holds my work in high regard and that's who I have to answer to ultimately. The other departments in the company also work well with me and respect me. However, I'm rapidly moving towards #1 or #6.

6) Quit. But as a senior manager in my company, and the only person with domain experience with our customer base plus the technical training to be able to handle several different roles at once, I know that it would sink the company (which as a shareholder does me no personal good, and would put a number of people out of work who I'm responsible for). I think that would be irresponsible unless I knew there was a reasonable replacement to fill in for me.

> This isn't about you. It's about him.

It sure is, a small company like ours doesn't have the time or resources to ego stroke an employee.

> BTW - If he thinks that something can be done better, it doesn't matter if said thing is technical and he's not. Again, stop questioning his competence.

I'm not sure I follow. People are competent in their own areas and incompetent outside of that. I think he's quite competent in his as far as I can tell. He's not competent in mine. He's not offering suggestions for improvement -- which I'm always open to, from anybody regardless of field. He's openly questioning why a complex 6 week project he handled the contracting for takes 6 weeks of active, hands-on work, and not 45 minutes, a hand shake and a signature so I can then move on to help him with another sales pitch. It's stupid and unreasonable. For goodness sakes, he's been with the company for a few years now and to my knowledge has never even installed the software!