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The product manager role is a mistake

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Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#111

Post by lukevp »

moandcompany wrote: post #58
jpatt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot more like a project or program manager than a product manager.

And ironically it seem like the things you'd positively attribute here to a product manager used to be/are actually part of the scope of what was traditionally a "project manager" or "program manager." For example, look at the scope and definition of a "program manager" from Microsoft or the US DoD in the 1980s, 1990s+, as well as literature describing the role of a program manager and the discipline from that time.

Why’s that ironic? There didn’t used to be frontend / backend / full stack devs either. As software engineering has matured and grown in scale, more subdivision of responsibilities is a natural outcome of that. We’re not all just directly writing code on mainframes and our customers aren’t just < 1k of users who directly call us on the phone if something goes wrong anymore, it’s millions of people using services 24x7 now. MS wasn’t making real-time collaboration systems and cloud sync in the 80s and 90s. They were making a stand-alone offline machine that barely could install device drivers and didn’t know what the internet was. Completely different products, and much simpler.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#112

Post by gretch »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #67
cmuguythrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to offer you another perspective: In all of the (B2C) companies in which I have worked as a PM (three, across two different industries), I have been closely involved in shaping and controlling the evolution of the product. My normal month has always consisted of creating anywhere from four to twelve unique proposals (PRDs) for new features for the company to build, with the number created varying based on the si…

Is that not a straight up engineering job? A good chunk of "engineer school" is practicing "customer has an issue, design a solution" type problems, in-between all the math.

A lot of traditional engineering (civil, mechanical, etc) are non-competitive endeavors. For example, if you are supposed to make a bridge, you just design what you think a good bridge to be.

In the modern consumer application, you have to understand business concepts like differentiation. If your product is very good, but it’s strictly worse than another product in every dimension, you don’t get any credit for second place. You actually get close to zero sales because no consumer chooses your product over the alternative, in contrast to a “bad” product that does at least something very well in a niche.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#113

Post by Pxtl »

At first I was interested in the premise but this article gets borderline Nietzschean about its obsession with dividing people up into categories of Great Men and Mediocre people and whatnot. It's kinda gross.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#114

Post by spamizbad »

Justsignedup wrote: post #61

The thing about PMs. They fulfill a very specific need, and that need is hard to quantify, but I can tell you that without a good PM everything falls apart. Here's a list of what they tend to do: - gather information from users on what is/isn't working for them - gather information from executives about what needs to be done to keep the company working - gather information from industry leaders who may or may not be…

I couldn’t agree more. I absolutely do not want to be without a functional product org.

I suspect a lot of teams have gotten burned from dysfunctional product orgs that seem disconnected (or disinterested) on the more customer/industry/organization side and instead burn through tons of meetings iterating on mock-ups, micromanaging designers (causing good ones to quit) and tying up engineers in product meetings they do not need to be in.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#115

Post by tennis_80 »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #47
karaterobot wrote: post #8

> You hire everyday great people. Each one needs to be great at something, obsessed by their craft, and driven by quality. You then put them together in a team, without individual responsibilities, ensuring that there’s minimal overlap in areas of greatness. My current company is full of smart people, and (for a variety of reasons) we don't have product managers. It sucks . What happens is that the things a PM does d…

Someone's gotta own the roadmap and prioritize the work queue, be it at a project level or updating the Microsoft project plan or the sprint. There's always a multitude of stakeholders. Devs, sales, marketing, ops, all have needs and idea. Someone must be the arbiter. I operate as principle on a project, and I have opinions, but I cannot set the roadmap alone

Eh, in my current role (engineer) we have a PM but they’re not all that useful. In theory, they do what you describe, but because they don’t have a technical background they struggle to identify blockers & engineers drive most prioritisation sessions.

They may jump in occasionally to tell us another team needs X or the business wants to see more Y so we should re-think what we work on next, but I struggle to see why that couldn’t be handled by our technical team lead.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#116

Post by alonsonic »

elicksaur wrote: post #102
glimshe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you had a project manager, not a product manager. A good product manager is very valuable.

It seems like whoever named these titles did a poor job. They’re so close, can you blame people for not seeing a difference? What is a product but a large project anyways?

A product manager is expected to view things from a business point of view. To identify features for the product and help it succeed in the market.

A project manager is in charge of planing, execution and governance of a project. They don’t define any of the goals or vision.

Saying product is a large project is a big over simplification. If we go that route anything could be called a “large project”.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#117

Post by thenerdhead »

Many PMs are lame ducks at companies because they have to "lead without influence" which is extremely challenging in many large companies where incentives do not align and takes time to build if you're good.

Clayton Christensen knew this all too well and calls this sustained innovation. In other words, to just make incremental improvements to a product to maintain a position in a market.

What this article is pointing out is a classic innovator's dilemma, in which the product manager role is unable to live up to the necessity to innovate and follow these great ideas of great PMs.

Overall a great article because it calls out the 10 dysfunctions of product management as told in books like "Build what matters". Especially this thought:

> Anyone with even a speckle of greatness eventually leaves. They either get pushed out by the mediocre dictator, or they leave on their own terms, as the environment has become intolerable to them.

The irony from my experience is that there are great people who want to do great things. They want a great PM and they want to follow a compelling vision. The modern day challenge is what companies are starting to identify... Vogons. "not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous". Also known as middle management.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#118

Post by emdowling »

It sounds like this person has worked with some truly mediocre product managers. I’m a PM, from a self-taught engineering background, and I’ve worked with many mediocre folks too across all disciplines.

I view my job primarily as risk management. A great team of engineers and designers will face a huge number of risks to shipping great products, like not having the right skill set to articulate their vision to get others on board, or having lawyers impose requirements or restrictions on what can and cannot be done. My job is to manage that, to help bring out the best in the team so they can get on with the actually important work of building and shipping great products.

I judge success by how redundant I am. My goal is to not be needed, for the team to have the right context, confidence and support to make good decisions without me.

I love working with engineers to level-up their skills so they can do just this; I work with my EM partners to understand the strengths, weaknesses and goals of each engineer, and try and find ways I can help them progress.

In an ideal, utopian world maybe I’m not needed. I can understand that argument. But in most cases, doing truly great things will run up against challenges and risks, and a good PM works in partnership with their team to overcome them and is a net value add.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#120

Post by tcmb »

elicksaur wrote: post #102
glimshe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you had a project manager, not a product manager. A good product manager is very valuable.

It seems like whoever named these titles did a poor job. They’re so close, can you blame people for not seeing a difference? What is a product but a large project anyways?

A project has a planned end date, a product typically doesn't.
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