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Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#71

Product owner/manager often works out fine as an informal position, where certain people in leadership roles are making decisions because they have an excellent aptitude for doing such; they especially have the ability to understand and empathize with their user base. That works fine until it stops working, and then it works horribly , because engineers have asserted themselves as antagonistic product owners: I know…

> And they just plain don't. Things can go completely insane. It boggles my mind how badly some otherwise competent folks can botch this. This hit home with me, I’ve seen some of the smartest engineers fall into this trap. They seem to believe their great engineering skills translate directly to product management. It can be one of the worst possible outcomes for a product and company

Statistically speaking you are wrong.. can you list five tech products that became big after the PM types you talk about took over the product?

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#72

Product owner/manager often works out fine as an informal position, where certain people in leadership roles are making decisions because they have an excellent aptitude for doing such; they especially have the ability to understand and empathize with their user base. That works fine until it stops working, and then it works horribly , because engineers have asserted themselves as antagonistic product owners: I know…

I think this take is rather disingenuous, especially the tech vs non-tech comparison you mentioned. Most, if not all, of the market winning products have come from tech founders/engineers. So tech people actually do know things better about what customers want. Its when the product has gained traction and it goes beyond a certain inflection point that these non tech pm types swoon in. They hype up tropes about tech f…

I'm not saying engineers can't do the job; many engineers certainly are capable of working as product owners, and in most cases startup founders are their own product owners, regardless of ability (for better/worse, but usually for better if they're succeeding).

Rather, the point is that it's an extraordinarily critical function and not something to assume everyone is just good at because they say so or because they're "smart" in some sense.

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about product managers or project managers?

And what is the difference in job function between those two?

Project Managers oversee the building of new stuff.

... then Product Managers move in and squat.

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this take is rather disingenuous, especially the tech vs non-tech comparison you mentioned. Most, if not all, of the market winning products have come from tech founders/engineers. So tech people actually do know things better about what customers want. Its when the product has gained traction and it goes beyond a certain inflection point that these non tech pm types swoon in. They hype up tropes about tech f…

I'm not saying engineers can't do the job; many engineers certainly are capable of working as product owners, and in most cases startup founders are their own product owners, regardless of ability (for better/worse, but usually for better if they're succeeding). Rather, the point is that it's an extraordinarily critical function and not something to assume everyone is just good at because they say so or because they'…

Its not so much about smartness, its about knowing what is the right move to make. That some one who isnt familiar with the product internals or the market knows better than the founders/engineers because of some innate ability is a bit far fetched

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about product managers or project managers?

And what is the difference in job function between those two?

Well, the clue is in their names. Project managers manage projects, which could be anything. They juggle resources and timelines.

Product managers are responsible for the direction of a product. They have to figure out what customers want or need and ensure that the product being built satisfies some of those needs and is competitive in the market place.

There may be some project management in product management, but there is no product management in project management.

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#76
post #68
post #13

In a recession, where companies give up on the efficacy of their marketing and sales operations, a lot of those positions get cut. When a company merges or gets acquired (often, to improve financial metrics), that enables the company to cut a lot of marketing and sales positions. Product is seen as a position that is seen as a bit more stable. The company still sells the product, current and potential users can still…

As someone interested in moving into PM, what are some of the things PMs do that make them worth their weight in gold?

Mostly covered elsewhere in this page, but in my opinion, gold PMs understand, on a deep level, the intersection between user needs, the marketplace, company strategy, and the engineering resources available; don't take shit from any of them, and can balance each of them.

1. User needs: this means not just talking to users, but seeing how users use your product and competing products. You understand what users are actually trying to do. Not taking shit from users means, just because a user tells you they wish something existed, therefore it gets written down as a feature request. Maybe something else would be better, maybe the user is a sourpuss who is giving you crap because they're having a bad day. Gold PMs read the room. Allowing every user direct write access to the feature request lists is design-by-committee and guaranteed to result in crap. Gold PMs know how to filter out everything but the most essential.

