3 ms·
I’m curious about which type of products you have been working on and what type of product decisions the engineers you have been working with have done. Because
by ggregoire 7y ago
I’m curious about which type of products you have been working on and what type of product decisions the engineers you have been working with have done. Because your experience is the opposite of mine. Engineers who understand anything to business and product management are extremely rare. And people who are good at it and genuinely interested in it usually move to this role (or create their company!). Also, as described in this article (interesting read btw), a lot of PMs are actually just projects managers instead of being product managers. They plan small features here and there, add tasks to the sprints and attend daily stand ups. This is not what you want from a PM. You want a PM who has a vision for the product and a very good understanding of the market, the clients and the users (can be different persons in b2b), and the competition (like the founders in the first phase of a startup, who eventually need PMs to do this part of the job. This is also well described in the article). Finding good PMs is hard tho, there is no specific degrees or whiteboard exercises to differentiate the good ones from the bad ones. It’s all about experience and finding someone who already did the job correctly somewhere else.
- Redsquare 7y agoWhy does everything boil down to scrum and ridiculous ceremonies?
- throwawayjava 7y ago> I’m curious about which type of products you have been working on and what type of product decisions the engineers you have been working with have done. IME: technically-trained PMs are worth their weight in gold. PMs without a technical background are extremely dangerous liabilities. Context: Mostly b2b products where careful judgement on technical feasibility is the difference between "useless" and "game-changer". > Engineers who understand anything to business and product management are extremely rare. And people who are good at it and genuinely interested in it usually move to this role It depends. Only if they don't take a huge paycut by moving into the PM role, and only if the org is willing to let them move into the PM role. Many business are not willing to lose highly productive engineers with niche skillsets and are not willing to pay PMs as much as they pay their senior engineers. IME, senior engineer -> executive/founder is a lot more common than senior engineer -> PM. But it's not because engineers can't be product people... sorta the opposite. > a lot of PMs are actually just projects managers instead of being product managers. No true Scotsman, right?