6 ms·

Product manager responsibilities

69 points by sturza 8y ago

jackmodern 8y ago
waiting for an engineer to jump in here and tell everyone how useless PMs are.
- reilly3000 8y ago
  Gotta love it when engineers fail to see the value in People people, then when their startup dies they blame their tech stack and users. Unless the engineers are willing and able to competently wear that hat and can manage their time well enough to still ship, product market fit just won’t happen.
  - vvram 8y ago
    Role of a dedicated product hat is diminishing as your customer value delivery chain becomes more efficient, assuming the engineering and founders are in tune with the market signals and can react fast. The role of product in a startup with founders makes more impactful, assuming you are not blind to outside forces.
- Brajeshwar 8y ago
  I’ve commented few times in similar situations, I hope I can be of more use today too. I hope you will think this over and/or connect the dots backward when you realized this in the future. How do I know? Because I went through them — started as a developer, turned to design, involved in business, started/exited few Startups, and continued to help Startups. When I was in the engineering role, I thought everyone else was an idiot and “they don’t get it.” I thought that all the talks are useless when I can just go, write codes and get the “actual final thing done.” In my defense, I heard last time, some of my codes are still working on AT&T, Walt Disney to name a few. When I realized that there are lots of engineers, who are much better than me, I jumped to designing and did a whole lot of designs too for many known brands, some unknown and many Startups during their early days, including few of our own. I sometimes see the logo of an established on billboards and I proudly claim, that was one of my early works and I designed that logo. I dabbled in designs before the development/engineering phase of my life. Because I can empathize with engineering, I became more lenient with my thought but I sometimes wondered, “let them program it but I’ll add the final beauty and that is what it sells.” Then I got in love with business and once upon a time even closed deals worth multiple thousand dollars. By that time I began to realize the importance of every role * the irritating salesperson is no longer irritating but began to fascinate me. * loved working with a bunch of project manager that shield the team from the clients and cushion everything that came in hard. * brilliant work by the business development team that makes life clearer for everyone to work on. * and the product managers that lingers on to all the silly, nitty-gritty, boring work long after the engineers and the designers moved on “interesting challenges”. Yes, everyone has a role and they play their part. If you play a role in the whole cycle, play your part and do it well. If you’re that good an engineer who can start from A and finish till the Z, then you’re already a good person and won’t say such thing as “xyz is useless because I’m abc.”
- ulfw 8y ago
  Yup. That happened already. (see above)
- Stuckinsofa 8y ago
  Maybe because there are so many incompetent PMs? The PM working I'm working with does not know the product feature set (except for the very basics), does not have any vision or goals, does not have a systematic approach to talking to collecting feedback from customers. What's on our backlog changes dramatically and when project ends we basically start with a new product backlog. When customers have questions on basic stuff he has to defer to engineering. Any competent hire can be useful, but hiring good PMs is maybe even harder than good engineers. So people bitch.
  - polote 8y ago
    Yes it is exactly true, the issue right now in the field of product management, is most PM are in fact PO (product owner) they manage the sprint. But these people have the title of product manager. Product manager is required job in any company that wants to grow and deliver best products. But these people are very hard to find and very expensive, so instead we hire PO and give them the title of PM and ask them to do what the CEO is asking
- bg24 8y ago
  Engineers operate at a level where contribution/output matters on an average. PM's operate to demonstrate progress and continually garner positive mindset of leadership. Unfortunately, that means it is okay if an engineer feels PM is useless. What's not acceptable is if a senior leader feels and comments negatively on performance of a PM. PM job can be thankless if you try to make everyone happy, and you've way more things to do with limited time.
mharroun 8y ago
Speaking from startup perspective. While there are a hand full of exceptions. IMHO the dedicated role of a product manager is exceptionally counter productive. Unless they are a founder they tend to lack technical expertise of capable enginners and enginnering managers as well as have a disconnect from the core drivers of what can make the buisness sucessful. Maybe I have just had bad luck but in my 12 years of experiance with 6+ startups it's either the founders or buisness competent technical leaders who have driven a company and its products to suceed. "Formal" product managers I have come to associate with elements that kill startups... things like kingdom building, playing politics, information withholding, setting timelines and expectations without any real clue what it really takes. We need buisness competent enginners, systems to feed feedback from sales and customer service to product enginner teams and engineering leaders who can communicate with other departments and understand buisness goals that they must build towards. What is not needed a role who does not know sales, customer service, marketing ,or enginnering who puts systems in place to seperated thoes units for their own personal benafit.
- sytelus 8y ago
