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More product, fewer product managers

kitemaker.co

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Re: More product, fewer product managers

#251

Post by quickthrower2 »

atoav wrote: post #249
quickthrower2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Incentives” if you do this you better make it pay so I never have to leave. If I have to leave to get a payrise then I am getting on the Omega Star team and slowing down their ISO timestamp roll out to get GraphQL on my CV, so I can hit levels.io and get that extra $100k TC. /s but Poes law applies.

I don't think your company is worse off if you get rid of those people by giving them a taste of the real world.

No but "those people" is all people, to some extent. All people have life outside of work, like to make more money, see how unaffordable a house is and say "OK I need to earn $200k a year to raise a family the way I want". While they won't be so brazen, there is some effect of "doing thing thing that leads to the carrot". So the company needs to change that carrot - but it is hard because the whole industry has the carrots.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#252

Post by NearAP »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #228
jasondigitized wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not the OP, but I think my comment here [1] might be a good example of what the OP means

1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25975417

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#253

Post by NearAP »

ath3nd wrote: post #70
bjornsing wrote: post #63

I'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.

This mindset is also part of the reason why some products are atrociously bad. Developers build products with the latest tech, whizzes, bells and whistles and totally miss the 'actual' requirements and/or how their users use it. When bugs/issues are raised, dev complains that users aren't using the product the 'correct' way.

At the end of the day, whether you should have a Product Manager or not AND the number of PMs you should have will depend on various factors such as the product itself, team size, size of the company, type of company (B2B, B2C, etc). But saying that PMs are NEVER needed and Developers should just build is wrong. Someone has to wear the hat of a 'Product' person. Whether it's a separate person or the developer is dependent on the factors earlier listed.

My comment here [1] and the discussions for that post is a good example of this mindset of PMs are NEVER needed.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25975417

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#254

Post by aleph_minus_one »

jsdwarf wrote: post #243
flappyeagle wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best PMs I’ve worked with were HIGHLY technical, either in the same areas as the developers or in adjacent areas, like product design, or the domain of the product PM for retail company did long stints in merchandising at Costco PM for spreadsheet company was a former banking analyst Most companies hire under qualified generalist PMs who have to learn everything about their market from scratch; it’s very challeng…

Sounds good in theory, but what if your company decides to reduce investments in the spreadsheet product and instead transfer the product team into a much faster growing product segment, e.g. SAP integrations? Then the perfectly qualified PMs start from square one again. IMHO it's an essential skill for a PM to familiarize him/herself with a new domain in short time. It also offers cross-pollination / the chance to d…

> Sounds good in theory, but what if your company decides to reduce investments in the spreadsheet product and instead transfer the product team into a much faster growing product segment, e.g. SAP integrations?

> Then the perfectly qualified PMs start from square one again.

Exactly the same point holds for programmers: what if (say, by becoming acquired) a company has to switch from being a, say, a Deno/Vue.js shop to becoming a Java shop? Exactly.

So the answer is: don't do such radical changes in the product portfolio and way of doing work if you don't want the employees to more or less to start from square one again.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#255

Post by cutemonster »

jsdwarf wrote: post #243
flappyeagle wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best PMs I’ve worked with were HIGHLY technical, either in the same areas as the developers or in adjacent areas, like product design, or the domain of the product PM for retail company did long stints in merchandising at Costco PM for spreadsheet company was a former banking analyst Most companies hire under qualified generalist PMs who have to learn everything about their market from scratch; it’s very challeng…

Sounds good in theory, but what if your company decides to reduce investments in the spreadsheet product and instead transfer the product team into a much faster growing product segment, e.g. SAP integrations? Then the perfectly qualified PMs start from square one again. IMHO it's an essential skill for a PM to familiarize him/herself with a new domain in short time. It also offers cross-pollination / the chance to d…

Note: "were HIGHLY technical".

They had the ability to learn technical things once, then they can do it again. (In a short time? Not so easy to find out until after you've hired them, in any case?)

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#256

Post by NearAP »

sunpazed wrote: post #33

I’ve been in product management for over 20 years, and I agree with most of what is said here. Ratios matter. CPOs end up empire building with an army of PMs. The organisation ends up with PMs owning a slice of the customer experience such as a single page, optimising CTRs on buttons, with no meaningful contribution to the product strategy or vision. It’s hard to be a Product Manager without owning a product.

> It’s hard to be a Product Manager without owning a product

I'll say it depends on the size of the product. If you're dealing with say ERPs (Oracle Fusion Apps, WorkDay, SAP, etc), a PM can't own an entire product. Instead, they'll own multiple features where each of those features are complex in themselves and being ERP typically involve integration with multiple other products.

But I agree with the general thrust of your point which seems to be that the PM should own something 'significant'

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#257

Post by demondemidi »

epgui wrote: post #69
demondemidi wrote: post #67

Earlier 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 what happens when you have limited resources and you need to decide where to allocate them. Politics are everywhere humans are.

But why then is it used as a pejorative? What you described is "engineering".

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#258

Post by Huppie »

allsunny wrote: post #79

I wonder what the author might suggest as an appropriate ratio of PMs to engineers might be. I generally like 1 per 10 person team. I also like the idea of not having a separate product tool but have yet to see a good tool that can satisfy software project management (eg Jira, Linear) and product ops (product board, Airtable).

I've never seen the tool before but my guess (based on the frontpage) is that kitemaker is their attempt at building such a tool.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#259

Post by mixmastamyk »

steveBK123 wrote: post #171

"Expose everyone to users " - I would note this of course has logical limits. I've worked in orgs where we had shared slack channels (and DM ability) with all customers. Not great. This meant that squeaky wheels got a lot of oil. They quickly figured out who in the channel actually knew what they were doing, and so every customer had their pet senior engineer they would bother all hours of the day / weekends / etc wi…

> I actually turned off all slack alerts and disabled notifications on my phone

Nobody should be reachable after 5pm unless they work the night shift and/or being paid to be oncall.

That you “actually” disabled these alerts points to a culture problem at work. A work app should not even be installed on your mobile.

Put your workstation to sleep at the end of the work day and don’t wake it until the next one. As you said, they can call for the once in a year emergency.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#260

Post by demondemidi »

bjornsing wrote: post #107
demondemidi wrote: post #67

Earlier 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)?

You’ve worked for 35 years and you’ve never seen anyone act out of self-interest to the detriment of the project / company? Either you’re incredibly lucky or you’re blind. ;)

I'll take Blind for $1000 Alex. The self-interested people I saw were weeded out unless they made decisions that led to stock increase. In which case their self-interest was aligned with the correct decision. I don't call either one politics.

I think of politics as useless bickering that doesn't advance the project. Usually it is self-correcting for the reason above. I've seen a lot of bad decisions drive company's stock into the shitter, but I think of that as simply the "wrong" decision.

Shit, I think I -AM- blind. Hmm....

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