Designers should understand design, engineers should understand function - and PMs should understand the market. For instance why should we prioritise one segment over the other? How should we price the product? What are the second order effects of prioritising one feature over the other?
More product, fewer product managers
221–230 of 314 posts
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you are solving it, you get to choose how to do it, in what order and with what priority In times of plenty, this works, and I think it can have high velocity. Especially with very small teams that all have high levels of direct investment in the result. There are also times of famine, however, and the work that keeps the lights on is often not work that even invested software developers want to prioritize. When…
> and the work that keeps the lights on is often not work that even invested software developers want to prioritize. What kind of work is that? And why are the developers willingly not wanting to prioritize it, if the alternative of not doing it is becoming jobless? Do we need some kind of PM figure to say things like: "If we don't make this feature for the client, we are doomed, so start coding. Chop chop!". And do…
> Do we need some kind of PM figure to say things like: "If we don't make this feature for the client, we are doomed, so start coding. Chop chop!".
Yes, and yes! I believe you're starting to see. Good management has value. Even if that is to deflect invalid criticism for devs.
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#223The problem with most PMs is that they are not doing boots-on-the-ground work. A good PM should be constantly bridging the gap between engineering and the user. 1. Map the product or idea being built to those who will use it. Present it, get users feelings on it, if it is viable and needed. Throughout development, gather continuous feedback by demoing, shadowing, and adapting to new feedback. Plan and execute a launc…
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Re: More product, fewer product managers
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
My team was product managed by a gutless PM who essentially made senior devs & tech leads do all the legwork. Requirements gathering, mean user upset about a bug, weekly status call, need to break some bad news re: priorities? - send a senior dev or tech lead. Skipped most of the agile ceremonies too, busy guy. Never wrote or edited a JIRA ticket, that was for tech org to manage. He PMd 2 other tech teams the same wa…
> He PMd 2 other tech teams the same way. I'm with you that all of this is bad PM work, but this seems to be the root cause. I've been at a startup like this where there weren't enough PMs to start and then a couple left, which just led to the rest being stretched across more teams. You just can't do much of anything useful in this situation - your existence consists of preparing for and attending stakeholder meeting…
> Once you get to that point, it can become even worse because you end up in this doom loop of management realizing that the core PM work is getting delegated to eng, thinking that this means they don't need as many PMs and then delegating more work to eng.
At least that is better than eng doing the PM work and the PM getting all the credit for it.
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#225I've spent some time interacting with product managers as an engineering manager, or head of a functional area. I've also been "acting" PM for an internal product at a medium size tech company. I think product management entails some of the most important things a company does. But it's really hard work, and many less capable PMs gravitate away from it and more towards either "driving" (i.e. micromanaging) the engine…
I don't believe in Product Managers or Project Owners as a net good towards building a better product or a better company. The most successful teams I have been in had no dedicated product role, instead, all decisions were made by the developers. My current view is best to remove all type of non technical people or even mildly technical people from the developers' way and let them build in peace.
What kinds of products were those teams building?
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#226When I was a software engineer, I used to think I was the smartest person in the room, and derided the work of product managers, delivery managers and to some extent engineering managers. I've had experience of engineering roles up to Principal and Hands-on CTO and felt that we didn't need the non-engineering backgrounds at all. Today, I find myself in a senior TPM role for a FAANG who also has "product manager" in h…
> But please, stop thinking the answer is more engineers.
The answer is to hire more product-minded engineers.
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Politics” 35 years in the semi industry. I must be stupid. I really don’t see politics. I see people trying to argue for their option and get support. But I’ve never seen this politics that people complain about. I’m so lucky I guess. Is politics just someone making a better argument that is the wrong technical decision? What is “politics”? Or am I just not at a high enough level (senior principal)?
Politics is a when a company like Caterpillar spends a year trying to acquire GPU's for their autonomous vehicle teams, because they have 20 security and project managers that want to assert themselves in every conversation to get promoted, to get to senior leadership positions, while the company looses out to Chinese competitors they were ahead of. Politics is also when middle managers and 2 engineers conspire to st…
Politics happens whenever there are more than 2 people :). OP above must be really lucky to have not seen politics at all or one of those beneficiaries of politics who are like "Politics ... wut? nah"
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe in Product Managers or Project Owners as a net good towards building a better product or a better company. The most successful teams I have been in had no dedicated product role, instead, all decisions were made by the developers. My current view is best to remove all type of non technical people or even mildly technical people from the developers' way and let them build in peace.
The worst products I have ever seen were when the developers acted like product managers. What you end up with are a bunch of really cool stuff that no one wants to pay for and only a few people find utility in.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by that? Is it the standard scope creep / premature generalization pattern, or something else?
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He PMd 2 other tech teams the same way. I'm with you that all of this is bad PM work, but this seems to be the root cause. I've been at a startup like this where there weren't enough PMs to start and then a couple left, which just led to the rest being stretched across more teams. You just can't do much of anything useful in this situation - your existence consists of preparing for and attending stakeholder meeting…
> Once you get to that point, it can become even worse because you end up in this doom loop of management realizing that the core PM work is getting delegated to eng, thinking that this means they don't need as many PMs and then delegating more work to eng. At least that is better than eng doing the PM work and the PM getting all the credit for it.
Exactly. "Oh no, the team doing all the work and covering for the other team is going to get the incremental resource increases".
Yes. If a team is incapable of either doing their job or in advocating for needing more resources to do their job, then they do not get to have more resources. Particularly when another team is covering for this gap, typically, engineering.
It never goes the other way right? How many times are PMs picking up JIRA tickets, handling bug fixes, joining on-call rotas, etc type tasks that engineering does?
If non-engineering roles/orgs are created to take load of engineering, and are incapable of doing so, then they need not exist. This goes for DevOps/CloudOps/SRE/Support/QA/Product/Project Mgmt/etc.
You can run a lean startup consisting entirely of 3 engineers. But you can't run a lean startup consisting entirely of 3 SRE/QA/Product/whathaveyou.
This is not a knock on these other orgs/roles. In a well functioning shop, they are essential. But when orgs like Product forget that the tail doesn't wag the dog.. bad things follow for everyone.
Re: More product, fewer product managers
#230Most product management functions should be merged into product design - it's impossible to design a good product without thinking about what features that product should have and how users will use it.
I wouldn't eliminate the role entirely but I think most companies have 10x the number of product managers they need to in part because it's a way for non-technical people to get into tech and tech salaries. Now that the market is tightening it's unsurprisingly we're eliminating those roles.