Designers and product managers are a bane

This post is inspired by another comment that I made but startups generally should try and avoid hiring designers and product managers for as long as possible. These days is seems like it's a given that you need these two groups to hack on a project and that in my opinion is mistaken. When it comes to a lot of tech products, the original hackers often found an interesting angle which makes the product unique. PMs and designers often don't understand that so there is a chance of them moving away from it. Designers have a habit of following trends and often don't have the courage to do anything which is unique and goes against trends. Especially the ones that you can afford at an early stage startup. If you want to make your product look as generic as the next one, bring in a designer. PMs have a habit of adding feature after feature because that is their major means of contributing. Even if a product doesn't need those features, PMs often have nothing to do so they keep adding them. A pure hacker team on the other hand can often spend down cycles polishing the app and fixing bugs. Of course at the end of the day if there are some really awesome PMs and designers you know, include them in your project but please don't do that as a default.