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As a CTO, I disagree with your disagreement :) Engineers dont want a "script for implementation". They want to exhibit autonomy and creativity to the product

by dberg 10y ago

As a CTO, I disagree with your disagreement :) Engineers dont want a "script for implementation". They want to exhibit autonomy and creativity to the product as much as everyone else, especially product managers. I am not saying they should be product managers in a vacuum, but every good CTO knows the value of ownership and autonomy of a product is extremely rewarding to engineers.

ssijak 10y ago
You can have all the autonomy of technical decisions you want, but you can not make business decisions and UX decisions. You can have a word about it, sure, but not authonomy about it.
- dberg 10y ago
  making "Product" decisions is a broad topic. Who is to say a FrontEnd engineer didn't start as an amazing UX person? I think your comment is an (IMHO incorrect) blanket statement that is impossible to apply to all engineers.
KirinDave 10y ago
And indeed, that autonomy and creativity is a skill to be practiced. The best practitioners are people who lead development efforts for a company and eventually mature into their own senior technical positions (be they directors of engineering, senior engineering managers promoted from technical positions, or CTOs).
typingduck 10y ago
I agree with both of you and tensor :) Having dedicated people understanding what users want, what competitors are doing and what are the future directions of the market is probably necessary and worth dedicating serious time to. It is just how people organize teams right now that seems a little broken; a Product Manager and 'their' team. This leads to the Engineers who like to innovate becoming bored and finding smart ways to get out of the 'typingpool'. This innovative talent is really necessary to scale product teams though, e.g. spotting common patterns across code bases. With that loss in innovation companies suddenly find a comparable feature that took 2 weeks taking 2 months. Also as technology evolves new features previously impossible become possible. A Product Manager probably will not see this. Perhaps there is a more 'ownership' heavy way of organizing Engineers. Something a bit more democratic like having a pool of ideas coming from Product Designers and Engineers. Self forming teams can come together to deliver whatever motivates them.
- ethbro 10y ago
  > With that loss in innovation companies suddenly find a comparable feature that took 2 weeks taking 2 months. No offense to the mentioned, but the "ideas are like assholes, everyone has one" comment seems to apply extremely accurately to non-technical design and product teams who are blessed by management to throw things over to "those technical people" without any concern. And why would a 2 week task not take 2 months under that structure? If your high-performing, creative engineers are sisyphean implementers of someone else's features without some empowerment, ownership, and accolades for the end result, good luck retaining them.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  1. There's plenty of room to innovate on the implementation side. PMs don't tell you what algorithms to use or how to lay out the data in memory. 2. Not every engineer yearns to be a Product Manager. Sure, many want to make product decisions but don't want to do the other necessary work that comes with the role (like market research, metrics and analytics, managing the schedule and budget, writing PRDs, communicating with customers and partners, dealing with Legal, making sure the user manual is accurate, coordinating releases with ops and tech support, etc.) I think some techies think being a PM means merely sitting in your cube dreaming up a feature and saying "This Shall Be". 3. Good PMs most definitely need to stay on top of technology as it evolves. They need to know their platforms' capabilities and when new things become possible.
  - dberg 10y ago
    1> Yes there is plenty of room to innovate on implementation, but they still want input to the scope of what they are implementing. 2> Nobody is saying they should be product managers, I am just suggesting they want more direct input to the shape of the product itself (not suggesting ALL engineers either) 3> Agreed, and PMs should continue to be good at this, its a core part of their role, understanding the ecosystem

by dberg 10y ago

ssijak 10y ago

You can have all the autonomy of technical decisions you want, but you can not make business decisions and UX decisions. You can have a word about it, sure, but not authonomy about it.

dberg 10y ago
making "Product" decisions is a broad topic. Who is to say a FrontEnd engineer didn't start as an amazing UX person? I think your comment is an (IMHO incorrect) blanket statement that is impossible to apply to all engineers.

KirinDave 10y ago

And indeed, that autonomy and creativity is a skill to be practiced. The best practitioners are people who lead development efforts for a company and eventually mature into their own senior technical positions (be they directors of engineering, senior engineering managers promoted from technical positions, or CTOs).

typingduck 10y ago

I agree with both of you and tensor :) Having dedicated people understanding what users want, what competitors are doing and what are the future directions of the market is probably necessary and worth dedicating serious time to. It is just how people organize teams right now that seems a little broken; a Product Manager and 'their' team. This leads to the Engineers who like to innovate becoming bored and finding smart ways to get out of the 'typingpool'. This innovative talent is really necessary to scale product teams though, e.g. spotting common patterns across code bases. With that loss in innovation companies suddenly find a comparable feature that took 2 weeks taking 2 months. Also as technology evolves new features previously impossible become possible. A Product Manager probably will not see this. Perhaps there is a more 'ownership' heavy way of organizing Engineers. Something a bit more democratic like having a pool of ideas coming from Product Designers and Engineers. Self forming teams can come together to deliver whatever motivates them.

ethbro 10y ago
> With that loss in innovation companies suddenly find a comparable feature that took 2 weeks taking 2 months. No offense to the mentioned, but the "ideas are like assholes, everyone has one" comment seems to apply extremely accurately to non-technical design and product teams who are blessed by management to throw things over to "those technical people" without any concern. And why would a 2 week task not take 2 months under that structure? If your high-performing, creative engineers are sisyphean implementers of someone else's features without some empowerment, ownership, and accolades for the end result, good luck retaining them.
ryandrake 10y ago
1. There's plenty of room to innovate on the implementation side. PMs don't tell you what algorithms to use or how to lay out the data in memory. 2. Not every engineer yearns to be a Product Manager. Sure, many want to make product decisions but don't want to do the other necessary work that comes with the role (like market research, metrics and analytics, managing the schedule and budget, writing PRDs, communicating with customers and partners, dealing with Legal, making sure the user manual is accurate, coordinating releases with ops and tech support, etc.) I think some techies think being a PM means merely sitting in your cube dreaming up a feature and saying "This Shall Be". 3. Good PMs most definitely need to stay on top of technology as it evolves. They need to know their platforms' capabilities and when new things become possible.
- dberg 10y ago
  1> Yes there is plenty of room to innovate on implementation, but they still want input to the scope of what they are implementing. 2> Nobody is saying they should be product managers, I am just suggesting they want more direct input to the shape of the product itself (not suggesting ALL engineers either) 3> Agreed, and PMs should continue to be good at this, its a core part of their role, understanding the ecosystem