11 ms·

Chefs and Soldiers Make Good Product Managers

92 points by nreece 9y ago

nitwit005 9y ago
> Both the military and professional kitchens are environments where there's zero tolerance for slackers and indecision I'm fairly certain the military would be surprised to learn they lack slackers and indecision.
- product50 9y ago
  Yeah totally. Also the fact that people in military command authority by structure. Try doing that as a PM and you will immediately piss off all your XFNs and, in general, build an inferior product. I think what these articles lack is that being a good PM is more about the process vs. what one knows. A good cook, for instance, would generally have intrinsic knowledge about flavors, cuisines, preparation, plating etc. The more the cook knows about these areas the better she is and would command respect. PMing, on the other hand, has very little to do with the domain of the area you are working on. It is more about the process you use to figure out the following - building out a long term strategy for the area you are working on, breaking down the strategy into smaller parts and prioritizing those, working with and convincing your eng, xfn & leadership team that what you have going is the right thing, being very data driven to figure out what is working and doubling down on it, focussing on a market which is large enough but where you are differentiated etc. I am not saying a cook or military person can't do that but I would be cautious to generalize.
  - mockery 9y ago
    Tangent: What's an XFN? (Google and Wikipedia don't seem to provide plausible answers, and I'm pretty sure you don't mean "XHTML Friends Network"...)
    - csours 9y ago
      Crossfunctionals? wild guess.
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      I wasn't wondering the same thing.
    - guiomie 9y ago
      Cross functional
    - product50 9y ago
      Apologies for not being clear there. XFN means cross functional teams (design, research, product marketing, analytics, sales etc.) in my comment above.
  - caleblloyd 9y ago
    The military has a rank structure, yes. But Officers just starting out learn quickly that while their Senior NCOs fall under their command, they must earn the trust and respect of those NCOs to accomplish their mission. A product manager that manages a team of developers is in a very similar position.
niravs 9y ago
this piece literally tells only half the story — the execution part. what makes a great product manager is the raw product level insights and instincts that very few individuals have about the product itself and the direction the world is actually moving in. this is basically the conjoined triangles of success kinda BS.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  I think it really depends. If you have a visionary at the top (say the CEO, CPO, VP of product etc) then you just need good colonels and lieutenants below. If you're relying on bottom up innovation (e.g. Google's 20% time) then you absolutely need a different set of skills.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nemo44x 9y ago
"Self reliant and a team player" - that's what I think makes the best managers and what I strive for and this alludes to that idea. I can see the "chefs and soldiers" analogy. Independent within in a team in that you can take on a role when needed and run with it but always work within the confines of a team when available. I like it.
babesh 9y ago
My experience: The organization was rigidly run which allowed good execution in the short run but blinded us to opportunities. So now the company is still around but all these companies that came afterwards exploited opportunities that we either couldn’t see or wouldn’t pursue and had much better outcomes. Also people saw this and left causing a talent drain. Reminds me of the saying that generals always fight the last war.
protomyth 9y ago
I’m still convinced that a TV show runner might be a pretty good choice for running a software project particularly if they have experience with FX. I think they would get the creative part of the process and understand the business end.
drblast 9y ago
A pm job is conceptually one of the simplest jobs but one of the most difficult to execute. I've worked with two great PM's and a shitload of mediocre to bad ones. Technical competence, organization, willingness to work for a team of engineers, and humility is what it takes. The military calls it "servant leadership." They teach classes in it. Ideally, the military has lots of servant leadership but in reality it does not. Oh, and bless the good PM's, they're worth their weight in gold. The mediocre ones might as well not be there. The bad ones are actively destructive.
- trevor-e 9y ago
  The best product managers in my opinion are hands off. All too often I see PM's micromanage every little detail of their product instead of letting the engineers/designers (the experts) do their work. IMO the PM should be involved very little in day to day things and instead focus their time on user research, new features, feedback, etc.
  - ulfw 9y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. Sadly I have seen (and worked) in organizations that treat their engineers like they have zero creative thinking and merely use them as glorified typists. I have had an inexperienced CPO ask me to pseudo-code JIRA stories for an engineering team. You can imagine that ask didn't go far...
- gaius 9y ago
  bless the good PM's, they're worth their weight in gold. The mediocre ones might as well not be there. The bad ones are actively destructive The same is true of recruiters
  - ma2rten 9y ago
    The same is true of programmers.
cakedoggie 9y ago
So the biggest problem is slackers? That is why they make great PM's? What a joke. > Making good decisions quickly isn't the only quality PMs need that military or kitchen experience instills. How can you make good decision unless you have intimate knowledge of the problem area. And to do that, you have to have come through the ranks. What would a chef or military personal (depending on what they were doing) know about spinning up extra servers, choosing to go to cloud, or what scope to cut in a mobile app?
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  I couldn't agree more. The worst project managers I've worked with have been keen on deadlines without understanding what they're asking for. They're more interested in schedules than understanding the details of the project. The best project managers are ones that either know the domain inside out or are good at getting the best out of people (and that doesn't mean acting like a slave driver). I've never met one that had both, but I can imagine they aren't short of money.
