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I can attest Product Managers were the downfall of one startup I worked at. The company had dozens of millions in funding and managed to piss it all away with i

I can attest Product Managers were the downfall of one startup I worked at. The company had dozens of millions in funding and managed to piss it all away with ill-founded escapades driven by a handful of Product Managers. If anything, the Product Managers seemed to be managing their careers, not the product. They babied engineers until most of the engineers stopped caring about the product and just gave up working hard at all. All the brilliant ideas were trite insights you could read on two year old Gartner reports -- "release a cloud version". CEO and CTO beware, do not let Product Managers happen to your company.

AussieWog93 5y ago
On the flip side, my old PM had an incredibly deep understanding of both the product and the customers buying it (an area in which us SWEs were lacking), in addition to a semi-hands-on understanding of the engineering process too. He wasn't a professional software engineer, but he took the time to actually learn how to program through some side projects and through this gained a real understanding of what would be trivial for us to implement and what wouldn't. To top it all off, he had good rapport with the CEO and was adept at managing upwards. The product wouldn't be half as good as it was if not for him. Rather than tarring an entire profession with the same brush, I think a much fairer "warning" to founders is to make sure the people you're hiring are competent and that the job they are doing is something that actually adds value to the organisation. PMs, when deployed appropriately, can be worth their weight in gold.
- mmsimanga 5y ago
  What you describe is the ideal PM. Someone who understands the business and customers and some of the technology. There are two kinds of PMs that are good. The one you describe who understands the business and the former developer who has been with a company many years and has made transition to PM role. However in a lot of companies this is not always the case.

AussieWog93 5y ago

On the flip side, my old PM had an incredibly deep understanding of both the product and the customers buying it (an area in which us SWEs were lacking), in addition to a semi-hands-on understanding of the engineering process too. He wasn't a professional software engineer, but he took the time to actually learn how to program through some side projects and through this gained a real understanding of what would be trivial for us to implement and what wouldn't. To top it all off, he had good rapport with the CEO and was adept at managing upwards. The product wouldn't be half as good as it was if not for him. Rather than tarring an entire profession with the same brush, I think a much fairer "warning" to founders is to make sure the people you're hiring are competent and that the job they are doing is something that actually adds value to the organisation. PMs, when deployed appropriately, can be worth their weight in gold.

mmsimanga 5y ago
What you describe is the ideal PM. Someone who understands the business and customers and some of the technology. There are two kinds of PMs that are good. The one you describe who understands the business and the former developer who has been with a company many years and has made transition to PM role. However in a lot of companies this is not always the case.