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Boy, do I hate PMs. It’s as if almost every PM I’ve had to deal with isn’t particularly proficient in business, programming, or design management but knows exac
by hbosch 8y ago
Boy, do I hate PMs. It’s as if almost every PM I’ve had to deal with isn’t particularly proficient in business, programming, or design management but knows exactly enough of all 3 silos to be dangerous at once to the other two. More often than not, I’ve found a PM will try to steer a project with some compromise to dev and design and bias toward business — in my selfish opinion as a single-silo employee, it’s mostly frustrating. PMs always come across like they believe they are miniature CEOs.
But, all that said... I could never do what they do. Oftentimes PMs are the last guys to leave, working weekends, scrambling for last minute keynotes and honestly pushing out ideas faster than anyone — good or bad. So even though I don’t always like working under a PM, I definitely respect the position and think in general the good ones really deserved the $$$.
- pmiller2 8y agoA good PM, almost by definition is kind of a mini-CEO. Their job is to push the product forward in a way that serves the company’s business interest. Product management is not engineering, design, sales, or marketing, but takes all of those into account. Maybe you’ve never worked with a good PM?
- QuercusMax 8y agoThis is exactly what I've heard for some very senior (L8-10+) folks at Google: if you think of a product development team like a company, the Product Manager (PM) is the CEO, Tech Lead (TL) is CTO. If you have a Program Manager (PgM), they may act as COO. In fact, when startups are acquired, this is often exactly how their C-suite ends up: CEO -> PM, CTO -> TL, COO -> PgM.
- brogrammernot 8y agoSpeaking as a PM with 5 years of engineering across the stack at decently big companies, I would say that it’s my job to push towards a bias for business value and the TL + engineering members job to push back when it’s time to prioritize the tech debt. Trust me, I’d love to dig into the code (and most of the engineering team doesn’t realize I read their PRs + code every day still so I’m well aware when they’re sane-bagging) but the goal of a well run team is push/pull. I can weigh the benefits of a product feature from the business and engineering tech debt, retention, etc angles and I do from time to time when the team doesn’t step up but I’m going to be biased towards shipping business value because I’m the umbrella that catches all the praise and the shit-storm when things go wrong. You need a ton more victories to survive in PM world then you do in Eng world. It’s easier to be mediocre in Engineering then product b/c you’re gone after the 2nd or third bad launch.