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More product, fewer product managers

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Re: More product, fewer product managers

#261

Post by eropple »

tomrod wrote: post #222
ath3nd wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Right - like, you'd think it's obvious that of course you'd just do the right thing. But developers are expensive and market research, talking to customers, planning for the future, etc. becomes rivalrous to building things. And that stuff is generally much less interesting, so without compulsions to solve those problems, they frequently then don't get solved.

"But if you don't do these things, the company fails!" Yeah, and look at all those small, engineering-heavy companies that do exactly that! And further--eventually, as you scale you reinvent division of labor because as much as we like to kid ourselves, software developers are not, universally, better at doing everyone else's job. (If you find yourself in a position where you are better at doing everyone else's job, you should probably find a new company to work at.)

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#262

Post by mixmastamyk »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #25

When 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…

Ahh, to be young and (even more) arrogant again.

What you just described is called growing up or maturation and not limited to software engineers. The next step is to generalize the idea.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#263

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#264

Post by Kinrany »

steveBK123 wrote: post #169
martin_drapeau wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great way to solve for this in B2B, is to hire a customer and train them as PM. They will hit the ground running much faster to bridge the gap.

My org tried this, but being in financial services no one thought through this problem - our customers are much better paid than any PM we could hire. That is to say, the only customer we could convert to a PM was one who was fundamentally bad enough at his existing client side job that he was OK capping his income at 25-50% of his potential.

Doesn't it go in the other direction too? Any PM you can hire can probably make more in finance?

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#265

Post by kbos87 »

The reason I can't stand debates like this is that the "most right" answer is highly dependent on the details of the organization. Strong opinions are borne from bad experiences and people tend to generalize the patterns they've observed first hand.

A small org with a founder who has a strong vision they are good at articulating probably doesn't need many PMs. Similarly, you might find teams with engineers who are actually very user and market minded and have the bandwidth to do some of that work. Or, in the case of Airbnb, you can essentially split up the role and assign pieces of it to separate teams (which, the more I hear about it, strikes me as odd.)

At the end of the day, patterns in roles - and the PM role in general - usually exist for a good reason. There's a critical set of skills that, when done well, are very much justified and should exist as a single role - not the side project of a developer or a designer.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#266

Post by sullivantrevor »

kbos87 wrote: post #265

The reason I can't stand debates like this is that the "most right" answer is highly dependent on the details of the organization. Strong opinions are borne from bad experiences and people tend to generalize the patterns they've observed first hand. A small org with a founder who has a strong vision they are good at articulating probably doesn't need many PMs. Similarly, you might find teams with engineers who are ac…

Yeah he said that in the article

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#267

Post by sullivantrevor »

flappyeagle wrote: post #131
ath3nd wrote: post #70

Earlier 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 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…

1000% this

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#268

Post by at_a_remove »

demondemidi wrote: post #67
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…

“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)?

I'll give you one from personal experience, and it was in an academic setting.

My boss, whom I will call Boss W (who spent a lot of time maneuvering people around) had first worked for my previous boss, Boss F. Boss W, I think, spent more time playing chess than anything else. First he worked out a situation where he was peer to Boss F, then, with another coup, managed to get Boss F working for him.. Still not satisfied, he managed to change to whom the department reported to from Uberboss J to Uberboss C.

Uberboss C, who was peer to another administrative type, Administrator W, was eager to prove the value to the change. And so I was tasked with developing a product rather similar to something that Administrator W had at his previous job. The product itself was politics, in that it presented to a group of stakeholders about a thousand to three thousand items to decide the disposition of. But this was futile, really, because we had about six hundred thousand items to have reviewed, so we would never actually get anywhere with presenting this to the stakeholders. But they wanted it and so ...

And so I was told that this was going to be an Agile thing, and I had until the start of the semester to have it done, and they needed to see a fully-featured prototype (a contradiction) right away. Although promised, I never got to meet with the internal stakeholders who would present this product to the external stakeholders who would do the disposition.

That's quite a tight deadline, but it gets interrupted because to prove value to someone else, I get sent on a week-long conference doing something utterly unrelated. They just wanted to prove to the guy running Dept B that they were going to have someone in the mix for his technology.

Despite this and catching a tremendous cold, I managed to have something developed by the start of the semester, because it was so very very urgent.

And then it was not shown to the internal stakeholders for seven months. All o that hustle! So Agile much wow.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#269

Post by SkyPuncher »

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.

If you don't have product, who is talking to customers on your team?

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#270

Post by sublinear »

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.

A good PM might not be that technically knowledgeable at all.

If they're at least very detail-oriented and can effectively lead sprint planning or whatever the equivalent is at your org, much chaos and indecision can be avoided.

They get bonus points if they're good at shielding dev teams from office politics and committing everyone to a firm schedule free of sloppy requirements or loose due dates.

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