Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

blog.luap.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 148 posts

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#131

Post by kareemm »

sb8244 wrote: post #97
nandorsky wrote: post #7

This is a poorly written article that is all over the place. It’s evident the author had a horrible experience with a PM. Their description of a PM is a description of a PM who’s doing their job poorly. Qualitative research at any company is critical and poor qual research (interviewing the wrong people, asking the wrong types of questions, etc) will yield poor insights as is the case here. Any PM working at a B2B st…

It also matches with my experience fwiw. The biggest issue I saw with qualitative is that it almost always was used to reinforce an existing idea that the PM has. I've never heard a PM say they learned something surprising and are reconsidering their initial idea.

> I've never heard a PM say they learned something surprising and are reconsidering their initial idea.

You have never worked with a good PM then. I hear unexpected things from customers pretty much every single time I talk to one.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#132

Post by llamaLord »

xbar wrote: post #83
llamaLord wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this whole article the word "problem" is only written once, and it's in the line "the problem with product managers is". Given you don't understand that the core pillar of the product manager role is to be the owner of the problem space, I'm not sure how qualified you are to comment on how valuable our role is or isn't. Discovery isn't about decided what does or doesn't get built, it's about discovering what the r…

> A lot of PM's end up overreaching because they're just tired of there being a leadership vacuum and nobody willing to fill it. This kind of apologizing for horrific behavior undermines what I thought were otherwise strong points.

It's not meant to be apologising, it's meant to provide context so that engineering teams can be more comfortable pushing back and retaking control of the solution space.

Should PM's be better at not steam rolling engineering teams? Yeah, 100%, it's literally the #1 thing that I consciously work on when it comes to personal development and self discipline etc.

But it would also help if engineering teams were more... I want to say "aggressive" when it comes to solving new problems and building new solutions.

I get that "new features" is seen as a PM thing and we always get shit for pushing "new features" over things like fixing tech-debt. But for 95% of products, "new features" are going to be a very consistent reality and often they're responded to extremely negatively by engineering teams, even (and some times especially) when those engineering teams are placed in the drivers seat to come up with the solutions.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#133

Post by llamaLord »

polote wrote: post #65
llamaLord wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this whole article the word "problem" is only written once, and it's in the line "the problem with product managers is". Given you don't understand that the core pillar of the product manager role is to be the owner of the problem space, I'm not sure how qualified you are to comment on how valuable our role is or isn't. Discovery isn't about decided what does or doesn't get built, it's about discovering what the r…

Sorry if you took it personally or you think this is a rant. This is clearly not the case, I can repeat it, PM have a lot of value, but there is one specific area that we shouldn't give them control over. It doesnt mean they are bad PM or good PM, innovation requires just fundamentally opposed skills to the standard product management ones that we see in books.

I didn't take anything personally. IMO your implication that I did just feels like another attempt to straw-man PM's.

Trust me, we deal with so much psuedo-emotional garbage every day that stuff like this just slides off our backs.

My point is that you obviously don't actually understand what a PM's job is, so you probably shouldn't be telling everyone what they can and cannot do.

As a PM I've been the one that's lead some of the largest and most successful innovation focused initiatives that the companies I've worked at have ever delivered. In some cased delivering revenue uplifts totaling 20-30% of the companies entire income.

Engineers don't have a monopoly on innovation. Innovation is what happens when a great solution is paired with a nasty problem. For at least one half of that calculus, most companies need good PM's.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#134

Post by brookst »

allenu wrote: post #122
brookst wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re aware that Microsoft didn’t even have a Product Manager title until last year, right?

I worked there for 13 years and worked with a lot of people with the title of Product Manager, or "PM" to be specific. And no, we didn't call them "project managers".

How did you work there for 13 years and not realize that Microsoft “PM” was neither product nor project, but “Program”?

It was a hybrid role that every org did differently, and it was confusing to everyone and made it hard to separate product focus from execution focus.

Last year they split the roles into Product Manager and Technical Program Manager (TPM), and PM’s had to elect which role/title/path to choose.

This is at least true for the Experiences and Devices and Cloud and AI orgs.

Source: work there now, have been there 6 years.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#135

Post by llamaLord »

kareemm wrote: post #131
sb8244 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also matches with my experience fwiw. The biggest issue I saw with qualitative is that it almost always was used to reinforce an existing idea that the PM has. I've never heard a PM say they learned something surprising and are reconsidering their initial idea.

> I've never heard a PM say they learned something surprising and are reconsidering their initial idea. You have never worked with a good PM then. I hear unexpected things from customers pretty much every single time I talk to one.

Additionally, as a PM, I hear unexpected things from my engineering teams to and they very often change the course of an initiative we're running.

