Actually, I was at Microsoft between '94 and '05 and that's close to what happened in many cases, but not because of a single program manager. (At least not in

Actually, I was at Microsoft between '94 and '05 and that's close to what happened in many cases, but not because of a single program manager. (At least not in cases that I saw directly.) Rather, as the company grew, and more program managers and project managers were assigned to things, a lot of developers felt less in control of their work due to the collective influence of a non-programmer organization. That kind of growth probably has to happen. To be fair, most all the program managers had engineering degrees, and some had been successful developers. The project managers came from a different track entirely, and I think that was a more challenging relationship for a lot of developers.