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Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

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Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#31

Post by overgard »

So: I don't really know, but I have a theory.

Good product managers are really really hard to find. I've had the pleasure of working with a few, but I would say about 90% of them are worthless. The gems are definitely worth having around though.

The problem is, since finding good product managers seems so incredibly hard, I think instead of hiring for it and making it an official title, most organizations just evolve someone into the role. The problem is, being able to be a good manager requires a lot more domain knowledge than a lot of people realize, IMO, and so it ends up that often times the best product managers are people that either evolved into it from a design or development standpoint, or a person that had a lot of good domain knowledge in the subject matter that could step in. The commonality of all the product managers I've know that weren't good was that they really lacked domain knowledge, to the point where they were basically trying to tell people what to do even though they were clearly the least informed person in the room.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#32

Post by inthewoods »

gjmulhol wrote: post #30

I sense a lot of hostility toward product managers here, and I don't know why. I could understand why, as a developer, someone would not want a bad product manager, but a good one should make a developer's life easier. Developers are the ones who should be coming up with ideas about HOW to do things. Make something more efficient? Dev. Implement an incredible new technical feature? Dev. Product Managers are the ones…

Great comment - totally agree with the hostility point.

The best product managers are like the best point guards in basketball. They see the whole court, deliver the ball right into the hands of the person who can score at the right moment. Unfortunately, most PMs are like characters in Office Space.

My theory about why their aren't many PMs out there: it's a shitty job. I was a PM for around 10 years, but I left it because it's just not a great job in most orgs. More specifically, it is generally a job of "no" as opposed to a job of "yes", and is a job that lacks any real authority in most cases.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#33

Post by benjamincburns »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #18

Comments seems to be confusing Project Management, Product Management and Product Marketing Management. Those specializations don't often exist in small companies, but definitely arise in larger companies. To the folks denigrating Product Management: it's a very difficult job; and some pretty crappy people get into it when they don't like marketing and can't do software development. That doesn't mean that Product Man…

> That doesn't mean that Product Management is worthless...

> the real key was the ability to balance product requirements now against their long term affects

The problem is that a lot of companies are structured so that this is impossible for their PMs to accomplish.

Good employees (PMs or otherwise) will always find away to be effective in spite of the organization. However, if product management is too much under the thumb of sales, or if they are too much under the thumb of development and disconnected from sales, they don't have the visibility they need into one end or the other. Further, there will be pressure from their bosses to advocate more for their side.

To me, the best PMs are good mediators. Not only do they know how to schedule requirements and decide scope, they know how to communicate that effectively, and get buy-in from both sales and development with a minimum of squabbling. Because of this, if they're capable of doing their job effectively they don't need sales or development to report directly to them, and likewise they shouldn't be reporting to either sales or development.

If leadership feels the need to put product management under sales or under development, chances are they need to hire new PMs.

I completely agree though that good PMs are rare, exceedingly difficult to hire for, and worth double their weight in gold.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#34

Post by crimsonalucard »

overgard wrote: post #31

So: I don't really know, but I have a theory. Good product managers are really really hard to find. I've had the pleasure of working with a few, but I would say about 90% of them are worthless. The gems are definitely worth having around though. The problem is, since finding good product managers seems so incredibly hard, I think instead of hiring for it and making it an official title, most organizations just evolve…

I agree. Essentially, good product managers should have all the skills necessary to be a designer or developer as well.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#35

Post by insidepitch »

gjmulhol wrote: post #30

I sense a lot of hostility toward product managers here, and I don't know why. I could understand why, as a developer, someone would not want a bad product manager, but a good one should make a developer's life easier. Developers are the ones who should be coming up with ideas about HOW to do things. Make something more efficient? Dev. Implement an incredible new technical feature? Dev. Product Managers are the ones…

"Some places that have Product Managers (or Product Somethings (editors, gurus, swamis, whatever)): Apple, Google, Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Square (they exist, I know some who fill these roles), Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Spotify, and many others. These people not only exist but also are a central communication hub if they are doing their jobs right. Today's shining stars of PM are Apple (for hardware), Google, and Facebook. Everyone wants to hire people away from those teams."

Where are you getting your info? Apple has no Product Managers. It has lots of Project Managers and Product Marketing Managers but not Product Managers as you describe them. What products to build (from high level vision down to fine details) is decided by primarily Engineering and Design (for both hw and sw).

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#36

Post by crimsonalucard »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #18

Comments seems to be confusing Project Management, Product Management and Product Marketing Management. Those specializations don't often exist in small companies, but definitely arise in larger companies. To the folks denigrating Product Management: it's a very difficult job; and some pretty crappy people get into it when they don't like marketing and can't do software development. That doesn't mean that Product Man…

All of your requirements for a good PM mean that the PM needs to have the skills to be a developer as well. It's probably why some companies aren't hiring for PMs anymore because only an engineer will have the technical foresight required to perform adequately.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#37

Post by CoffeeDregs »

benjamincburns wrote: post #33
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #18

Comments seems to be confusing Project Management, Product Management and Product Marketing Management. Those specializations don't often exist in small companies, but definitely arise in larger companies. To the folks denigrating Product Management: it's a very difficult job; and some pretty crappy people get into it when they don't like marketing and can't do software development. That doesn't mean that Product Man…

> That doesn't mean that Product Management is worthless... > the real key was the ability to balance product requirements now against their long term affects The problem is that a lot of companies are structured so that this is impossible for their PMs to accomplish. Good employees (PMs or otherwise) will always find away to be effective in spite of the organization. However, if product management is too much under…

    >The problem is that a lot of companies are structured so that this
    >is impossible for their PMs to accomplish.
Would love to hear more about this since I'm going to be structuring the engineering, and possibly product, teams for the startup I joined...