A PM is an Air Traffic Controller - not a dictator.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#136

Post by llamaLord »

singleshot_ wrote: post #79
polote wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I agree that this is poorly written (I wrote it). The point of the article is not that companies shouldnt have PM, but that you shouldnt make them owner of the innovation in a B2B context. Of course if you start with the assumption of "Good PMs" it will work, but you will rarely find these "good PMs"

Imagine feeling qualified to write this article without knowing the difference between a project manager and a product manager. Imposter syndrome indeed. Thinking you are the correct person to evaluate a “PM” without knowing what half the letters mean is pretty amazing, leaving us to wonder what would happen if this person ever were to encounter a program manager.

Let's be fair here... I consider myself a pretty proficient Product Manager and even I would struggle to tell you what the Program Manager in our Org is actually meant to do.

Don't get me wrong, they do a lot and it's all valuable. But even they can't tell me what their fundamental role responsibility is hahaha.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#137

Post by allenu »

brookst wrote: post #134
allenu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked there for 13 years and worked with a lot of people with the title of Product Manager, or "PM" to be specific. And no, we didn't call them "project managers".

How did you work there for 13 years and not realize that Microsoft “PM” was neither product nor project, but “Program”? It was a hybrid role that every org did differently, and it was confusing to everyone and made it hard to separate product focus from execution focus. Last year they split the roles into Product Manager and Technical Program Manager (TPM), and PM’s had to elect which role/title/path to choose. This…

Ah, you got me there. My apologies. You're right. I had forgotten that it was "program" and not "product". (I haven't worked there in a few years and probably mixed it up with product manager titles at a different company.)

To me, it always felt like it was supposed to be an intentional "product" role as opposed to "project", but you're right that it basically was a hybrid where they worked on product but also helped manage the project itself.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#138

Post by llamaLord »

haswell wrote: post #102
nandorsky wrote: post #7

This is a poorly written article that is all over the place. It’s evident the author had a horrible experience with a PM. Their description of a PM is a description of a PM who’s doing their job poorly. Qualitative research at any company is critical and poor qual research (interviewing the wrong people, asking the wrong types of questions, etc) will yield poor insights as is the case here. Any PM working at a B2B st…

This piece would be better titled "Startups stop innovating when they have poor leadership", and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the PM role and the nature of the problems the author is witnessing. One of the most important aspects of the PM's role is not to take a list of feature requests, and not to give customers what they directly want/ask for, but to understand their problem space deeply, and to use th…

This guy gets it. Thank you for taking the time to write this up properly, the failure of OP to understand the PM roles relationship with the concept of a "problem space" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role that never seems to go away.

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#139

Post by llamaLord »

robertlagrant wrote: post #73
llamaLord wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the fact that OP buys into the trope that they're the same thing kinda speaks to the point that they have no idea what a PM actually does.

If you go by volume, you may well find that the theoretical definition you're referring to is outnumbered by the practical reality. I definitely wouldn't assume that reality matches theory.

I'm going by my personal experience as a PM. To be fair, whenever I talk on a PM panel I tend to be the odd one out.

For example, I tend to be the guy on the panel all the other PM's hate because I taught myself to code so that I could have deeper empathy for how my engineering teams work and now I advocate for all PM's needing to be at least moderately technical.

Rocking the boat certainly doesn't make you popular haha

Re: B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

#140

Post by singleshot_ »

llamaLord wrote: post #136
singleshot_ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine feeling qualified to write this article without knowing the difference between a project manager and a product manager. Imposter syndrome indeed. Thinking you are the correct person to evaluate a “PM” without knowing what half the letters mean is pretty amazing, leaving us to wonder what would happen if this person ever were to encounter a program manager.

Let's be fair here... I consider myself a pretty proficient Product Manager and even I would struggle to tell you what the Program Manager in our Org is actually meant to do. Don't get me wrong, they do a lot and it's all valuable. But even they can't tell me what their fundamental role responsibility is hahaha.

On the other hand you’re not out there writing slam pieces on project managers, so I don’t think your lack of clarity around these terms is causing anyone any heartburn. And yeah these terms are a little under-differentiated in some shops. How I learned it [0]:

Project manager handles a discrete undertaking with a beginning and an end that falls outside whatever your org considers “ongoing operations.”

Program manager handles a portfolio of interrelated projects. If a lot of projects are failing and you want a single throat to choke, the program manager might be a good person to replace.

Product manager seems like it could be interpreted as kind of like a program manager (for a large, complex set of inter related projects) or a project manager (if there’s only one project) except that the organization’s ongoing operations include the creation and development of the product, instead of the product being a single event/discrete undertaking.

Source: read PMBOK decades ago

[0]: maybe others who learned differently can chime in? Doesn’t seem like this terminology is universal.

Post reply on HN