Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

It seems some people are lumping Product Managers and Project Managers together.

They should be separate roles. And I believe, ideally, if you're in an organization with Product Managers, you shouldn't have Project Managers.

You can depending on the circumstance, but if you're a product manager you're more than likely in an agile environment.

Project Managers deal with projects, a temporary endeavor with a definite start and definite end to accomplish a goal. Products are ongoing things. Prod Managers should be looking for trends in the future of the market, and putting those features on the backlog of the team that's working on that product.

Are Prod and Proj managers going away? I think Proj Managers are. So many bad ones. Prod Managers? I haven't seen that happening actually. It seems more people are moving to Agile and hiring Prod Managers and Scrum Masters.

At least in my area.

I agree with you. No need for these types of fake jobs.

Call it whatever job title you want, there inevitably needs to be someone steering the boat. You can get rid of 'PMs' but you can't get rid of the need to set strategy / vision, understand the customer problem, identify solutions, collaborate with design and corral the rest of the organization (marketing, sales, support, operations) to bring it all together. If you don't have a PM performing those functions, then a member of the engineering team needs to step up, or perhaps someone from the executive team. But then guess what... that person is doing the things that PMs do, so I guess you might start calling them a PM...? Or a 'Product Editor'... or 'Program Manager'. All just names for something pretty similar.

When organizations are small enough, the whole team performs those functions together. As you grow it makes sense to have someone double down and own those responsibilities. Though this doesn't absolve engineers of the need to understand customers and help paint the product vision.

Perhaps the better question is 'Where did all the non-technical-purely-business-MBA PMs go?'

The answer is that it is likely a disappearing breed. An MBA won't teach you how to build great software or lead technology teams, so it's foolish to believe that someone with such credentials would be a natural fit to come lead a software organization. Good PMs I've worked with can have a conversation about the technology stack as easily as they can debate a marketing strategy. Great PMs these days need to span the entire 'company stack' if that makes sense.

Lastly, if you don't know why a given role exists, then it's probably because you haven't worked with someone great in that role. There are a number of roles in tech companies I found less useful until I met someone who had mastered the craft - when I saw them in action, it became clear why the role existed and how they could perform a certain function infinitely better than I.

As a last thought, I worked at Intuit a while back and I'm not sure they are a 'shining star' of PM training. They have done a good job of 'marketing' themselves that way, and they are an example of a company that typically has 'less technical' PMs in their organization. This is because Intuit is more of a 'marketing / business' driven organization. This contrasts with Google who is known to favor promoting engineers into the PM role. Neither model is 100% - the ideal is probably somewhere in between.

So, within an SCRUM/agile process, where do you see the PM role? The scrum master? The product owner?

I worked at a place where agile failed because (1) the "Product Manager" was AWOL (he punched a timecard but never seemed to put stories in) and (2) the lead developer refused to put in estimate for everything. (As the one developer who actually put in estimates, I just got abuse because my estimates were "too long")