  - dalacv 9y ago
    The article is about product managers. Not project managers.
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      My mistake.
  - crispyambulance 9y ago
    The surprising thing about project managers who use the phrase "when-will-it-be-done" far too much is that they're often willing to help you with getting resources and getting help/cooperation "across silos" if you ask them in the right way. They want the project to progress. Desperately. From their point of view they're often powerless people surrounded by line workers that don't want to interact with them, yet they're somehow responsible for the success of the project. They're acutely aware that the meetings are often pointless for workers, deep inside, they know that coloring red/yellow/green rectangles on a gantt chart is of little value. You can use that to your advantage if you make a request and frame it such that they can advance your progress concretely by helping you in some way that isn't possible for you to do alone.
anjc 9y ago
I don't think the skills translate from a kitchen in the manner described. No doubt being in a kitchen environment is demanding, requires rigorous prep, can be high pressured, is high energy etc. These are attributes of the environment though, not the people within it. New people who enter the environment just adapt to it. Having worked in tech and as a cook, being in an office environment can be draining and torturous and could turn Gordon Ramsey into the worst slacker. This is also due to attributes of the environment, and not the people within it. If you want the personal attributes described (ability to work under pressure etc) then seek them from people within the corporate world, e.g. people who do field sales, because at least then there's a chance that these skills will remain.
mattschmulen 9y ago
I would add to that oil and gas project managers. When I moved to SF from Dallas I was astounded how little Product Managers assessed resource costs + risk to value. I get that it's a different world with different objectives but there were clear moments in the SV where some good old fashion blue collar project management would have made a significant impact.
- dalacv 9y ago
  Isn't the article about product managers, though?
ryanjodonnell 9y ago
Usually I enjoy articles from firstround, but this article is kind of clickbaity. I see what they're getting at here but if their claim that chefs and soldiers make the best product managers is true... then most PMs be would be former chefs and soldiers.
kamilszybalski 9y ago
Every time I see a PM related post I always think back to https://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-content/uploads/Good_Product_Manager_Bad_Product_Manager_KV.pdf https://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-content/uploads/Good_Produ...
Ryel 9y ago
As someone who has cooked at the Michelin level in NYC I just wanted to say thanks to the author(s), whoever that may be, and to the OP for sharing. This came at the right time. I'd been reminiscing about my kitchen families across the country all week. I also normally take my restaurant experience off of my resume but maybe I'll try putting it back in.
kyberias 9y ago
Survivorship bias anyone? "I hired a chef and military person and they performed well as product managers. Let's see what conclusions I can make..."
humanrebar 9y ago
> There's a whole checklist Patterson looks for whenever he makes product hires... One of my main frustrations with non-technical PMs (chefs and soldiers probably apply, but not always) is when they aren't actual experts in the software business, in the business of code. There are Dunning Kruger effects in play. The usual response is "find the smart people and listen to them" but hopefully everyone on the project is smart, in which case the advice isn't actionable. And the Dunning Kruger effect is a huge deal when trying to find the people that are specifically great at technical strategy. Another response is to find a more objective way to find the best technical advice, whether through metrics or less specific track records. But building a good software product is complex and time-consuming enough that you get very few data points to work with. Sometimes the negative effects of bad decisions (massive technical debt, intractable legacy systems, retention problems, etc.) are indirect or won't really be felt until at least some of the personnel on the project has moved on. A specific concern that a non-technical PM will underestimate is tooling. Unsupported dependencies, old language versions, old compilers, mostly broken IDEs, undersized build farms (if they exist), and so on typically happen when the people making strategic decisions can't code, or at least haven't coded lately. It's not always easy to know when to buckle down and fix something like that, but I often see equivalent (organizational-value-wise) feature work getting star treatment.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jonbarker 9y ago
Whenever there is a discussion about why there are a lot of bad examples of {{insert job description}} my bubble radar goes off.
squozzer 9y ago
I won't hate too much on this article, but in my experience, the question always comes down to "How do you get there?" How do you get to "being able to lead without authority"? How do you get to "always taking blame while giving credit away"? And so on. By practicing, and making mistakes along the way. Something that most corporate policies / deadlines don't accommodate. Maybe the question companies should ask themselves is, "Why would someone whose qualities make them a good PM want to work for us?" Good luck with that.
gumby 9y ago
In my experience, hiring enlisted folks has been super successful (especially coast guard veterans), while hiring commissioned officers has been, with one exception, poor. I'm referring to officers with substantial careers in the military, not ROTC folks who put in their time and bugged out. This is despite the fact that given my background I know more commissioned officers than I do enlisted folks. I assume this is simply that to be successful in the military you have had to adapt to a bureaucracy and structure which is radically different from the business world I live in. Certainly the risk/reward calculus is different. I am not trying to imply they are idiots.

