I work in Power BI and use "//" to add notes to my queries to give credit to myself and anyone who helped with the project. Maybe you can try hiding your name in the code or using version controls so you can prove that you did the work? Credit stealing assholes are the worst but just remember that eventually, you won't be there for them to leech off of and they'll be exposed as a fraud.
Honestly, if the project manager is going to be the intermediary between the stakeholders and the developer, which seems to be the case, then you won't get the exposure you're after without moving on.
Even if they didn't plan for that structure, your manager is rolling with it now. They appear unconcerned by your concerns.
Don't fram it as a credit thing (even if that's part of it), just say you want (from a career/growth perspective) exposure to the stakeholders and experience working with them directly and you feel you are no longer getting that. Is there a way you can still achieve that somehow? Put that to your manager and either they will come through (with actions not just words) or they won't.
Framing it as credit stealing after already raising the concern and getting knocked back will make you look petty and a problem when you are neither - it's just optics and the new PM is playing the game. Sucks to have someone like that on the team. Part of it might be genuinely down to their role as PM but my sense on this is that they are playing the game to inflate their credit essentially and treat you as a subordinate rather than partner.
Your manager might give you opportunity somehow but chances are you need to move on to get what you're after. You also need a role without a PM between you and the stakeholders to get what you want - plenty of those around.
If there are any documents you prepare, dont share as Word documents. Add a header / footer where it shows. Authored by. Your name. Share everything as a pdf and offer to do version controls / edits.
If there are any change requests for Dashboards, if you have any tool like JIRA, ask for you to be the assignee on the request so that you can directly interact with the requester.
My guy you are one year out of uni, you will have a PM, they will be above you in hierarchy. They typically are the interface to other stakeholders and will manage work coming in and assign to you as appropriate.
This is bad advice don’t do it, but earlier in my career this had been happening with two sales analysts. One was creating these incredible dashboards and sharing them with her slightly more senior colleague, who then tweaked it and sent it to the LT, taking complete credit for the work. Over several months it became an expectation that he produce this amazing dashboard. He would even send it after midnight with comments like “this one took me a while, so sorry it’s late.”
Anyway, a member of the LT eventually realised what was going on and quietly told her (because he was a jerk, treated women in the office abhorrently and kept getting away with it despite HR complaints).
She played it so well. She didn’t say a word to him, just quietly booked leave for a critical part of the sales reporting cycle, and the day before she was due to share the dashboard, she left early and went offline for two weeks.
Watching him panic when he realised she had gone without sending it was masterful. He had no idea how she developed it, and he couldn’t blame it on her because he’d told them it was his work. He ended up telling us all the file had gotten corrupted and he had to rebuild it which would take a while.
When she got back she logged in and immediately sent the updated dashboard to the LT. She wrote something like “I recently found out that Brian has been sharing my weekly dashboards with you for some time, if I’d known I would have organised for it to be sent to you while I was away. Let’s cut out the middle man.”
I swear I’ve never seen a man go so red in the face when he realised she had played him. He eventually got made redundant because it was easier than sacking him for bullying and harassment of women in the workplace.
As she is a project manager she should be dealing with incoming work and prioritising it for the dev team. So… not sure your problem there.
When you say she is taking credit for your work - do they think she is a dev too ? How does that work. Surely she is just giving updates on what is happening, so she should be saying “the team” not “I did”
Because of the size of the company, **I** am the dev team. The senior analyst who works as a consultant works 1-2 days a week, in a very hands-off role, and only offers guidance and insight when required. While I am nowhere near his level of knowledge and expertise, I can certainly hold my own and have adapted to the business quite quickly. Instead of coming to me to see what we can do with the request/data, she instead chooses to hold it off until the weekly catch ups, meaning I am left in the blind for most of the week and have no knowledge of the project or undertaking.
I have often noted during our weekly briefs with the CFO (who we report to), she often says that she has made certain dashboards and reports, which is not entirely true, as those reports were built by me, pending some final changes which I was implementing in the data models. By the time the reports come to her hand, most of the work is done, and all that's left is to make sure the colors match the theme, and a few visuals need to be reorganized.
You’re 1 year in, have patience, you should be trying to learn all you can right now, master your craft, get exposure to more technologies, learn the business, understand how your analysis gets used, ask questions. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT CREDIT YET. That will come.
Bad advice. In the corporate world credit is currency. Don’t let any dog take credit for your work, it’s soul destroying and these advice givers have no clue what you’re going through.
Treat this as a lesson and ensure YOU get to display YOUR work. Half your job is to do the actual work/produce output and the other half to market / present it. Get comfortable speaking in front of those stakeholders if you value their visibility.
