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More product, fewer product managers

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Re: More product, fewer product managers

#281

Post by esafak »

ath3nd wrote: post #77
a3d wrote: post #29

Good devs with good communication == Better then PM Dev + Business = speed and customer centric Dev + PM + Business = one more layer, i.e. slow, i.e. some loss of customer voice I worked at Amazon as dev for 10 yrs. In early days 2001+. Amazon did not hire PMs then. Best of Amazon exp came out in that period. I was part of that myself. Pm is needed for things like building amazon prime. If at all.

That's a very based take! The whole idea of a PM boils down to address a less qualified non technical middle man to make all the important decisions, while also pigeon hole your communications with the rest of the stakeholders. Why does this role even exist is beyond me. It's like we can't trust the engineers with any important decisions, so we need some business guy who took a two week course and now is suddenly qua…

It is easier to build an engineering team when you don't expect them to be product-minded in addition to being technically proficient.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#282

Post by physicsguy »

I've recently left a job because of bad product management. The big issue I find is that often PMs are too far away from the product and spending all their time politicking and thinking about "strategy", so they have no idea how much work a particular feature is. I was leading a technical team in my last job working on industrial software, and I'd regularly have a PM come to me and tell me that there's been a contract signed for a new customer, and we have X piece of bespoke work as part of that contract due by usually ~1 month in the future. So you start asking questions, what does X mean, how do you want to resolve this problem, etc. etc. etc. and most of the time, the PM can't answer those questions, so you're stuck. And the deadline gets closer and closer, and then the customer isn't happy when it inevitably gets missed, and the pressure comes down on you as an engineer to make things work, and people get burnt out.

My view is that PMs should sit super super close to the team. There should never be a case where the software team is more knowledgeable about the product function than the PM, but in practice this is often the case.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#283

Post by HenryBemis »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #274
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…

Spotify, if you’re reading this, hire someone who listens to podcasts for your podcast feed in app.

I feel Spotify doesn't do anything they don't want to do. Most changes (especially) in the Podcast function are baaaaad. I switched from Podcast Addict to Spotify (already had it for music), and I ended up to stop updating the app, because I dislike more and more every update.

The insult to that is also "no changelog". I hate the generic "we try to make it better, but ain't telling you what". So at this point it's a gamble whether I want to update or not, so I don't.

Also for Spotify, perhaps it's time to allow a pool of 1000 (?) volunteers from each language to help you rewrite titles, names, etc. in the local languages. I'm happy for the latin alphabet, but do make a "local language" field and then let the users see THAT instead of the common if they choose to.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#284

Post by snapetom »

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…

I spent at least the first half of my career working with non-technical PMs and thought they were useless. I then joined a company where the PM was a former C++ game dev who was on several credits of some of the biggest games of the 2000's. He was an absolute joy to work with. He understood issues that we faced, he warned us of pitfalls to certain approaches, he greased pathways for us in upper management. I consulted with him when I was trying to decide whether to take a PM role.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#285

Post by snapetom »

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.

I took a PM role at a company that was "engineering first" company for decades. This is code for engineering with no accountability, and a culture where engineers do nothing but pat themselves on the back.

My product is utter crap. As an example, 2/3 of the code moves data from Oracle to JSON to MySQL back to JSON to PostGres to parquet that just reconstructs the schema of the original Oracle tables. It is fragile as fuck and the "architect's" proposed solution when I joined was to throw Redis in the mix. Customers hate it because it's always breaking down and has massive requirements.

I went to war with him, pointing out how absolutely asinine the whole thing is. Turns out, he was already on an RIF chopping block along with several other engineers that contributed to this mess. I just pushed it over the edge. When he left, I discovered one of them basically came in in the morning, logged in to customer sites, launched four screen sessions at each customer and tailed -f logs all day, manually restarting when their own shit code went down.

This is what happens when you get out of developer's way and let them build in peace.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#286

Post by dagw »

ath3nd wrote: post #85
alistairSH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that scenario, who is driving product requirements? For example, in an area with strict financial/regulatory compliance laws, are you expecting every engineer to be an expert in those laws? And have contacts at the government agencies implementing those policies?

> In that scenario, who is driving product requirements? The developer teams, who else? You build it, you need to know what you are building, right? I find it fascinating that the dev community that gobbled so easily "You build it, you run it", doesn't question why we are not being trusted with knowing and determining what to be built in the first place. > For example, in an area with strict financial/regulatory comp…

How often do you have a Product Manager who is an expert in regulatory/compliance laws and has contacts with government agencies?

Maybe not an expert, but literally every project I've been involved with where those things are relevant, the PM knew more than most of us, knew who to talk to, and was responsible to make sure we did the right thing. It is pretty much what half the role was about. They were often pretty senior people with long experience working in a relevant field.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#287

Post by jasontheknight »

The general pattern of replies from developers to any thread like this tends to go "I worked at a company and the PM was bad so therefore all PMs are bad and pointless". And, let's be clear, there are lots of undertrained, underskilled PMs out there working on the wrong things (delivery management, writing tickets, bossing devs around etc).

BUT - this is a leadership problem. Either leadership want and expects PMs to be doing those things (dysfunctional product mindset) or they want them to be better PMs but don't know how (poor performance management). In either case, firing all the PMs and expecting the devs to do it just means the devs get thrown into the fire instead. They're welcome to try! But, the idea that removing PMs from a dysfunctional organisation fixes anything is nonsensical. The devs will be just as unhappy taking orders from a more senior stakeholder who understands them even less.

Good product managers can be game changers. They absolutely should not spend all their time bossing developers around. They don't need to be former developers themselves (although there's nothing wrong with developers becoming PMs). They don't need to spend all their time on tech. Building great products isn't as simple as saying "The developers can do it" and letting them build whatever. How many developers really want to work on market strategy, pricing and packaging, customer segmentation, user interviews, wrangling stakeholders etc? I guess... maybe some... but enough? The whole fetish that developers have for "just let us do it" will dissolve quickly in a good or bad organisation because they only see the bits they want to see.

For the record, I spent 20 years as a developer before moving into product leadership.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#288

Post by OJFord »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #274
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…

Spotify, if you’re reading this, hire someone who listens to podcasts for your podcast feed in app.

And someone who has ever used (including caring whether it be off, not just on) to work on shuffle and Smart Shuffle.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#289

Post by steveBK123 »

Kinrany wrote: post #264
steveBK123 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well yes but that's why I think "we'll just hire a typical user as a PM" isn't really a solution.

It also doesn't give them any training in how to PM.

They should just be someone technical enough with enough people skills and familiarity with user use cases to bridge the gap.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#290

Post by ath3nd »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #237
marcinzm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the domain expert have to be the PM versus someone the engineers consult directly?

Why shouldn't engineers consult with a PM? Isn't that a key part of the role - to break down external requirements into engineering needs?

Yes!

But imagine if the developers themselves could break down the external requirements into engineering needs!

Or are developers grug brains that need a bigger, superior brain to simplify scary real world into simple, safe engineering needs? Or developer grug so busy, must write code, no time look at feedback form, no time think client request, need simplified instructions, must slap keyboard, clack, clack?

Context: https://grugbrain.dev/

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