Not too sure if this is a rant thread or "asking for advice" thread. Maybe a bit of both.
I work in system support (help desk basically) for a large company, in a small team of 4 (inc me); each of us specialise in a separate program that the company uses, which all talk and interface to each other in varying ways.
My line manager announced to my team recently that he's leaving, and it's left us a bit shell-shocked. We unanimously agree that he was a great line manager, and was very hands on. While we mainly specialised in our programs, he knew all of them himself, and could dip in and out and fill in the gaps between us very well. He also knew the processes of multiple departments in the company in and out, so he would push for business improvements and program enhancements, often at the benefit of multiple departments.
The rest of us simply don't have enough experience to be able replace him in any sort of meaningful way, and the head of our department has never seemed to give us the time of day, which I suspect is one major factor in my manager leaving. I don't have much confidence that the head is even considering arranging a replacement, and even if there is one, I can't see them being anything but a glorified project manager. They won't know the processes or be able to dip in to offer support in the same way.
My main concern at the moment was my specialist program, I supported kind of together with him. The others in the team have had virtually zero exposure to it, as they've been busy with their programs (similarly I know relatively little about their programs). So support for that is now going to fall 99% on me. Not only that, but we've been preparing for the past ~10 months to go live with another new program, which kind of links together with the program I already supported, so it kind of naturally fell on me to pick up that and all the testing and go-live prep, with my manager supporting me. We're on the cusp of going live with this within the next 2 months.
My team has had a chat. We're all concerned about the impacts this will have on us, but I'm absolutely dreading it, because I'm going to have 2 major programs with all the questions coming to me. It's inevitable I'm going to get overwhelmed, and I can't see any other outcome than push through till I burn out. Plus I feel like I'll be letting down the team, because I feel like I won't have time to help pick up the slack that's going to fall on them with their programs.
I work in system support (help desk basically) for a large company, in a small team of 4 (inc me); each of us specialise in a separate program that the company uses, which all talk and interface to each other in varying ways.
My line manager announced to my team recently that he's leaving, and it's left us a bit shell-shocked. We unanimously agree that he was a great line manager, and was very hands on. While we mainly specialised in our programs, he knew all of them himself, and could dip in and out and fill in the gaps between us very well. He also knew the processes of multiple departments in the company in and out, so he would push for business improvements and program enhancements, often at the benefit of multiple departments.
The rest of us simply don't have enough experience to be able replace him in any sort of meaningful way, and the head of our department has never seemed to give us the time of day, which I suspect is one major factor in my manager leaving. I don't have much confidence that the head is even considering arranging a replacement, and even if there is one, I can't see them being anything but a glorified project manager. They won't know the processes or be able to dip in to offer support in the same way.
My main concern at the moment was my specialist program, I supported kind of together with him. The others in the team have had virtually zero exposure to it, as they've been busy with their programs (similarly I know relatively little about their programs). So support for that is now going to fall 99% on me. Not only that, but we've been preparing for the past ~10 months to go live with another new program, which kind of links together with the program I already supported, so it kind of naturally fell on me to pick up that and all the testing and go-live prep, with my manager supporting me. We're on the cusp of going live with this within the next 2 months.
My team has had a chat. We're all concerned about the impacts this will have on us, but I'm absolutely dreading it, because I'm going to have 2 major programs with all the questions coming to me. It's inevitable I'm going to get overwhelmed, and I can't see any other outcome than push through till I burn out. Plus I feel like I'll be letting down the team, because I feel like I won't have time to help pick up the slack that's going to fall on them with their programs.