92 points by nreece 9y ago

> Both the military and professional kitchens are environments where there's zero tolerance for slackers and indecision I'm fairly certain the military would be surprised to learn they lack slackers and indecision.

product50 9y ago
Yeah totally. Also the fact that people in military command authority by structure. Try doing that as a PM and you will immediately piss off all your XFNs and, in general, build an inferior product. I think what these articles lack is that being a good PM is more about the process vs. what one knows. A good cook, for instance, would generally have intrinsic knowledge about flavors, cuisines, preparation, plating etc. The more the cook knows about these areas the better she is and would command respect. PMing, on the other hand, has very little to do with the domain of the area you are working on. It is more about the process you use to figure out the following - building out a long term strategy for the area you are working on, breaking down the strategy into smaller parts and prioritizing those, working with and convincing your eng, xfn & leadership team that what you have going is the right thing, being very data driven to figure out what is working and doubling down on it, focussing on a market which is large enough but where you are differentiated etc. I am not saying a cook or military person can't do that but I would be cautious to generalize.
- mockery 9y ago
  Tangent: What's an XFN? (Google and Wikipedia don't seem to provide plausible answers, and I'm pretty sure you don't mean "XHTML Friends Network"...)
  - csours 9y ago
    Crossfunctionals? wild guess.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    I wasn't wondering the same thing.
  - guiomie 9y ago
    Cross functional
  - product50 9y ago
    Apologies for not being clear there. XFN means cross functional teams (design, research, product marketing, analytics, sales etc.) in my comment above.
- caleblloyd 9y ago
  The military has a rank structure, yes. But Officers just starting out learn quickly that while their Senior NCOs fall under their command, they must earn the trust and respect of those NCOs to accomplish their mission. A product manager that manages a team of developers is in a very similar position.

niravs 9y ago

this piece literally tells only half the story — the execution part. what makes a great product manager is the raw product level insights and instincts that very few individuals have about the product itself and the direction the world is actually moving in. this is basically the conjoined triangles of success kinda BS.

