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I spent 10 years working as a software engineer on a product that I was originally a customer of. I found it really weird that so many engineers and product ma

I spent 10 years working as a software engineer on a product that I was originally a customer of. I found it really weird that so many engineers and product managers in the company never really used the product the company produced at all. I don't think that engineers should really be product managers, as an introvert I certainly didn't have the patience to sit in all the meetings that the PMs took every week, which is why I leaned on real actual PMs to do that. However, senior engineers ought to develop at least some Product Management Brain and spend a bit of time literally just using the product like a user and not as a developer. I don't think software development should be the only thing developers do, at the strict exclusion of all else. They need the ability to be deep in some code and go "wait, is this complicated garbage actually what customers really want?" and throw a mental exception and go have a chat with the PM and determine if the requirements have gotten wildly off course. The mentality of "PMs determine the requirements, I just write the code" is a recipe for a really poor product.

tomc1985 4y ago
It is weird to me to see people talking like this. Throughout my 10+ year career as an SE, all the way from junior level to senior-plus, customer- and product-mindset thinking has been seemingly mandatory. Like how would I even write the software if I didn't understand what they wanted? What would I even do/what should I even write? We need to remember at all levels that it is people that use this stuff. Coincidentally, we are also people. So we should all be able to think as them. It is weird to me to be separated from my stakeholders. I can't say I really like having a PM in between me and them, other than having them sit in meetings instead of me.
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  > Like how would I even write the software if I didn't understand what they wanted? What would I even do/what should I even write? Whatever the ticket says. I have done plenty of work that I couldn't tell you where it fit into the product or what button one would click to make it run as we otherwise had unit tests to verify it.
  - korijn 4y ago
    It sounds incredibly demotivating. Is it?
    - papito 4y ago
      I save that passion for personal projects. After all, the work is buying someone else a nice house and the new electric Delorian.
      - korijn 4y ago
        Well, unless your product makes a real positive impact on people's quality of life or the environment. :) Maybe I'm just fortunate to have such an employer. (Of course my CEO also gets rich in the process, but that's not the only "mission".)
    - egeozcan 4y ago
      Why should it be demotivating trying do something perfectly as requested? Many of us, including me, come from freelancing, and perhaps that trained many to answer most customer requests with "ok but what you really want is...", but in a company where there are people doing that as their job... Why bother? Actually I would even go further and argue that too many passionate developers talking product management in every refinement meeting is a big inefficiency, and depending on the company size, sometimes even one is one too many.
      - aidaman 4y ago
        lol because developing products that users want/work well for users is 100x more important than writing code.
        egeozcan 4y ago
        Protecting the environment and sustainability is also 100x more important than that. Do we ever draw a line where our responsibilities end or as developers do we have to gather knowledge and make the best decisions until we reach singularity or the heat death of the universe? Delegating is okay, or you burn yourself out.
- leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
  Because we are supporting too many products as it is and they are always asking for more? I get snippets from users, but I support so many different types of users and roles, it would take probably 6 months of only training to have a rudimentary understanding of all of those roles and the products we support that they use. And we implement SAFE "agile" and most of the time it seems like we are insulated from actual users. I got in hot water because I had the audacity to talk to a user because the client kept changing the flow after the inception meeting that ended up being the client solutionizing the project.

tomc1985 4y ago

It is weird to me to see people talking like this. Throughout my 10+ year career as an SE, all the way from junior level to senior-plus, customer- and product-mindset thinking has been seemingly mandatory. Like how would I even write the software if I didn't understand what they wanted? What would I even do/what should I even write? We need to remember at all levels that it is people that use this stuff. Coincidentally, we are also people. So we should all be able to think as them. It is weird to me to be separated from my stakeholders. I can't say I really like having a PM in between me and them, other than having them sit in meetings instead of me.

MattGaiser 4y ago
> Like how would I even write the software if I didn't understand what they wanted? What would I even do/what should I even write? Whatever the ticket says. I have done plenty of work that I couldn't tell you where it fit into the product or what button one would click to make it run as we otherwise had unit tests to verify it.
- korijn 4y ago
  It sounds incredibly demotivating. Is it?
  - papito 4y ago
    I save that passion for personal projects. After all, the work is buying someone else a nice house and the new electric Delorian.
    - korijn 4y ago
      Well, unless your product makes a real positive impact on people's quality of life or the environment. :) Maybe I'm just fortunate to have such an employer. (Of course my CEO also gets rich in the process, but that's not the only "mission".)
  - egeozcan 4y ago
    Why should it be demotivating trying do something perfectly as requested? Many of us, including me, come from freelancing, and perhaps that trained many to answer most customer requests with "ok but what you really want is...", but in a company where there are people doing that as their job... Why bother? Actually I would even go further and argue that too many passionate developers talking product management in every refinement meeting is a big inefficiency, and depending on the company size, sometimes even one is one too many.
    - aidaman 4y ago
      lol because developing products that users want/work well for users is 100x more important than writing code.
      - egeozcan 4y ago
        Protecting the environment and sustainability is also 100x more important than that. Do we ever draw a line where our responsibilities end or as developers do we have to gather knowledge and make the best decisions until we reach singularity or the heat death of the universe? Delegating is okay, or you burn yourself out.
leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
Because we are supporting too many products as it is and they are always asking for more? I get snippets from users, but I support so many different types of users and roles, it would take probably 6 months of only training to have a rudimentary understanding of all of those roles and the products we support that they use. And we implement SAFE "agile" and most of the time it seems like we are insulated from actual users. I got in hot water because I had the audacity to talk to a user because the client kept changing the flow after the inception meeting that ended up being the client solutionizing the project.