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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

#51

Post by avip »

captain_crabs wrote: post #5

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…

non-technical PMs are the best. They don't try to do things they can't, they take our word wrt complexity of implementing things and tradeoffs. And they are mostly women, which brings an extra layer of much-needed balance.

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

#52

Post by opportune »

NearAP wrote: post #49
dawhizkid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone noticed how few "Who's Hiring?" posts are looking for PMs. In an avg month with nearly 1000 comments, I see maybe 10-15 instances of the word "Product Manager"

I believe companies have more software engineers than PMs which invariably means there will be more software engineering vacancies than PM vacancies I also think the attrition rate for PMs are much much lower than that of Developers.

Yeah, I don't think PMs can really burn out / grow to hate your job as easily as developers do (unless you just have low performance). Also their skills don't transfer as easily. I see people with the title of "PM" (not product though) I work with making more than me who just click through the data visualizations/backend I made and turn that into reports to management... why would anybody give up that job when 1) they are making a lot of money doing something low-stress 2) those skills don't transfer at all.

It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.

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

#53

Post by timlloyd »

polote wrote: 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

Following John Cutler, Marty Cagan and Teresa Torres helps

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

#54

Post by NearAP »

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #29
captain_crabs wrote: post #5

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…

> Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details about your situation? I've had several. The key feature is that they bring something to the table: I don't actually need technical guidance on how to build the product -- I (or another engineer) knows enough to solve the technical aspects, that's why the corporation is paying me (or them). But what I do…

>>>> What skills are most useful in an engineer, and how do we make you look good/help you make us look good >>>>

1) I don't think it's technical skills per se (your hierarchy would have reviewed that when you were hired). I think it's more of an attitude. I've lost count of the number of times PMs make a case for a feature to behave in a specific manner and Dev doesn't want to invest the time or effort to even investigate if it's possible/how that can be done. From Dev POV - we already do it this way so live with it. PM makes the argument that is not the best from a functional POV but Dev is simply not interested.

Note: I'm not saying all Devs behave this way, just pointing out a technical way of doing something might not provide the best functional experience and being open to explore or understand what PM is trying to achieve is important.

2) Ability to look at the big picture. Sometimes one is so focused on the immediate tasks and its technical design that they miss the fact that the PM has a road map and this feature or set of features is just one bit on the roadmap. This means that whatever is being built now should if possible make it easier to implement the other features down the line.

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

#55

Post by opportune »

captain_crabs wrote: post #5

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 on the product and the actual functional relationship between PM and engineers. Is the product manager mostly working with designers and customers to see what is needed for the underlying project, and then communicating that equitably with engineers? That's ideal. Is the product manager making high-level technical commitments to management (e.g. "we are going to move our VMs from AWS to Azure by EOW!") because it's what they want to hear and then acting extremely bossy and assholishly to engineers trying and likely failing to meet that deadline? Do they not even do anything other than acting as a second manager who is way less qualified? Then they are actively making the work environment worse. Both situations are possible and honestly technical skills don't even matter that much here.

Now, if you are working on a very software-y product like SAAS or some other thing where other developers are the consumers, then you should not be non-technical (or if you are non-technical you should have a ton of experience being the PM for technical products) simply because you have little hope of understanding the needs of the consumers of the product. But this is a minority of products

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

#57

Post by NearAP »

dawhizkid wrote: post #37
dman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the parts that you thought were not a great fit?

It's just an extremely nebulous role and completely different from company to company, which means you could be perceived as great in one co and terrible in another. I find it hard to measure my own real value.

You're right - it differs from company to company.

I think you'll enjoy the role if you are in a company where the PM drives the feature - the PM determines what features should be implemented, does the design (UI, logic, behavior, etc and then Dev does the technical design and codes it).

One way to measure your value is also your ability to solve customer's problems. By this I mean - you could have a feature/capabilities and then a customer has a unique situation; being able to figure out how to use your feature in a non-conventional manner or coming up with a work-around (not one that creates a loop hole) to solve the problem can feel rewarding. The challenge though is that it is sometimes difficult to quantify this when you are trying to move companies

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

#59

Post by NearAP »

opportune wrote: post #52
NearAP wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe companies have more software engineers than PMs which invariably means there will be more software engineering vacancies than PM vacancies I also think the attrition rate for PMs are much much lower than that of Developers.

Yeah, I don't think PMs can really burn out / grow to hate your job as easily as developers do (unless you just have low performance). Also their skills don't transfer as easily. I see people with the title of "PM" (not product though) I work with making more than me who just click through the data visualizations/backend I made and turn that into reports to management... why would anybody give up that job when 1) the…

>>>> It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.>>>>

Interesting. I think it's the opposite. Because PM culture differs from company to company, I feel like companies interview for PMs with a bias for how they expect their PMs to behave. This would be unlike Developers where companies are looking for folks proficient in specific languages.

I've had friends who interviewed with companies for PM positions and the focus was on their doing great UI mockups. The interviewer was looking for good UIs. Unfortunately, these folks were coming from places where the UI mockup they did was just basic placement of elements to communicate the elements they expected their solutions to use. A seperate design team would later turn their mockups into beautiful UIs

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