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I swear, every time I read an article on HN about salary it gives me anxiety. I'm perpetually worried that I'm not earning as much as I should be earning. I don't think it is healthy but I can't look away.
As the level of abstraction rises, I believe people will move towards a role that looks more like a Technical Product Manager with design chops.
In addition, engineers have commoditized many technical solutions that used to be challenging in the past 15 years. Scaling used to be a tough challenge, not any more for many companies. In fact, part of my daily job is to prevent passionate engineers from reinventing wheels in the name of achieving scalability. It's not because we don't need to solve scalability problems, but because the infrastructure is good enough for most of companies. Building and operating so called "big data platform" used to be hard, not that hard any more. Building machine learning pipeline used to be hard, not that hard any more for many companies. Of course, it's still challenging to build a highly flexible and automated machine learning pipeline with full support of closed feedback loop, but many companies can get by without that level of maturity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I've noticed is that companies generally have fewer PMs than software engineers. A company might have a whole team of engineers but only one PM, and the PM typically has a title like "Director of Product Management". So it gives the impression that product manager is a director-level position. But eventually as the company grows, they'll eventually hire more PMs who report to the Director of Product Managem…
I think this has some merit. I’ve seen ratios from 3:1 to 10:1 engineers to PMs at companies I’ve been at. I could imagine the ratio going even higher. Edit: this does raise the question, though: where do product managers come from? What does the career path of a PM look like, including what happens before they become PMs?
I came over to the dark side from software development. Was tired of implementing other people’s bad ideas and convinced product leadership at my company that I could be an idea guy myself (along with all the other footwork and juggling you need to do as a PM). So it was an internal transfer. I think the good PMs have strong hands-on “actual development” backgrounds. I realize this is a self-serving opinion, too.
I swear, every time I read an article on HN about salary it gives me anxiety. I'm perpetually worried that I'm not earning as much as I should be earning. I don't think it is healthy but I can't look away.
To me, I see rising trends in terms of cost of healthcare, cost of buying a home, schooling for kids, kids themselves, caring for aging parents, etc. I just think "Damn, even with a salary that is way above median for the country, can I realistically reach all my goals in 'due time'?".
Right now I'm not sure if the answer to that question is yes, but I know that when looking at some of the salaries I see around there that grabbing a job at that salary can definitely ease my anxiety.
Preparing for SWE interviews is definitely a rat race, and I may need to move to a high COL area to earn these types of salaries, but it's a trade-off I'm willing to make to help ensure that I can reach the goals I've set for myself.
This hardly comes as a surprise. How many companies, especially startups, really need to tackle tough technical challenges? On the other hand, how many companies desperately need product talents to figure out what is valuable to produce? In addition, engineers have commoditized many technical solutions that used to be challenging in the past 15 years. Scaling used to be a tough challenge, not any more for many compan…
Boy, do I hate PMs. It’s as if almost every PM I’ve had to deal with isn’t particularly proficient in business, programming, or design management but knows exactly enough of all 3 silos to be dangerous at once to the other two. More often than not, I’ve found a PM will try to steer a project with some compromise to dev and design and bias toward business — in my selfish opinion as a single-silo employee, it’s mostly…
A good PM, almost by definition is kind of a mini-CEO. Their job is to push the product forward in a way that serves the company’s business interest. Product management is not engineering, design, sales, or marketing, but takes all of those into account. Maybe you’ve never worked with a good PM?
In fact, when startups are acquired, this is often exactly how their C-suite ends up: CEO -> PM, CTO -> TL, COO -> PgM.
I swear, every time I read an article on HN about salary it gives me anxiety. I'm perpetually worried that I'm not earning as much as I should be earning. I don't think it is healthy but I can't look away.
I have the same problem. I'm actually intentionally underpaid because this way (1) I have less anxiety about getting fired (2) I have less problems with imposter syndrome (3) I worry less about being underpaid since I know I'm underpaid. I know most people will think this is extremely irrational, but I'm paid about 3 times more than I can spend (I live very cheap and am happy this way) so I already save 2/3 of my tak…
I think that's perfectly reasonable. I find it hard to believe it would be "extremely irrational" to most people. Maybe I'm underestimating the extent to which money is fetishized in your culture (I presume the US).
Also, being able to save 2/3 of your net salary is... a ludicrously privileged position, underpaid or not.
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".
In other news, CEOs are the highest paid workers in Silicon Valley. This is a seniority thing not a "this function is more valuable" thing.
Product managers are actually not that "senior" in the corporate ladder. They have lots of responsibility without much authority.