  Most times founders do have very good intuition because they are building product for themselves first and the various complexities may not be important earlier in the cycle. However if you are going in the new field and well past "early days" then having product managers with field experience could be very useful. For example, you want to build new glucose meter and you know the tech but have no idea about regulations, customer preferences, competition, history of dead products etc. In addition to what has been described in article, I would say followings are also responsibilities of product manager: * Design meticulous user studies, evaluate prototypes with customers, identify problems earlier. * Research options for external interfaces for the company including supply chains, offshore options, vendors, partners. * Do analysis of competition, their strengths and weaknesses. Estimate their future trajectory, influences, cost structure, customer opinions and actions. * Perform retrospectives for successes and failures that happens within the company. Create systematic log of these analysis and ensure failures don't repeat but successes do. * Make sure there exist systems for various data collections including human resources, engineering (bugs, backlog, hours spent, LOCs), customer support etc. Help turn these data in to dashboards. Lead analytics and insights in all aspects. * Take a detailed look at the history of the field. Why past product failed? Why some won in competition and some lost? What customers rejected? How laws changed destiny of products? Lead the "lessons learned" storyteller role. * Create systematic database of who's who in the field. Everyone from previous founders, star engineers, politicians, activists, biggest fans, partners etc. * Ensure there exist efficient measurable pipeline for lead generation to customer acquisition to customer exit interviews. Influence strategies for sales, marketing, evangelization. Ensure company can preemptively avoid or at very least detect churn much earlier. As you can see, founder alone may not be able to do all of these + product design + engineering efficiently and comprehensively. I would also say good product managers are never just product managers but also able to take over partly or completely sales and/or marketing. Also many good product managers are not generic MBA types but rather very specialized in specific field with solid design skills and experience in their field. The way I look at it is founders provides intuitions while product manager brings data and systematic analysis.
dawhizkid 8y ago
Seriously one of the most overrated jobs in tech...speaking from experience.
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  Where were you a product manager (assuming you're willing to share) and why did you feel the position was not particularly useful?
bg24 8y ago
I have been a product manager for a decade now, both in established firms and startups. From my experience, startups need to have the founder and engineering leader in lockstep, and the experience to productize the vision. PM role in a startup is more about wearing multiple hats. If you do not have a solid engineering leader and right engineering experience to build the product, PM job is simply not worth staying. In contrast, PM leadership role becomes crucial in an established product, or even a startup entering into the growth trajectory. PM responsibilities vary wildly. Being able to sell, build relationship, be at the right place at the right time etc. decides your success more than your inbound skills like product requirements, planning etc.
- Brajeshwar 8y ago
  Very true. Right now, I'm helping a Startup on a massive growth curve with multiple products, new market category, new geographies, et al. There are a bunch of Product Managers, while a few good engineering leaders are leading the tech team. My role is basically to groom the PMs to mostly talking to customers, say NO to the engineers' cool feature they want to build if they are not yet validated with customers, say NO to the C-Suite including the CEO of all their fancy cool business ideas they want to execute. Continue with mini-experiments, and build a process to do such repeatedly and rinse them well. Reduce the release cycle and hopefully automate pretty much everything.
blunderkid 8y ago
There are good PMs and those pretending/forced to be, just like not all "hackers" are LinusT. In product minded startups, at least one founder has got to be a good early stage PM. Most calls in the beginning are gut calls but good PMs/founders will quickly get in a state where data begins to take over gut increasingly. Although the best PMs also have the best guts and know when to trust one over the other.
amriksohata 8y ago
Having a Product Manager and a BA is a toxic place to be, the Product Manager is often too far removed from the questions the engineers will ask
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
villaumbrosia 8y ago
I'm truly surprised at how many negative sentiments there are in this thread about the role of Product Managers. Clearly there are some PMs who are more effective/competent than others, but for many companies, the role is crucial for success. As some have already mentioned, the PM is often the person who is kind of a "utility tool" within the departments. PMs have to be able to communicate effectively amongst each team, and translate each departments needs into positive action. I have also noticed that a lot of answers here are saying that all you need is a competent engineering lead instead of a PM. I don't agree with this at all. Engineers are critical to the success of a product, there is no doubt about that. But they also are generally more of a hard-skills player in the development of the process. PMs often have to be able to translate the work of hard-skill colleagues into understandable insights for other stakeholders. Some may see this as frivolous, but you'd be surprised at how many times I've seen an engineer deliver a report in a way that was impossible to understand, and far from relatable. While this post could literally be pages long, I am going sum up the final point here: PMs do the work that allows engineers and members of other departments to focus on their core responsibilities. Engineers don't always have the time to determine customer needs, assess market competition, develop sales strategy, move information through departments, or the many other tasks that are necessary to create a top-tier product. So before jumping to conclusions about Product Management responsibilities, be sure to do your homework and see what the best PMs have done to take their businesses into greener pastures.

