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I really hope someone on HN has a more in the trenches view of this and why? Maybe more engineers should leverage the unique advantage of their skill-set: pass

I really hope someone on HN has a more in the trenches view of this and why? Maybe more engineers should leverage the unique advantage of their skill-set: passive income from coding projects? Assuming they want to make more money than PMs.

c0nsumer 8y ago
Good PMs have a much broader scope and much greater knowledge of the business -- the problems the engineers are tasked with solving -- than many engineers do. When doing a good job they bring together the technical might of the engineers, the designers/architects of the system, and the business folks to be sure something is completed when needed, the way it needs to be done. A good, technical PM who is great at working with people can link together folks with a wide range of skills and make sure stuff gets done. This is worth a lot of money. (Conversely, a bad PM will absolutely kill a project, through a slow and painful process that'll make everyone involved want to quit.)
- mazatta 8y ago
  A good PM knows that all they should own is the definition of "what" should be worked on, but the bad ones seem to gravitate towards the "how" as well. I suspect this has something to do with many PMs transitioning out of engineering roles, but it can be very frustrating to work with a "Product Micromanager".
  - NearAP 8y ago
    It depends on the company. For some companies, the PM is responsible for "what" should be built and "how" (functional how) it will behave. Developers then try to implement the PM's "how" and then there's a back and forth between Dev and PM. For example, Dev might say - there's a better way to achieve this but it will change the functional behavior; or if we implement what you want, the page load time will be slow so is it OK if we do it this other way... At the end of the day, the PM's focus is - how will the average user use this product, what does the average user expect this product to do. That is generally not Dev's focus. Dev's focus is typically - what is the best way to get this done so that application loads quickly, doesn't place undue stress on the server, etc. Sometimes, Dev doesn't pay attention to how the UI looks, they just care that the code runs efficiently
- ghaff 8y ago
  Furthermore, PMs are often customer facing. In my experience, they're often the people you bring in when the account manager wants to have roadmap and other relatively technical discussions. There are degrees of seniority like everywhere else of course. But, in my experience (was a PM for hardware systems for a number of years), they're not typically right-out-of-school.
- icedchai 8y ago
  Good PMs, yes. A few I have worked at previous companies barely understood their own products, how to use them, or their customers. They were over glorified email forwarders. Sometimes they could copy-and-paste to Jira, and maybe take a few screenshots.
eitally 8y ago
As mentioned in other posts, on average PMs are more experienced than average SWEs (there are far fewer PM roles so it's easy to restrict the hiring pool to only exerperienced/senior candidates). This doesn't mean PMs make more than SWEs of equivalent experience, and frequently they don't.
ataturk 8y ago
Been trying to create that "passive income" for over a decade with little to show for it. Guess I'm really bad at it. My only passive income has come from investments and it's not enough to fully retire on, only about half, subject to market conditions, of course. When you look at how much capital is involved it will make you cry to realize how little income can be derived from it in a reliable manner.

c0nsumer 8y ago

Good PMs have a much broader scope and much greater knowledge of the business -- the problems the engineers are tasked with solving -- than many engineers do. When doing a good job they bring together the technical might of the engineers, the designers/architects of the system, and the business folks to be sure something is completed when needed, the way it needs to be done. A good, technical PM who is great at working with people can link together folks with a wide range of skills and make sure stuff gets done. This is worth a lot of money. (Conversely, a bad PM will absolutely kill a project, through a slow and painful process that'll make everyone involved want to quit.)

mazatta 8y ago
A good PM knows that all they should own is the definition of "what" should be worked on, but the bad ones seem to gravitate towards the "how" as well. I suspect this has something to do with many PMs transitioning out of engineering roles, but it can be very frustrating to work with a "Product Micromanager".
- NearAP 8y ago
  It depends on the company. For some companies, the PM is responsible for "what" should be built and "how" (functional how) it will behave. Developers then try to implement the PM's "how" and then there's a back and forth between Dev and PM. For example, Dev might say - there's a better way to achieve this but it will change the functional behavior; or if we implement what you want, the page load time will be slow so is it OK if we do it this other way... At the end of the day, the PM's focus is - how will the average user use this product, what does the average user expect this product to do. That is generally not Dev's focus. Dev's focus is typically - what is the best way to get this done so that application loads quickly, doesn't place undue stress on the server, etc. Sometimes, Dev doesn't pay attention to how the UI looks, they just care that the code runs efficiently
ghaff 8y ago
Furthermore, PMs are often customer facing. In my experience, they're often the people you bring in when the account manager wants to have roadmap and other relatively technical discussions. There are degrees of seniority like everywhere else of course. But, in my experience (was a PM for hardware systems for a number of years), they're not typically right-out-of-school.
icedchai 8y ago
Good PMs, yes. A few I have worked at previous companies barely understood their own products, how to use them, or their customers. They were over glorified email forwarders. Sometimes they could copy-and-paste to Jira, and maybe take a few screenshots.

eitally 8y ago

As mentioned in other posts, on average PMs are more experienced than average SWEs (there are far fewer PM roles so it's easy to restrict the hiring pool to only exerperienced/senior candidates). This doesn't mean PMs make more than SWEs of equivalent experience, and frequently they don't.

ataturk 8y ago

Been trying to create that "passive income" for over a decade with little to show for it. Guess I'm really bad at it. My only passive income has come from investments and it's not enough to fully retire on, only about half, subject to market conditions, of course. When you look at how much capital is involved it will make you cry to realize how little income can be derived from it in a reliable manner.