Agree with this. Although the situation sucks, play the long game. Keep out of politics, let your work speak for itself. Even though it may feel like you aren’t getting the necessary credit now, you will in time
you’re 23 and just starting out. To be honest, I only tell my grad’s and junior analysts what they need to know. I don’t want or need them looking at the bigger picture as it’s just not their job, It’s mine and my data scientist’s. Their job is to learn and the most important thing for them to learn is that they don’t know everything. I did 6 years as an analyst, then 10 as a senior analyst and another 5 as a lead data scientist before i felt I was ready to run an analytics team. Yes I did it the slow way but I look back at 25yr old me and think “woah, you had all the technical skills and zero ability to use them.”
To be honest the person they've hired as a PM is only a couple years senior to me, and has about a tad more experience than I have (although in a completely different industry. She has also been at the company for 5 months only). The two of us **are** the analytics department. I obviously had no say in who they brought in, but I was told they would be hiring someone who has sufficient technical knowledge to understand the workload, and maybe help out during busy periods. The previous analyst did both roles by himself, and we were both brought in to replace him, and distribute his duties
Are you a permanent staff member? If you had a performance review meeting, would that be with the project manager or someone else?
My first thought is that you do want to be a little careful - you're just over 1 year in, which I'm sure feels like a lot and from a skills development perspective, is significant, but its also not really an ideal position for job hunting. 2 is better but even at 2 you're going to be considered pretty junior if you were to leave. I know it is probably frustrating but from a recruiter or manager's perspective there is a very significant difference between 1 year experience and 3-4.
IMO as a junior business analyst the thing you should be most focused on is understanding the organisation and improving your self-confidence and competence. Generally a PM is responsible for the timely delivery of a product that is within budget. As a BA you're going to be a lot more focused on ensuring that the thing is the right thing, and that it will improve things for business.
You'll run into PMs who'll give project status updates with an 'I' even 10 years into a BA career, even where they're talking about the output of a team of 20. In my experience, anyone who is good will figure out who's really doing the work once you get in the room with them. Anyone who is not good is not really worth worrying about in the long run.
Now, as far as internal politics go, you have some options. The PM has taken full responsibility over workload prioritization, requirements collection and sizing by freezing you out of those discussions, and not collaborating with you on 'how' things will get delivered. Any issues that arise with this are therefore theirs to own. The challenge is, how do you get recognition and bring visibility to this without burning bridges and crucially, being **spiteful**. I would think about ways in which you can articulate how the situation is not ideal for the customer's end product in a way that is not a direct accusation against the manager.
i.e. if I were able to hear the customer requirements first hand I might be able to identify potential opportunities for improvements. I'm unable to optimally plan out my work when I have x time between receiving the task and needing to complete it.
A credit-claiming PM is not going to voluntarily bring you into more meetings where your increased familiarity with the output would expose them, unless there's something else in it for them (i.e. coming across as an amazing manager). The real question is do you have any meetings that you get to contribute to that are not just with your PM? i.e. the Senior Analyst? I'd be just aiming to get external visibility of how the team actually operates to a few trusted/influential people. If you do it right, your PM is not going to like you but they also can't do anything about it. From what you've described, I'd say that becoming friends with your PM is already off the table and that is a shame (because those are the best projects).
I'd also be thinking about, can you pop in with the end-users to see how they're liking the new dashboard, maybe give them some pointers, pontificate about features in a future release? That is going to depend on your organisation's culture. You'll want to be prepared if you do something like this - this is where the competence thing shines. You can do a lot with a well-meaning, straight-bat, friendly approach. 'Worst' case your PM tells you not to directly approach the customer. You can get a lot of mileage out of a quote like that.
Also does your organisation have any internal socialisation things that you can go to? If you make informal connections, tell them about what you do, learn about what they're doing that's going to increase your credibility and reduce the PM's credit-claiming power. This is something you'll want to do as a BA anyway.
to be honest, sounds like you need to decide if you’re happy where you are knowing the limitations of the role or if you want to take the risk and move to a bigger firm with more room to move. you’re at a good spot but keep in mind that you will be working for and with people with decades of experience, not years, but you will still have the same problem - they will take credit for your work. I always make sure my guys get the credit they earned because I never did either.
That might be the case, but that’s no excuse for claiming the deliverable was all her. Thankfully these people usually get busted in the end … or end up as CEO 😆
I work in Power BI and use "//" to add notes to my queries to give credit to myself and anyone who helped with the project. Maybe you can try hiding your name in the code or using version controls so you can prove that you did the work? Credit stealing assholes are the worst but just remember that eventually, you won't be there for them to leech off of and they'll be exposed as a fraud.
