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The product manager role is a mistake

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Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#341

Post by bazmattaz »

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…

As a PM I think this is spot on.

The path to becoming a great PM is longer and arguably harder than becoming a great engineer. Like you say a lot of what makes a great PM comes from years of experience in a variety of roles and companies.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#342

Post by xialvjun »

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…

> Very few engineers want to maintain relationships with customers, interview users to identify potential features, manage leadership, play politics for resource allocation, and so on.

Because the more you do, the more you are responsible for, but what you get doesn't increase. It's a question of profit distribution.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#343

Post by bazmattaz »

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’m a PM and this is spot on. The PM is not some sort of authoritarian decision maker that tells the team what to build (like this article seems to say), the PM should be a close ally of the team. He/she will work closely with their team to define the roadmap and prioritise work that will have the biggest impact for customers and the business.

When The PM is doing a great job, it should be so obvious for the engineers what problems they need to solve next and understand why they need to solve it.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#344

Post by aurareturn »

snapetom wrote: post #164
aeternum wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the vast majority of PMs could not describe the difference between TLS 1.3 and 1.x. The problems you describe are legit but unless you have extremely technical product managers, hiring more PMs will only make the problem worse.

I do believe that the traditional PM role/background should be considered obsolete, especially in software companies. Well-rounded engineers should be in these roles these days.

The vast majority of engineers I encountered do not have what it takes to be a good PM. I'm an engineer myself.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#345

Post by skrebbel »

flappyeagle wrote: post #262
skrebbel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do it but we’re 15 people so it doesnt count. Valve seems to do (or at least, have done) something very similar. Their employee handbook[0] used to be a staple on HN but I haven’t seen it flying around much lately. I wonder if it’s working out of them. [0] https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...

Valve doesn’t ship

Woa! I mean I stopped gaming when Half-Life was new but that’s quite an indictment for their model huh.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#346

Post by 59nadir »

_rutinerad wrote: post #236
ipaddr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is DevOps and one is a programmer

They’re both programmers and you can’t “be devops”.

The vast majority of my colleagues would say "that person is a devops" instead of "that person does devops", which I don't get at all. I've assumed it's some deeply rooted misunderstanding of language (my colleagues are eastern european) that has taken hold across the entire local industry.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#347

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

sanderjd wrote: post #296
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling you don't work on massively complex projects. We have loads of project managers where I work and I thank my stars we have every one of them. The coordination and planning required is ferocious for the work we need to deliver. It is not trivial and it would quickly fall apart without them.

Some of what you described in the comment I replied to fits the description of complicated company-spanning project management - a valuable role I have typically seen referred to as "program management" - but some of it, the team level dealing-with-task-backlogs type stuff, are things that managers and team members can just do in the course of their work. But you're right that my comment focused only on the latter th…

There is certainly a distinction between teams just dealing with their task backlog and project management. I wouldn't waste a project manager on that.

Program management is a level above project management as you say, coordinating multiple projects. But there is definitely a space for complex single projects (not programs) that still require detailed planning and coordination.

It's not really about personal preference though, unless this issue is a show stopper for you in terms of where you work. I've worked in both informal and formal settings. I personally dislike heavyweight project management processes but they are sometimes required!

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#348

Post by ako »

sarchertech wrote: post #267
ako wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about responsibility, the PM is responsible for the success of a product. To achieve this he collaborates with all the parties you mention, but in the end the PM has the responsibility. Key in this is bringing together knowledge of the market, the competitors, the customer problems, the value of a solution to these customers, determining a roadmap that will lead towards a successful product, coordinate launch, s…

Having one product owner is fine. The problem is that it should be a role someone moves into from one of the disciplines involved. Design, engineering, domain expert etc… Now we have Product Manager orgs with Associate PMs, junior PMs, senior PMs, group PMs etc… A junior PM almost by definition can’t be a product owner. They don’t have the seniority to make decisions, so what you end up with is a situation where seni…

Product Owner and Product Manager is not the same, especially in a larger organizations. Product Managers usually dont manage sprint backlogs, as its too fine grained. I often see sprint backlog that contain 20+ stories that add up to 1 customer facing capability/feature.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#349

Post by robertlagrant »

yellow_mixer wrote: post #249
robertlagrant wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing I've mentioned is anything to do with product management. The optional "run a team" bit is "team lead". Not product.

Writing a tickets is usually not owned by engineering. Some engineering managers may do this work, but it’s usually owned by Product while Engineering helps refine and turn tickets into actionable work. Engineering also doesn't negotiate features. Engineerings job is to help product determine LOE and help Product prioritize requirements for a future release. Again, strong engineering leads can do this work, but I bel…

> I believe Product Owner should hold these responsibilities

That's inarguable, as you haven't said why, but I'm saying the structure I described works well. My rationale is: product people don't generally write great tickets, and they also aren't in a position to negotiate features based on technical constraints.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#350

Post by johhns4 »

doktrin wrote: post #86
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…

In recent experience the PMs I have worked with have primarily concerned themselves with the desires of executives. Literally all the other responsibilities you mentioned were handled by others.

Yes. But this is because we have organizations where people survive by placating the higher-ups instead of producing value to the product and their team. Hence, these people survive.

It's human nature to find the best way to survive so we can't really blame these PMs for doing what they need to keep their job. Suck up to the people that will ultimately give them their paycheck.

The issue isn't the PM or shitty employees that aren't producing actual value, the issue is with the ego of the higher ups that rather keep people that agree with them on all things than have people who will constantly challenge them.

I have seen many CxOs (that aren't founders) who are very good at befriending the founders and thus they are more prone to survive. They are not necessarily doing anything useful to move the needle though, so this gives people the impression that the best thing you can do to survive is just be liked by the higher ups. Telling founders that they are wrong on a day to day basis because you work so closely with users and the engineering team, is not a good way to keep your job. If you are very smart maybe you can navigate this in a way that works, for awhile.

If my point is muddled, I'm saying that if you have a shitty PM it's because of the organization that employs people and keeps people based on the wrong criteria. Good leaders aren't threatened by getting challenged or feel the need to constantly get their egos validated.

Or maybe I'm wrong there too and it's just human nature to want to keep people that you always get along with.

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