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As a product manager you should not be asking anyone to build you anything without properly explaining the why. It starts with the why, and a good engineering t

As a product manager you should not be asking anyone to build you anything without properly explaining the why. It starts with the why, and a good engineering team will offer how+when. If you get overly involved in the how you'll end up with ignoring that insight and the responsability that comes with it. Being on both the side of product and engineering, more often than not it's a lack of collaboration and trust between the two that leads to poor products and frustrated engineers. Your last paragraph hints at this. Poor product insights - some of the most competitive features I've seen make it into a product found themselves there because an engineer decided to build it to fix a pain point of their own (often after having that feature request ignored by product owner) Humor your engineers and give them creative ownership over a feature (from suggestion to implementation)- you'll be surprised how effortlessly it comes out. "I should share and be curious about whether my insights on product and strategy are valuable to the team" Good advice for everyone in the team, wish it was followed unilaterally.

ridaj 7y ago
> "I should share and be curious about whether my insights on product and strategy are valuable to the team" > Good advice for everyone in the team, wish it was followed unilaterally. Indeed, and this is how I approach my responsibilities as well. I grew myself in service of the team rather than telling people what to do / not to do. > Humor your engineers and give them creative ownership over a feature (from suggestion to implementation)- you'll be surprised how effortlessly it comes out. From firsthand experience, it works well sometimes, and when it works it's really magical. But it unfortunately doesn't work every time, because some folks really just want to be told what to code (don't want to engage), and other folks want to engage but don't have the skills (creativity, awareness of the pros and cons of various relevant UX patterns, user testing, etc). I give as much creative ownership as possible and really wish it could delegate it entirely though (does make my job easier).

ridaj 7y ago

> "I should share and be curious about whether my insights on product and strategy are valuable to the team" > Good advice for everyone in the team, wish it was followed unilaterally. Indeed, and this is how I approach my responsibilities as well. I grew myself in service of the team rather than telling people what to do / not to do. > Humor your engineers and give them creative ownership over a feature (from suggestion to implementation)- you'll be surprised how effortlessly it comes out. From firsthand experience, it works well sometimes, and when it works it's really magical. But it unfortunately doesn't work every time, because some folks really just want to be told what to code (don't want to engage), and other folks want to engage but don't have the skills (creativity, awareness of the pros and cons of various relevant UX patterns, user testing, etc). I give as much creative ownership as possible and really wish it could delegate it entirely though (does make my job easier).