jdavis703 9y ago
I think it really depends. If you have a visionary at the top (say the CEO, CPO, VP of product etc) then you just need good colonels and lieutenants below. If you're relying on bottom up innovation (e.g. Google's 20% time) then you absolutely need a different set of skills.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nemo44x 9y ago

"Self reliant and a team player" - that's what I think makes the best managers and what I strive for and this alludes to that idea. I can see the "chefs and soldiers" analogy. Independent within in a team in that you can take on a role when needed and run with it but always work within the confines of a team when available. I like it.

babesh 9y ago

My experience: The organization was rigidly run which allowed good execution in the short run but blinded us to opportunities. So now the company is still around but all these companies that came afterwards exploited opportunities that we either couldn’t see or wouldn’t pursue and had much better outcomes. Also people saw this and left causing a talent drain. Reminds me of the saying that generals always fight the last war.

protomyth 9y ago

I’m still convinced that a TV show runner might be a pretty good choice for running a software project particularly if they have experience with FX. I think they would get the creative part of the process and understand the business end.

drblast 9y ago

A pm job is conceptually one of the simplest jobs but one of the most difficult to execute. I've worked with two great PM's and a shitload of mediocre to bad ones. Technical competence, organization, willingness to work for a team of engineers, and humility is what it takes. The military calls it "servant leadership." They teach classes in it. Ideally, the military has lots of servant leadership but in reality it does not. Oh, and bless the good PM's, they're worth their weight in gold. The mediocre ones might as well not be there. The bad ones are actively destructive.

trevor-e 9y ago
The best product managers in my opinion are hands off. All too often I see PM's micromanage every little detail of their product instead of letting the engineers/designers (the experts) do their work. IMO the PM should be involved very little in day to day things and instead focus their time on user research, new features, feedback, etc.
- ulfw 9y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. Sadly I have seen (and worked) in organizations that treat their engineers like they have zero creative thinking and merely use them as glorified typists. I have had an inexperienced CPO ask me to pseudo-code JIRA stories for an engineering team. You can imagine that ask didn't go far...
gaius 9y ago
bless the good PM's, they're worth their weight in gold. The mediocre ones might as well not be there. The bad ones are actively destructive The same is true of recruiters
- ma2rten 9y ago
  The same is true of programmers.

cakedoggie 9y ago

So the biggest problem is slackers? That is why they make great PM's? What a joke. > Making good decisions quickly isn't the only quality PMs need that military or kitchen experience instills. How can you make good decision unless you have intimate knowledge of the problem area. And to do that, you have to have come through the ranks. What would a chef or military personal (depending on what they were doing) know about spinning up extra servers, choosing to go to cloud, or what scope to cut in a mobile app?

ZenoArrow 9y ago
I couldn't agree more. The worst project managers I've worked with have been keen on deadlines without understanding what they're asking for. They're more interested in schedules than understanding the details of the project. The best project managers are ones that either know the domain inside out or are good at getting the best out of people (and that doesn't mean acting like a slave driver). I've never met one that had both, but I can imagine they aren't short of money.
- dalacv 9y ago
  The article is about product managers. Not project managers.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    My mistake.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  The surprising thing about project managers who use the phrase "when-will-it-be-done" far too much is that they're often willing to help you with getting resources and getting help/cooperation "across silos" if you ask them in the right way. They want the project to progress. Desperately. From their point of view they're often powerless people surrounded by line workers that don't want to interact with them, yet they're somehow responsible for the success of the project. They're acutely aware that the meetings are often pointless for workers, deep inside, they know that coloring red/yellow/green rectangles on a gantt chart is of little value. You can use that to your advantage if you make a request and frame it such that they can advance your progress concretely by helping you in some way that isn't possible for you to do alone.

