Good PMs will defer on technical decisions and be firm on business decisions. Bad PMs won't. The logical precursors of this is that technically minded people a

Good PMs will defer on technical decisions and be firm on business decisions. Bad PMs won't. The logical precursors of this is that technically minded people are either not capable of analyzing business decisions, or that they shouldn't be allowed to anyway because they are technical people. Perhaps both. If they were capable, there would be no reason for a PM to be firm on a business decision, because the technical staff wouldn't run nearly as high a risk of pushing him to do something stupid. If we assume they are capable, then this becomes an argument to authority. I would then like to ask the following question: if the people who watch the bottom-line see an improvement based upon a particular decision, do you really think they'll care who made the decision, and what influenced them?