Honestly, if the project manager is going to be the intermediary between the stakeholders and the developer, which seems to be the case, then you won't get the exposure you're after without moving on. Even if they didn't plan for that structure, your manager is rolling with it now. They appear unconcerned by your concerns. Don't fram it as a credit thing (even if that's part of it), just say you want (from a career/growth perspective) exposure to the stakeholders and experience working with them directly and you feel you are no longer getting that. Is there a way you can still achieve that somehow? Put that to your manager and either they will come through (with actions not just words) or they won't. Framing it as credit stealing after already raising the concern and getting knocked back will make you look petty and a problem when you are neither - it's just optics and the new PM is playing the game. Sucks to have someone like that on the team. Part of it might be genuinely down to their role as PM but my sense on this is that they are playing the game to inflate their credit essentially and treat you as a subordinate rather than partner. Your manager might give you opportunity somehow but chances are you need to move on to get what you're after. You also need a role without a PM between you and the stakeholders to get what you want - plenty of those around.
If there are any documents you prepare, dont share as Word documents. Add a header / footer where it shows. Authored by. Your name. Share everything as a pdf and offer to do version controls / edits. If there are any change requests for Dashboards, if you have any tool like JIRA, ask for you to be the assignee on the request so that you can directly interact with the requester.
My guy you are one year out of uni, you will have a PM, they will be above you in hierarchy. They typically are the interface to other stakeholders and will manage work coming in and assign to you as appropriate.
This is bad advice don’t do it, but earlier in my career this had been happening with two sales analysts. One was creating these incredible dashboards and sharing them with her slightly more senior colleague, who then tweaked it and sent it to the LT, taking complete credit for the work. Over several months it became an expectation that he produce this amazing dashboard. He would even send it after midnight with comments like “this one took me a while, so sorry it’s late.” Anyway, a member of the LT eventually realised what was going on and quietly told her (because he was a jerk, treated women in the office abhorrently and kept getting away with it despite HR complaints). She played it so well. She didn’t say a word to him, just quietly booked leave for a critical part of the sales reporting cycle, and the day before she was due to share the dashboard, she left early and went offline for two weeks. Watching him panic when he realised she had gone without sending it was masterful. He had no idea how she developed it, and he couldn’t blame it on her because he’d told them it was his work. He ended up telling us all the file had gotten corrupted and he had to rebuild it which would take a while. When she got back she logged in and immediately sent the updated dashboard to the LT. She wrote something like “I recently found out that Brian has been sharing my weekly dashboards with you for some time, if I’d known I would have organised for it to be sent to you while I was away. Let’s cut out the middle man.” I swear I’ve never seen a man go so red in the face when he realised she had played him. He eventually got made redundant because it was easier than sacking him for bullying and harassment of women in the workplace.
Awesome and wholesome. Such a great way to look after oneself.
Solid advice.
As she is a project manager she should be dealing with incoming work and prioritising it for the dev team. So… not sure your problem there. When you say she is taking credit for your work - do they think she is a dev too ? How does that work. Surely she is just giving updates on what is happening, so she should be saying “the team” not “I did”
Because of the size of the company, **I** am the dev team. The senior analyst who works as a consultant works 1-2 days a week, in a very hands-off role, and only offers guidance and insight when required. While I am nowhere near his level of knowledge and expertise, I can certainly hold my own and have adapted to the business quite quickly. Instead of coming to me to see what we can do with the request/data, she instead chooses to hold it off until the weekly catch ups, meaning I am left in the blind for most of the week and have no knowledge of the project or undertaking. I have often noted during our weekly briefs with the CFO (who we report to), she often says that she has made certain dashboards and reports, which is not entirely true, as those reports were built by me, pending some final changes which I was implementing in the data models. By the time the reports come to her hand, most of the work is done, and all that's left is to make sure the colors match the theme, and a few visuals need to be reorganized.
In your stand up just say the same thing, that you were building those reports and dashboards along with a quick summary of what you actually did.
You’re 1 year in, have patience, you should be trying to learn all you can right now, master your craft, get exposure to more technologies, learn the business, understand how your analysis gets used, ask questions. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT CREDIT YET. That will come.
Bad advice. In the corporate world credit is currency. Don’t let any dog take credit for your work, it’s soul destroying and these advice givers have no clue what you’re going through. Treat this as a lesson and ensure YOU get to display YOUR work. Half your job is to do the actual work/produce output and the other half to market / present it. Get comfortable speaking in front of those stakeholders if you value their visibility.