2. Marketplace: Gold PMs understand what other products are in the market. They understand that the market chooses between different products in the market, and therefore, what's important is how to differentiate the product within the market. Good PMs understand the difference between a feature that other products have that needs to be built in their product (i.e. table-stakes/non-negotiable, like SSO in Enterprise products), and not taking shit by adding features just because other products have them already (the building of which won't help differentiate their product in the market).

3. Company strategy: Gold PMs listen to executives who say which market segments the company is trying to reach so that they can reach out to the relevant users and choose relevant features, and not run after irrelevant segments that don't fit into the strategy. Not taking shit means knowing when to push back when executives pick a market segment that isn't going to be interested in the product (happens more often than you'd think), and making sure that the team has the budget and resources to go after (i.e. talk to users in) that market segment.

4. Engineering resources: Gold PMs understand, roughly, the skills of the engineers and developers who are available to them to build the features. They know what feature requests are feasible, approximately how much time it takes to build them, and when they need to back off and let engineers pay down technical debt. Not taking shit from engineering includes concerns like: not allowing Engineering to build feature work that they feel is really important but hasn't been through the Product process (market research, UX, etc.), pushing back when Engineering says something will take much longer than you think (i.e. is it a misunderstanding over scope?), pushing back when Engineering releases half-assed work (i.e. almost like QA in terms of exploring edge cases in the Product, and making sure those are addressed).

Gold PMs are valuable to Engineering when they distill user needs + marketplace + company strategy into a very simple list of the top 3 things that need to built in the next two weeks, and can clearly explain (including showing their work) why those 3 things are at the top. They are anchors when those top 3 things are clearly bullshit, when they don't even bring you a list of prioritized features to build, when their presence is required to get anything (even non-feature work) done, when they push paper for the sake of pushing paper, when they get in-between you and necessary externally-sourced information (design files, customer feedback, bug reports, etc.).

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#77
post #76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone interested in moving into PM, what are some of the things PMs do that make them worth their weight in gold?

Mostly covered elsewhere in this page, but in my opinion, gold PMs understand, on a deep level, the intersection between user needs, the marketplace, company strategy, and the engineering resources available; don't take shit from any of them, and can balance each of them. 1. User needs: this means not just talking to users, but seeing how users use your product and competing products. You understand what users are ac…

How is it possible to be efficient in these points without a strong engineering background, especially if you are innovating? Discussions in points 1, 2 and 3 will only be note taking if you cannot concretely envision what the implementation could be and need to ask engineering everything that is not a generic or superficial feature. The non-technical PM I have worked with always turned up to be project managers drowning the engineering and design teams in meetings and processes.

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#79
In times like these, when there is so much opportunity and so many use cases are easily recognizable due to the AI hype and so much information going around, anyone can be a product manager. When the tides turn and we enter the next AI winter, lots of these product managers will move on or be cut.

It's very easy to be a product manager in times like these, it's not easy being one where opportunity is rare and hard to find.

Re: Ask HN: Is everyone becoming a Product Manager these days?

#80
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly covered elsewhere in this page, but in my opinion, gold PMs understand, on a deep level, the intersection between user needs, the marketplace, company strategy, and the engineering resources available; don't take shit from any of them, and can balance each of them. 1. User needs: this means not just talking to users, but seeing how users use your product and competing products. You understand what users are ac…

How is it possible to be efficient in these points without a strong engineering background, especially if you are innovating? Discussions in points 1, 2 and 3 will only be note taking if you cannot concretely envision what the implementation could be and need to ask engineering everything that is not a generic or superficial feature. The non-technical PM I have worked with always turned up to be project managers drow…

Why do points 1 and 2 require strong engineering background? Knowing a feature is important or what features users actually want is not related to how hard it is to implement or how long it will take. If you have a good relationship with your engineers, you should be able to talk to them and trust their input.

Point 4 is the one that really sounds like needing engineering background.

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