anjc 9y ago

I don't think the skills translate from a kitchen in the manner described. No doubt being in a kitchen environment is demanding, requires rigorous prep, can be high pressured, is high energy etc. These are attributes of the environment though, not the people within it. New people who enter the environment just adapt to it. Having worked in tech and as a cook, being in an office environment can be draining and torturous and could turn Gordon Ramsey into the worst slacker. This is also due to attributes of the environment, and not the people within it. If you want the personal attributes described (ability to work under pressure etc) then seek them from people within the corporate world, e.g. people who do field sales, because at least then there's a chance that these skills will remain.

mattschmulen 9y ago

I would add to that oil and gas project managers. When I moved to SF from Dallas I was astounded how little Product Managers assessed resource costs + risk to value. I get that it's a different world with different objectives but there were clear moments in the SV where some good old fashion blue collar project management would have made a significant impact.

dalacv 9y ago
Isn't the article about product managers, though?

ryanjodonnell 9y ago

Usually I enjoy articles from firstround, but this article is kind of clickbaity. I see what they're getting at here but if their claim that chefs and soldiers make the best product managers is true... then most PMs be would be former chefs and soldiers.

kamilszybalski 9y ago

Every time I see a PM related post I always think back to https://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-content/uploads/Good_Product_Manager_Bad_Product_Manager_KV.pdf https://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-content/uploads/Good_Produ...

Ryel 9y ago

As someone who has cooked at the Michelin level in NYC I just wanted to say thanks to the author(s), whoever that may be, and to the OP for sharing. This came at the right time. I'd been reminiscing about my kitchen families across the country all week. I also normally take my restaurant experience off of my resume but maybe I'll try putting it back in.

kyberias 9y ago

Survivorship bias anyone? "I hired a chef and military person and they performed well as product managers. Let's see what conclusions I can make..."

humanrebar 9y ago

> There's a whole checklist Patterson looks for whenever he makes product hires... One of my main frustrations with non-technical PMs (chefs and soldiers probably apply, but not always) is when they aren't actual experts in the software business, in the business of code. There are Dunning Kruger effects in play. The usual response is "find the smart people and listen to them" but hopefully everyone on the project is smart, in which case the advice isn't actionable. And the Dunning Kruger effect is a huge deal when trying to find the people that are specifically great at technical strategy. Another response is to find a more objective way to find the best technical advice, whether through metrics or less specific track records. But building a good software product is complex and time-consuming enough that you get very few data points to work with. Sometimes the negative effects of bad decisions (massive technical debt, intractable legacy systems, retention problems, etc.) are indirect or won't really be felt until at least some of the personnel on the project has moved on. A specific concern that a non-technical PM will underestimate is tooling. Unsupported dependencies, old language versions, old compilers, mostly broken IDEs, undersized build farms (if they exist), and so on typically happen when the people making strategic decisions can't code, or at least haven't coded lately. It's not always easy to know when to buckle down and fix something like that, but I often see equivalent (organizational-value-wise) feature work getting star treatment.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jonbarker 9y ago

Whenever there is a discussion about why there are a lot of bad examples of {{insert job description}} my bubble radar goes off.

squozzer 9y ago

I won't hate too much on this article, but in my experience, the question always comes down to "How do you get there?" How do you get to "being able to lead without authority"? How do you get to "always taking blame while giving credit away"? And so on. By practicing, and making mistakes along the way. Something that most corporate policies / deadlines don't accommodate. Maybe the question companies should ask themselves is, "Why would someone whose qualities make them a good PM want to work for us?" Good luck with that.

gumby 9y ago

In my experience, hiring enlisted folks has been super successful (especially coast guard veterans), while hiring commissioned officers has been, with one exception, poor. I'm referring to officers with substantial careers in the military, not ROTC folks who put in their time and bugged out. This is despite the fact that given my background I know more commissioned officers than I do enlisted folks. I assume this is simply that to be successful in the military you have had to adapt to a bureaucracy and structure which is radically different from the business world I live in. Certainly the risk/reward calculus is different. I am not trying to imply they are idiots.