69 points by sturza 8y ago

jackmodern 8y ago

waiting for an engineer to jump in here and tell everyone how useless PMs are.

reilly3000 8y ago
Gotta love it when engineers fail to see the value in People people, then when their startup dies they blame their tech stack and users. Unless the engineers are willing and able to competently wear that hat and can manage their time well enough to still ship, product market fit just won’t happen.
- vvram 8y ago
  Role of a dedicated product hat is diminishing as your customer value delivery chain becomes more efficient, assuming the engineering and founders are in tune with the market signals and can react fast. The role of product in a startup with founders makes more impactful, assuming you are not blind to outside forces.
Brajeshwar 8y ago
I’ve commented few times in similar situations, I hope I can be of more use today too. I hope you will think this over and/or connect the dots backward when you realized this in the future. How do I know? Because I went through them — started as a developer, turned to design, involved in business, started/exited few Startups, and continued to help Startups. When I was in the engineering role, I thought everyone else was an idiot and “they don’t get it.” I thought that all the talks are useless when I can just go, write codes and get the “actual final thing done.” In my defense, I heard last time, some of my codes are still working on AT&T, Walt Disney to name a few. When I realized that there are lots of engineers, who are much better than me, I jumped to designing and did a whole lot of designs too for many known brands, some unknown and many Startups during their early days, including few of our own. I sometimes see the logo of an established on billboards and I proudly claim, that was one of my early works and I designed that logo. I dabbled in designs before the development/engineering phase of my life. Because I can empathize with engineering, I became more lenient with my thought but I sometimes wondered, “let them program it but I’ll add the final beauty and that is what it sells.” Then I got in love with business and once upon a time even closed deals worth multiple thousand dollars. By that time I began to realize the importance of every role * the irritating salesperson is no longer irritating but began to fascinate me. * loved working with a bunch of project manager that shield the team from the clients and cushion everything that came in hard. * brilliant work by the business development team that makes life clearer for everyone to work on. * and the product managers that lingers on to all the silly, nitty-gritty, boring work long after the engineers and the designers moved on “interesting challenges”. Yes, everyone has a role and they play their part. If you play a role in the whole cycle, play your part and do it well. If you’re that good an engineer who can start from A and finish till the Z, then you’re already a good person and won’t say such thing as “xyz is useless because I’m abc.”
ulfw 8y ago
Yup. That happened already. (see above)
Stuckinsofa 8y ago
Maybe because there are so many incompetent PMs? The PM working I'm working with does not know the product feature set (except for the very basics), does not have any vision or goals, does not have a systematic approach to talking to collecting feedback from customers. What's on our backlog changes dramatically and when project ends we basically start with a new product backlog. When customers have questions on basic stuff he has to defer to engineering. Any competent hire can be useful, but hiring good PMs is maybe even harder than good engineers. So people bitch.
- polote 8y ago
  Yes it is exactly true, the issue right now in the field of product management, is most PM are in fact PO (product owner) they manage the sprint. But these people have the title of product manager. Product manager is required job in any company that wants to grow and deliver best products. But these people are very hard to find and very expensive, so instead we hire PO and give them the title of PM and ask them to do what the CEO is asking
bg24 8y ago
Engineers operate at a level where contribution/output matters on an average. PM's operate to demonstrate progress and continually garner positive mindset of leadership. Unfortunately, that means it is okay if an engineer feels PM is useless. What's not acceptable is if a senior leader feels and comments negatively on performance of a PM. PM job can be thankless if you try to make everyone happy, and you've way more things to do with limited time.

mharroun 8y ago

Speaking from startup perspective. While there are a hand full of exceptions. IMHO the dedicated role of a product manager is exceptionally counter productive. Unless they are a founder they tend to lack technical expertise of capable enginners and enginnering managers as well as have a disconnect from the core drivers of what can make the buisness sucessful. Maybe I have just had bad luck but in my 12 years of experiance with 6+ startups it's either the founders or buisness competent technical leaders who have driven a company and its products to suceed. "Formal" product managers I have come to associate with elements that kill startups... things like kingdom building, playing politics, information withholding, setting timelines and expectations without any real clue what it really takes. We need buisness competent enginners, systems to feed feedback from sales and customer service to product enginner teams and engineering leaders who can communicate with other departments and understand buisness goals that they must build towards. What is not needed a role who does not know sales, customer service, marketing ,or enginnering who puts systems in place to seperated thoes units for their own personal benafit.

