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The difficult thing about talking about project management is that it is so inconsistent at different organizations that makes it impossible to talk about it wi
by stunt 6y ago
The difficult thing about talking about project management is that it is so inconsistent at different organizations that makes it impossible to talk about it without having a lot of context.
I worked at companies where project managers had very strong technical background and experience, but I also worked at a company where project managers were only a little technical, but had very strong project management skills. Then there is the other end of the spectrum, where project managers are simply incompetence. They got promoted to become a project manager with almost no knowledge about it and also no willingness to learn it properly and become good at it.
The latter (incompetence PM) is awful for any type of engineering work. And some companies make it even worse by making engineers report directly to those project managers.
The first type (technical project manager) is obviously harder to build, because not many engineers want to become project managers, and not many engineering teams are able to navigate without a good product team in organizations that don't have a solid engineering culture (e.g. traditional companies). So you often find companies with the second type. And even then I think it’s best if there is a clear separation of concerns between product and development teams. A product manager/team that takes care of product concerns but not engineers themselves. While they work with each other, engineers should report directly to a technical lead that understands their efforts and needs.
- 908B64B197 6y agoIf engineers report to PMs, your organization is broken. Love it when our competitors do it. Makes poaching great engineers really easy.
- ur-whale 6y agoNote that Google currently has a PM in the CEO's seat.
- ignoramous 6y agoTo be fair, one simply doesn't go from running a humble org competing with the Alexa Toolbar to running all of Alphabet with just PM mindset.
- paxys 6y agoSundar worked as an engineer, management consultant and product manager before moving up the management ranks at Google. So labeling him as a PM isn't accurate.
- ur-whale 6y ago> as an engineer Nope. He's a McKinsey drone through and through. Never wrote a line of code @ Google. Calling him an engineer is an insult to engineers.
- brown9-2 6y agoThere is a lot of conflating of “project manager” and “product manager” in these comments.
- l8rpeace 6y agoWhat qualifies as incompetence? As a former PM and Engineer, I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
- mandeepj 6y ago> very strong project management skills How do you define those skills?
- throwaway316943 6y agoFor the life of me I don’t understand why it isn’t common practice to simply have the team report strictly to a technical lead with a project manager working under the lead as part of the team but only responsible for keeping tabs on available resources and making schedules work. They should report the current logistical situation to the tech lead so the overarching plan can be adjusted as needed. In my mind the PM is a specialist not a leader.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dnndev 6y agosimple: most places view technical people (coders at least) as someone who is making money when they code. Its in-house outsourcing. Senior devs end up jumping ship when they realize they could make more money consulting. I would tweak your description and convert the PM role to QC / Support.