I’m one of two lead analysts on a team of 6 + our boss. This is basically my bosses 1st job in ‘real’ analytics group (at scale, not just pushing excel files) and first time leading a team. She is not competent at either. She is a bully to the data engineers and will have people working on ill designed projects haphazardly. She just talks big, use buzzwords, and act super confident. This fools the business who don’t know better on the technical side and the technical side who don’t know better on the business side. But anyone in the middle sees through it – and I’ve heard her peers complain pretty openly about the incompetence. Me and my peers do pretty good work despite all the confusion she creates and I feel like that is partly what keeps her around.
She regularly says to me and the other lead ‘My goal is to unload all my work onto you two.’ She is super nice to me and we have a good relationship, except for the anger and frustration I feel from the piles of work.
This is a new job for me, a few months in. I switched because of a big pay jump, felt bored and underutilized in my old role, and the business we are working on is super interesting and fun to me. Also upper leadership is pretty good – which I think is valuable.
What can I do? Complaining up the ladder seems dangerous. But as is, things are not working great and we are starting to lose projects to another analytics group who operates much better, which is a huge risk.
I have less that 5 yoe, and I’m not sure I’m quite ready to lead a group like ours if she leaves. I’d be the top internal candidate from the business area as of today, but someone outside could definitely come. Hoping maybe she can last until I’m ready to assert myself as a candidate to replace her? Or just try and help her with feedback? Open to people’s thoughts.