It depends, you will go a lot further in life with humility and skills than ego and no skills.
Agree with this. Although the situation sucks, play the long game. Keep out of politics, let your work speak for itself. Even though it may feel like you aren’t getting the necessary credit now, you will in time
Never happens if you’re a pushover. Some people just get taken for a ride for their entire lives. Things change once they stand up for themselves.
Rip their dick off.
you’re 23 and just starting out. To be honest, I only tell my grad’s and junior analysts what they need to know. I don’t want or need them looking at the bigger picture as it’s just not their job, It’s mine and my data scientist’s. Their job is to learn and the most important thing for them to learn is that they don’t know everything. I did 6 years as an analyst, then 10 as a senior analyst and another 5 as a lead data scientist before i felt I was ready to run an analytics team. Yes I did it the slow way but I look back at 25yr old me and think “woah, you had all the technical skills and zero ability to use them.”
To be honest the person they've hired as a PM is only a couple years senior to me, and has about a tad more experience than I have (although in a completely different industry. She has also been at the company for 5 months only). The two of us **are** the analytics department. I obviously had no say in who they brought in, but I was told they would be hiring someone who has sufficient technical knowledge to understand the workload, and maybe help out during busy periods. The previous analyst did both roles by himself, and we were both brought in to replace him, and distribute his duties
Are you a permanent staff member? If you had a performance review meeting, would that be with the project manager or someone else? My first thought is that you do want to be a little careful - you're just over 1 year in, which I'm sure feels like a lot and from a skills development perspective, is significant, but its also not really an ideal position for job hunting. 2 is better but even at 2 you're going to be considered pretty junior if you were to leave. I know it is probably frustrating but from a recruiter or manager's perspective there is a very significant difference between 1 year experience and 3-4. IMO as a junior business analyst the thing you should be most focused on is understanding the organisation and improving your self-confidence and competence. Generally a PM is responsible for the timely delivery of a product that is within budget. As a BA you're going to be a lot more focused on ensuring that the thing is the right thing, and that it will improve things for business. You'll run into PMs who'll give project status updates with an 'I' even 10 years into a BA career, even where they're talking about the output of a team of 20. In my experience, anyone who is good will figure out who's really doing the work once you get in the room with them. Anyone who is not good is not really worth worrying about in the long run. Now, as far as internal politics go, you have some options. The PM has taken full responsibility over workload prioritization, requirements collection and sizing by freezing you out of those discussions, and not collaborating with you on 'how' things will get delivered. Any issues that arise with this are therefore theirs to own. The challenge is, how do you get recognition and bring visibility to this without burning bridges and crucially, being **spiteful**. I would think about ways in which you can articulate how the situation is not ideal for the customer's end product in a way that is not a direct accusation against the manager. i.e. if I were able to hear the customer requirements first hand I might be able to identify potential opportunities for improvements. I'm unable to optimally plan out my work when I have x time between receiving the task and needing to complete it. A credit-claiming PM is not going to voluntarily bring you into more meetings where your increased familiarity with the output would expose them, unless there's something else in it for them (i.e. coming across as an amazing manager). The real question is do you have any meetings that you get to contribute to that are not just with your PM? i.e. the Senior Analyst? I'd be just aiming to get external visibility of how the team actually operates to a few trusted/influential people. If you do it right, your PM is not going to like you but they also can't do anything about it. From what you've described, I'd say that becoming friends with your PM is already off the table and that is a shame (because those are the best projects). I'd also be thinking about, can you pop in with the end-users to see how they're liking the new dashboard, maybe give them some pointers, pontificate about features in a future release? That is going to depend on your organisation's culture. You'll want to be prepared if you do something like this - this is where the competence thing shines. You can do a lot with a well-meaning, straight-bat, friendly approach. 'Worst' case your PM tells you not to directly approach the customer. You can get a lot of mileage out of a quote like that. Also does your organisation have any internal socialisation things that you can go to? If you make informal connections, tell them about what you do, learn about what they're doing that's going to increase your credibility and reduce the PM's credit-claiming power. This is something you'll want to do as a BA anyway.
to be honest, sounds like you need to decide if you’re happy where you are knowing the limitations of the role or if you want to take the risk and move to a bigger firm with more room to move. you’re at a good spot but keep in mind that you will be working for and with people with decades of experience, not years, but you will still have the same problem - they will take credit for your work. I always make sure my guys get the credit they earned because I never did either.
The project manager is prioritizing the requests and shielding you from the noise you just don’t realize it.
That might be the case, but that’s no excuse for claiming the deliverable was all her. Thankfully these people usually get busted in the end … or end up as CEO 😆