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More product, fewer product managers

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Re: More product, fewer product managers

#41

Post by maccard »

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…

> But please, stop thinking the answer is more engineers.

The answer isn't more PM's either, though. In my experience when people are struggling, the default answer is "we need more X", be it engineers, PM's, money. It's very rare to have a group that looks at that and says "we need to do better with what we have" and is able to do so.

A good PM will make sure that everything your product team is working on is the correct thing to work on, which is so much more efficient than hiring 2 more engineers to work on those things. A bad PM can come in many different ways, (just like a bad engineer - we've all worked with the Arcitecture Astronaut for example).

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#42

Post by potamic »

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…

The article is actually making a case for fewer PMs, not to do away with PMs altogether. In startups, founders tend to do PM because they bring the vision for what to build. Additional PM hires in such environments aren't likely to add much value. Even in large enterprises, most product decisions are really taken by a handful of very senior roles. Most of the PM org is there primarily to ensure fulfillment of whatever decisions are taken. They get reduced to a more of a bureaucratic function, which is where most people's frustration arises.

Nobody likes to have a stakeholder with no power to make decisions. A product manager who cannot tell you what comes a year down the line. A project manager who cannot change processes to improve efficiency. An engineering manager who cannot create opportunities for their team. Or a tech lead who cannot prioritise tech debt. You cannot avoid bureaucracy in large organisations, but you can reduce the surface. There's a case to be made to consolidate such bureaucratic functions under a single role for a team. But in smaller organisations and startups, it can perhaps be done away with entirely too.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#43

Post by hehhehaha »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #26
bbarn wrote: post #6

As a developer, and a development manager, the best product managers I've worked with rarely got involved in the "how". Sure, they may generate epic-level tickets in your back log, but lower than that, they trust you and the project people to get things done. Problem is, the org needs to support that, and in most companies, the work that gets the most attention isn't visionary or growth focused, it's whatever is maki…

Product managers own the "Why?" and the "What?". Project managers own the "When?". Engineering managers own the "Who?". Engineers own the "How?". When people try treading on other patches, it always ends in disaster. That works both ways: engineers are lousy at the "Why?" and the "What?" because they think too much in terms of "How?"; and yes, product managers need to step away from the "How?" unless it's to clarify…

Hard disagree, cross role context is critical for intuition on getting stuff done. A designer with no insight on engineering will create shitty designs that take forever to build, create patterns that arent reusable, etc. Engineers with no insight on product will not be able to balance the debt/product ratio properly. You can say that all of this gets sorted out with proper communication, but knowledge and intuition will always beat leaky bucket cross role comms

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#44

Post by rpastuszak »

_giorgio_ wrote: post #36
ChilledTonic wrote: post #9

Barely relevant to the article, but this new trend of AI art as the main image of blog articles drives me absolutely crazy - if you don't have a clear main image in mind when you wrote the article, don't waste my bandwidth downloading a computers pipe dream. I'm all for AI art, it's an incredibly valuable tool - but if your using an AI piece as the only image on the page, it should be for a damn good reason, not just…

The most sad part is imagining the prompt that he used, and how hard he tried to add black, whites, women... respecting the politically correct numbers.

What would be so sad about it?

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#45

Post by atoav »

cateye wrote: post #27

This article and many people attempting to analyze this topic (and many others) are missing a key element: "incentives"! Many developers are more passionate about technology itself – coding, solving complex technical problems, and creating efficient solutions. Their formal rewards (like promotions, bonuses, and recognition) are often tied to technical achievements. If a developer spends 40 hours on customer research,…

This isn't that hard. Just have your developers train people with your software. In every craft you learn the moment the rubber hits the road. A film director can watch the film in the editing room a thousand times, but the one first time watching it with a real audience will teach them more than those 1000 hours together. A carpenter can work away on a piece of furniture merrily all week long and be happy with themselves, but the moment of truth comes when the furniture is placed into the customers room. The same is true for software. If you want your software engineers to care about users they have to get first hand feedback what works and what sucks, preferably with their own eyes.

Every software engineer worth their salt has a certain degree of pride about doing things well. If this only ever is about the code, the commit history or other abstract concepts, but never about how well it can be used by the actual people it was made for, then how would they even start caring?

