The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#281

Post by orangecat » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #143

onion2k wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice is be to be ludicrous. Ask for far more than you think you're worth. As most people undervalue themselves you'll often find companies saying yes, or at least negotiating down to more than you'd have asked for if you capped your wage raise to 20%. If they hire you you'll then be faced with the feeling that you're out of your depth, overpaid, and incapable of doing the job you took, but that's a different set…

> My advice is be to be ludicrous. For recruiters who contact me from companies that aren’t my usual area of career interest, I do this to see what the upper bound is. It once backfired on me. Shortly after finishing grad school, a recruiter contacted me about a quantitative finance position and asked what range I was looking for. I replied “about $350k”. He responded, “We can work with that.” I think I had to scrape…

There are thousands of engineers at Google/Facebook/etc making $350k/year or more while working 40-45 hour weeks. For a position where you're expected to dedicate your entire life to the job, nothing under a million would be "ludicrous".

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#282

Post by formalsystem » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

I worked as a junior PM at Microsoft and eventually moved to Applied Science. My feel is that the junior PM role isn't necessarily needed & most tech organizations would benefit from a very small group of senior PMs. The junior PM role mostly involves syncing the dev team with the expectations of leadership which means you have to be good measuring dev progress (via scrums, task management, unblocking the dev team) and measuring product progress (via customer interactions, metric reviews, leadership review meetings).

The good qualities for such a role is to be a clear communicator and someone who gets shit done and doesn't work on pointless things.

However, I'd argue that anyone at any company should have these skills. I get that we're trying to make environments more amenable to introverts who don't necessarily want to be bothered with meetings and focus on code, but I also don't see how any pure non research organization can achieve this realistically. You're always going to be bombarded with requests to do all sorts of stuff, you'll have opinions about what's important and what isn't and you should be able to communicate it or else you'd be seriously mismanaging both your career and your product.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#283

Post by torgian » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

Not surprising. Product managers are typically part of the Profit section of a company. Software engineers are a Cost, even though without them a company wouldn’t even get off the ground these days.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#284

Post by beerlord » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

formalsystem wrote: post #282

I worked as a junior PM at Microsoft and eventually moved to Applied Science. My feel is that the junior PM role isn't necessarily needed & most tech organizations would benefit from a very small group of senior PMs. The junior PM role mostly involves syncing the dev team with the expectations of leadership which means you have to be good measuring dev progress (via scrums, task management, unblocking the dev team) a…

How do you become a senior dev if there are no junior devs?

A healthy company will maintain this pipeline, to keep fresh talent and fresh ideas coming in. Plus, getting down and dirty at the coalface is essential experience for a product manager.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#285

Post by luckydata » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

BlackJack wrote: post #258

luckydata wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add "engineering lying to my face about the status of a highly visible product and then telling me we have 3 months worth of work left one week before launch". It really happened.

I'm sorry to hear that, but something is wrong if the PM is that unaware of the state of the product.

Did I mention "lying" was a part of it?

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#286

Post by hendry » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

I remember my colleague saying at a company I worked for: Managers get fired, developers don't.

If you want job security, don't become a manager.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#287

Post by speby » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

hendry wrote: post #286

I remember my colleague saying at a company I worked for: Managers get fired, developers don't. If you want job security, don't become a manager.

This is absolutely untrue and poor advice.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#288

Post by beerlord » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #24

alistairSH wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wondered about that. The PMs with whom I work all have 15+ years experience in the business. And for most of them, "the business" is our specific domain area, not just "software". I would expect their salaries to be in the same ballpark as a senior engineer or line manager.

Also, the senior PMs all straddle the line between sales, consulting/services, and R&D. They tend to spend a lot of time in the company booth at conferences, dealing with client C-levels one-on-one, and working with our sales to team to ensure R&D is building stuff that will generate revenue. Their day-to-day interaction is with VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE mores than with us plebes. There shouldn't be any surprise that the…

Also worth mentioning that product managers make great startup founders (particularly with a a great engineer co-founder).

Sales, product development, customer and market research, internal management, marketing - these are all critical skills for startups. People leaving to start their own businesses would shrink the pool, and put upwards pressure on wages.

I've also seen a lot of PM job ads asking for people with startup experience.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#289

Post by analog31 » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:23 AM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #86

gowld wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are more than "slightly" different. A product manger is a creative professional. A project manager is an administrative professional.

Not really. When I had a "product manager" title, I had to do plenty of "project management".

At my workplace, the product managers are part of the marketing department, and interface with the sales force. Most of them have MBA's.

The project managers are in the engineering department and interface with the engineers, suppliers, operations, etc. Most have engineering degrees.

They work out most of the project documentation together, such as the specifications, budget, schedule, etc.

Re: The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016)

#290

Post by peteretep » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

When I worked at the BBC, they were called "Producers", even in tech terms. Suspect that capable producers find themselves well paid in any field.