sytelus 8y ago
Most times founders do have very good intuition because they are building product for themselves first and the various complexities may not be important earlier in the cycle. However if you are going in the new field and well past "early days" then having product managers with field experience could be very useful. For example, you want to build new glucose meter and you know the tech but have no idea about regulations, customer preferences, competition, history of dead products etc. In addition to what has been described in article, I would say followings are also responsibilities of product manager: * Design meticulous user studies, evaluate prototypes with customers, identify problems earlier. * Research options for external interfaces for the company including supply chains, offshore options, vendors, partners. * Do analysis of competition, their strengths and weaknesses. Estimate their future trajectory, influences, cost structure, customer opinions and actions. * Perform retrospectives for successes and failures that happens within the company. Create systematic log of these analysis and ensure failures don't repeat but successes do. * Make sure there exist systems for various data collections including human resources, engineering (bugs, backlog, hours spent, LOCs), customer support etc. Help turn these data in to dashboards. Lead analytics and insights in all aspects. * Take a detailed look at the history of the field. Why past product failed? Why some won in competition and some lost? What customers rejected? How laws changed destiny of products? Lead the "lessons learned" storyteller role. * Create systematic database of who's who in the field. Everyone from previous founders, star engineers, politicians, activists, biggest fans, partners etc. * Ensure there exist efficient measurable pipeline for lead generation to customer acquisition to customer exit interviews. Influence strategies for sales, marketing, evangelization. Ensure company can preemptively avoid or at very least detect churn much earlier. As you can see, founder alone may not be able to do all of these + product design + engineering efficiently and comprehensively. I would also say good product managers are never just product managers but also able to take over partly or completely sales and/or marketing. Also many good product managers are not generic MBA types but rather very specialized in specific field with solid design skills and experience in their field. The way I look at it is founders provides intuitions while product manager brings data and systematic analysis.

dawhizkid 8y ago

Seriously one of the most overrated jobs in tech...speaking from experience.

Judgmentality 8y ago
Where were you a product manager (assuming you're willing to share) and why did you feel the position was not particularly useful?

bg24 8y ago

I have been a product manager for a decade now, both in established firms and startups. From my experience, startups need to have the founder and engineering leader in lockstep, and the experience to productize the vision. PM role in a startup is more about wearing multiple hats. If you do not have a solid engineering leader and right engineering experience to build the product, PM job is simply not worth staying. In contrast, PM leadership role becomes crucial in an established product, or even a startup entering into the growth trajectory. PM responsibilities vary wildly. Being able to sell, build relationship, be at the right place at the right time etc. decides your success more than your inbound skills like product requirements, planning etc.

Brajeshwar 8y ago
Very true. Right now, I'm helping a Startup on a massive growth curve with multiple products, new market category, new geographies, et al. There are a bunch of Product Managers, while a few good engineering leaders are leading the tech team. My role is basically to groom the PMs to mostly talking to customers, say NO to the engineers' cool feature they want to build if they are not yet validated with customers, say NO to the C-Suite including the CEO of all their fancy cool business ideas they want to execute. Continue with mini-experiments, and build a process to do such repeatedly and rinse them well. Reduce the release cycle and hopefully automate pretty much everything.

blunderkid 8y ago

There are good PMs and those pretending/forced to be, just like not all "hackers" are LinusT. In product minded startups, at least one founder has got to be a good early stage PM. Most calls in the beginning are gut calls but good PMs/founders will quickly get in a state where data begins to take over gut increasingly. Although the best PMs also have the best guts and know when to trust one over the other.

amriksohata 8y ago

Having a Product Manager and a BA is a toxic place to be, the Product Manager is often too far removed from the questions the engineers will ask

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

villaumbrosia 8y ago

I'm truly surprised at how many negative sentiments there are in this thread about the role of Product Managers. Clearly there are some PMs who are more effective/competent than others, but for many companies, the role is crucial for success. As some have already mentioned, the PM is often the person who is kind of a "utility tool" within the departments. PMs have to be able to communicate effectively amongst each team, and translate each departments needs into positive action. I have also noticed that a lot of answers here are saying that all you need is a competent engineering lead instead of a PM. I don't agree with this at all. Engineers are critical to the success of a product, there is no doubt about that. But they also are generally more of a hard-skills player in the development of the process. PMs often have to be able to translate the work of hard-skill colleagues into understandable insights for other stakeholders. Some may see this as frivolous, but you'd be surprised at how many times I've seen an engineer deliver a report in a way that was impossible to understand, and far from relatable. While this post could literally be pages long, I am going sum up the final point here: PMs do the work that allows engineers and members of other departments to focus on their core responsibilities. Engineers don't always have the time to determine customer needs, assess market competition, develop sales strategy, move information through departments, or the many other tasks that are necessary to create a top-tier product. So before jumping to conclusions about Product Management responsibilities, be sure to do your homework and see what the best PMs have done to take their businesses into greener pastures.