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Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

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Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#11
post #2

There is clearly a lack of boards/forums/websites dedicated to product managers. But what I miss the more is a website, when we can get valuable insights about best practices. On HN you can get super useful information about any stack/language/framework by reading the comments, but when you are a PM you have nowhere to get that kind of information

A couple of sites that have been useful to me, in no particular order (not affiliated w/ any):

- productmanagerhq.com - productschool.com - mindtheproduct.com - roadmap.com - departmentofproduct.com

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#12

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

By "working under" do you mean having an engineer report directly to a product manager, where the PM is responsible for the engineer's career growth, compensation, reviews, etc?

As a former engineer turned product manager, I would not advocate such a reporting structure. A PM wouldn't be the best person to help manage an engineer's career growth and everything else. I think it's perfectly fine to be on the same cross-functional team though.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#13

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

Depends what you mean by non-technical. I've worked with product managers who didn't have an engineering background, and thst worked fine as long as they were able to understand the trade offs that we presented to them. I've also worked with product managers who just couldn't grasp any sort of technical nuance. That did not work out well.

I notice you phrase it as "work under", and I wonder if that is part of the issue you've had. Where I've worked, while it was true that the PM was guiding the direction of our work, they weren't our boss- they were simply a part of a team with a different role (in the same way that QA often takes direction from engineers, but they don't work for them). If the relationship you had with your PM was "one way" in this sense, then I can see why you wouldn't like it...

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#14

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

I typically have a good time working with non-technical PM's. I typically have a bad time working under non-technical PM's.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#15

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

By non-technical do you mean someone who has neither previously been a developer nor have a CS/Eng degree? I've worked with both and have found the lack of an engineering background is not determinant in my opinion of the PM. For the non-technical PMs with whom I've worked, the more important factors are willingness to listen when I explain the impracticality of a proposed change/feature and their own willingness to dive deep into understanding the problem domain and customer pain points.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#16

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

The positions I've worked with non-technical PMs has been one with a kind of dual structure - there was a lead developer who was the technical expert as well as largely the PM's equal. The PM was more of an ancillary addition to the team, and any decisions were filtered between the two.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#17

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

I think it's OK to start out as non-technical product manager but over time they should pick up some technical knowledge. Some product managers refuse to learn anything technical which doesn't work well in the long run in my view.

Same for developers. They shouldn't just wait for requirements but also understand their users to some degree.

In the end engineering and product management should develop some competence in the other's area. Otherwise communication is very tedious and error prone.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#18

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details abou…

I was a non-engineering background PM (I dropped out of high school). I can tell you about what I didn't know early in my career that was painful for me then (and something I've internalized hard now): It's ok to say "I don't know". Conversely, saying "I have the answer" when you don't is lying.

The worst thing you can do as a PM is to make a technical assertion that you don't understand to a technical audience. You will instantly lose the audience's respect and trust (and those things are very hard to get back). To my mind, being technical is about actually understanding how things work such that you can make arguments grounded in facts and experience about systems. If you make arguments like "why don't you just rip out Mongo?" without understanding how painful that would be, it's really hard for people to believe in you.

Being non-technical doesn't mean opting out of technical discussions, it just means saying "I don't know" when you don't know. This is something I see PMs screw up all the time.

In reality, nobody knows everything, but pretending you know something when you don't is a verifiable road to hell.

Lastly, product is about two things: intuitive narrative and fact-based decision making. If you can't reason about your product hypotheses from first principles and/or bring established respected metrics to the discussion, you deserve to not be taken seriously.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#19
post #2

There is clearly a lack of boards/forums/websites dedicated to product managers. But what I miss the more is a website, when we can get valuable insights about best practices. On HN you can get super useful information about any stack/language/framework by reading the comments, but when you are a PM you have nowhere to get that kind of information

Sounds like a good reason to release an HN clone for PMs - or use the r/ProductManagement or r/prodmgmt forums on Reddit in a more consistent manner. I'm all for sharing best practices too - but they're locked in my Google Keep without real sharing capability. SMH.

Re: Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

#20
This is glorious! And actually saves me quite a bit of time. This subject extends much deeper than the rote teaching of "soft skills" to engineers. And is more akin to realizing one's own humanity ;)

I can also recommend a text called Product Design and Development used in the grad-level MIT class

http://www.ulrich-eppinger.net/

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