    >get buy-in from both sales and development
Totally. People often rant about Sales or Marketing or Engineering, but none exists without the other. I think the combination of deep technical skills and a two year tour of duty in Sales (as a Field Applications Engineer) provided me with the ability to pre-understand each sides' concerns and to communicate with each more effectively.

    >If leadership feels the need to put product management under sales
    >or under development, chances are they need to hire new PMs.
Yeah, I've seen this first hand two separate times and the constant refrain from the rest of the company was "why isn't engineering building what our customer's need?" I do wonder if it's possible. Or advisable. Might be something that goes bad no matter how well it starts.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#38

Post by CoffeeDregs »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #36
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #18

Comments seems to be confusing Project Management, Product Management and Product Marketing Management. Those specializations don't often exist in small companies, but definitely arise in larger companies. To the folks denigrating Product Management: it's a very difficult job; and some pretty crappy people get into it when they don't like marketing and can't do software development. That doesn't mean that Product Man…

All of your requirements for a good PM mean that the PM needs to have the skills to be a developer as well. It's probably why some companies aren't hiring for PMs anymore because only an engineer will have the technical foresight required to perform adequately.

    >All of your requirements for a good PM mean that the
    >PM needs to have the skills to be a developer as well.
I somewhat agree. The best PMs I've seen have had technical backgrounds, so a technical background seems necessary, but it is not sufficient. The best PMs have had a deep understanding of customer need, company/product direction, development feasibility. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830892 said "president of the product" and I think that's nice. Given the invisibility of corporate "presidents", I'd suggest "CEO of the product" since you've got to have the ability to review the smallest issue while considering the long term effects.

Years ago, I was friends with the CEO of an hot CPU startup and I asked him what had most surprised him about his job. He was formerly the VP of a division of a public semiconductor company, so had serious experience. And still he said that he was astounded at the range of questions he got asked: VP of Finance raising some technical accounting issue; VP of Hardware knocking on his door to discuss process nodes and vendors; VP of Software looking for advice on ways to solve a complex problem; HR Director raising sexual harassment policies. Barring the sexual harassment policy, yeah, that sounds about like Product Management [and, yes, you will bump into "revenue recognition" while a PM].

EDIT:

... derp ... I missed this:

    >only an engineer will have the technical foresight
    >required to perform adequately
I think this was covered above, but I did want to address this particularly engineering-centric perspective. There are supremely bad engineers-turned-PMs because they think PM is Eng+[some vague management-y ring they should try to catch]. (There are also supremely bad marketers-turned-PMs... but we all know that...) Don't get lulled into thinking that you can be a good PM merely because you're an engineer. [You'll suck and be frustrated. And companies have huge problems with people doing jobs they shouldn't be doing, so be an awesome engineer/developer and you will be richly rewarded.]

The worst part of being a PM is that you won't be as skilled as your audience. You'll propose features, but you won't be as good at development as the developers who'll develop them, the salespeople who'll sell them, the marketers who'll market them. But you need to be good enough in any domain to call bullshit on any of them because everyone will be a passive-aggressive sand-bagger when they don't like your requests. [Once, as a PM, I proposed a feature and then, since I also had SVN access, built it in 3 hours. Was approached as I was building the feature. The Dir Eng was telling another PM the feature would take 3 days to build. Sand-baggers suck and developers sand-bag, too...]

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#39

Post by maxsilver »

pascalo wrote: post #24
USNetizen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That setup rarely ever works. There needs to be a person to interact with the customer. Developers don't work well with customers. A good PM will discuss options with the team, but they will serve as the interface through which the customer communicates with the team. The customer does not care how things get done, only that they get done on time.

"Developers don't work well with customers" Why does it have to be like that? This sort of silo thinking is probably what created the disconnect in the first place. The customer might care about how things get done, if it means the difference between getting 85% of their wish list done or 50%, all depending on one obscure feature. Agile/SCRUM can make the potential complexity of a feature more visible because it's a…

It's not so much that it "has to be like that", in that your merging two different roles, without finishing your thought. Your arguing for good project management, and practicing good project management, while telling yourself + others that it's "no project management."

There is no such thing as "no PM". Such a concept can't exist (for the same reason that "no developers" can't exist). There's actual work there, that someone has to do, or nothing gets built.

Now, it's totally fine if you say "I think it's best if all of our team members spend 75% of their time as developers, and 25% of their time as project managers". That's what you've just described above, and (in my opinion) there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But your misleading yourself if you claim "PM's aren't needed because Agile", or "PM's aren't needed because the one's I've met 'silo' us off". All you've done is shift the PM burden from a specific person, to some/all of your developers. Your developers are now actually "part-time developers, part-time PM's"

There's also some weird assumptions that your making around PM's. PM's do not have to silo developers away from the client (and good ones don't). PM's do not have to estimate for devs (good ones always use team estimates).

I've seen developers write buggy code, or brittle tests. But I would never say "developers aren't needed". You've clearly encountered bad PM's, and that's very unfortunate. But that doesn't mean "PM isn't needed", and as you yourself just described, you already have to pick up that work on your own since you lack one on your team.

Re: Ask HN: Where did all the Product Managers go?

#40

Post by Sindrome »

Personally I think having one person who's responsible for product is essential. Someone needs to find out what features really matter, how to prioritize them, and make important decisions like when to kill features.

I work for a very early stage startup. One of the reasons why we are having such a hard time finding product market fit is that there is no one person in charge of product. We all just do what we feel is important and 50% of the time it's useless, gets scrapped, or wasn't thought out well enough.

We need someone who eats and shits the product 24/7 and is responsible for making good or bad decisions.

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