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#46

Post by koliber »

ChilledTonic wrote: post #9

Barely relevant to the article, but this new trend of AI art as the main image of blog articles drives me absolutely crazy - if you don't have a clear main image in mind when you wrote the article, don't waste my bandwidth downloading a computers pipe dream. I'm all for AI art, it's an incredibly valuable tool - but if your using an AI piece as the only image on the page, it should be for a damn good reason, not just…

I often do have a clear image in my mind for an article. I can not draw it and I don't have the budget to hire someone to do it.

The image is meant to convey a feeling. It is meant to make an abstract concept from the article a little more tangible.

In the past, I'd search for images on the net that I could use to accomplish that. Now I can craft them with DALL-E, and they are usually much better.

This image should complement the article. Just like the text of the article is meant to convey some information, feeling, or concept, the image should do a bit of that as well.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#47

Post by vwolf »

atoav wrote: post #45
cateye wrote: post #27

This article and many people attempting to analyze this topic (and many others) are missing a key element: "incentives"! Many developers are more passionate about technology itself – coding, solving complex technical problems, and creating efficient solutions. Their formal rewards (like promotions, bonuses, and recognition) are often tied to technical achievements. If a developer spends 40 hours on customer research,…

This isn't that hard. Just have your developers train people with your software. In every craft you learn the moment the rubber hits the road. A film director can watch the film in the editing room a thousand times, but the one first time watching it with a real audience will teach them more than those 1000 hours together. A carpenter can work away on a piece of furniture merrily all week long and be happy with thems…

I can attest to that. I had worked on a product for a couple of years and received feedback from our support team, but never seen how the product was used in real life. One time, we had a specific bug that the customers were complaining about, and no matter how they described it, we couldn't figure out what the problem was. That was until I went to one of the customer sites and saw how the users were interacting with the product.

When they tried to demonstrate the bug, it was immediately clear to me what the issue was. That was the first time I really grasped the difference in how we approach software products. It also helped me see how the product could improve their job by watching how the process was in real life. Gave me a lot of ideas on how to make their job easier by using the product.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#48

Post by madeofpalk »

cateye wrote: post #27

This article and many people attempting to analyze this topic (and many others) are missing a key element: "incentives"! Many developers are more passionate about technology itself – coding, solving complex technical problems, and creating efficient solutions. Their formal rewards (like promotions, bonuses, and recognition) are often tied to technical achievements. If a developer spends 40 hours on customer research,…

Heh it's funny that your takeaway is "managers hate this". I know a lot of developers who would hate such a thing, thinking the only thing developers should do is write code.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#49

Post by mewpmewp2 »

aurareturn wrote: post #28
gabrieledarrigo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a developer, and a development manager, the best product managers I've worked with rarely got involved in the "how". My experience is completely the opposite. PMs that don't understand the how, that is, they don't know how their product works, are the worst. Best PMs that I worked with had a technical background.

>Best PMs that I worked with had a technical background. Best PMs I worked with just figured out what users wanted and organized the team to build it through good communication. That's it. Sometimes the technical PMs can be an issue because they care too much about the how and not enough of the why and what. If your product is selling devtools to developers, then yes, it helps to have a technical PM. Case by case.

This would also depend really on how technical the product is, but if a product is technical and PMs don't have enough technical background they won't be able to understand nuance of what customers wanted and what is actually possible to do.

Re: More product, fewer product managers

#50

Post by madeofpalk »

koliber wrote: post #46
ChilledTonic wrote: post #9

Barely relevant to the article, but this new trend of AI art as the main image of blog articles drives me absolutely crazy - if you don't have a clear main image in mind when you wrote the article, don't waste my bandwidth downloading a computers pipe dream. I'm all for AI art, it's an incredibly valuable tool - but if your using an AI piece as the only image on the page, it should be for a damn good reason, not just…

I often do have a clear image in my mind for an article. I can not draw it and I don't have the budget to hire someone to do it. The image is meant to convey a feeling. It is meant to make an abstract concept from the article a little more tangible. In the past, I'd search for images on the net that I could use to accomplish that. Now I can craft them with DALL-E, and they are usually much better. This image should c…

I don't know the exact word for the style, but this article is pretty egregious for the overly stylised "AI art". This just looks cheap, obviously "AI", and is pretty distracting for me. I don't know if that was the intention or not, but it's a detractor for me.
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