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

41–50 of 148 posts

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

#41

Post by meany »

tchock23 wrote: post #11
dchuk wrote: post #10

As soon as an article states you can use “product manager” and “project manager” interchangeably, you can immediately assume the author has no idea what they’re talking about. Convenient this article did that early on, saves everyone a lot of time.

This, plus if you see them mentioning the Henry Ford ‘quote’ about horses you can reliably close the browser tab because they’re about to build a straw man argument against doing basic customer/user research.

Interesting, I’ve always thought of this quote justifying deeper user research than just asking users what they want, not less. I’ve seen people who don’t really understand user needs over index on what they say they want versus deeply understanding their workflow and needs.

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

#42

Post by diceduckmonk »

rokkk wrote: post #8

This post makes some wild assumptions, like the fact that B2B PMs only interview customers, and not end users. Also, that they mostly build what people are saying they want to have. Ironically, avoiding assumptions is the basis of product management. At the end of the day, someone has to do the product role on the team. If the founder can scale that, great, and if the engineers can do it, even better! Unfortunately b…

> There are a lot of shitty PMs out there, just as there are a lot of shitty engineers or any other job function

Indeed, both can create negative value for a project.

At least with engineers, we have slightly better proxies for interviewing. Leetcode sucks but it does filters out people who can’t code or grasp recursion. Unfortunately, the source of resentment towards Leetcode is that it also filters out people who can code in a practical setting (false negatives). While false positives are increasingly common with Leetcode now that tech is lucrative and people know how to play the game, people who pass Leetcode interviews can program in some capacity

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

#46

Post by Xylakant »

dandare wrote: post #16

> And finally if you are really good at taking decisions to make a company successful you will have started a company of your own a long time ago Except this is true of anyone in the company. Unless the author says who is capable of making these really good decisions this article is empty rant.

The idea that someone that is good at making decisions that make a company successful would always start their own company is wrong on many levels. Running a company is about much more than making a product successful. There’s all the nitty gritty stuff that constantly bogs you down from legal, tax, finance, interpersonal stuff in the company landing on your plate. Some of that can be handed off to an accountant or lawyer, but you still need to learn at least the basics of it to understand what they’re trying to tell you and decide based on that advice. You need access to capital, sometimes a lot. Your risk profile is entirely different than as an employee. Many companies just fail with a total loss. Many people can’t afford a total loss.

There’s a strong bias in tech circles to view the outliers that made it from garage to unicorn, but they’re just that: outliers. Don’t make the mistake of considering them the norm.

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

#48

Post by user_named »

beebmam wrote: post #32

Devs working directly with customers will always be better than relying on PMs to do it. But it's hard to find devs with the soft skills needed, and are willing to do so.

Those people are generally referred to as product managers

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

#49

Post by user_named »

huksley wrote: post #5

It is because product managers should only be hired at the company after post product-market fit. And they innovate usually not in creating the new product, but improving the existing one, or identifying the possible new product to be created.

At an early stage startup the founders are the product managers, and if they are bad at it, they won't get funding or revenue.

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

#50

Post by llamaLord »

meany wrote: post #41
tchock23 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, plus if you see them mentioning the Henry Ford ‘quote’ about horses you can reliably close the browser tab because they’re about to build a straw man argument against doing basic customer/user research.

Interesting, I’ve always thought of this quote justifying deeper user research than just asking users what they want, not less. I’ve seen people who don’t really understand user needs over index on what they say they want versus deeply understanding their workflow and needs.

The quote is designed to make you understand that building products is about understanding problems, not listening to desired solutions.

A PM's job is to be the owner of the "problem space", while the engineering teams job is to be the owners of the "solution space".

Fords point was that his customers would only ever tell him about solutions they wanted (faster horse). When in actual fact what mattered to Ford was the problem (current modes of personal transport being expensive, unreliable, uncomfortable, slow, single-person).

Any good PM should be able to explain this to you. OP has never worked with a proper PM apparently... Just BA's and Project Managers that wanted a pay bump.

Post reply on HN