8 ms·

100% this, what ends up happening is product wedges themselves between business and technical so they wield the power due to having business' ear, and any attem

100% this, what ends up happening is product wedges themselves between business and technical so they wield the power due to having business' ear, and any attempt by technical to communicate directly with business is met with severe reactions. The thing to understand is that very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people. In addition, part of software development is being able to identify what needs to be solved. Any developer with a modicum of experience knows how to do this. Just as you have a technical leader on the team, you need a technical architect on the team. That person can interface with the business or the business analyst (or both) as needed. separate teams is a degenerate case for strong software development. I once literally had a business person ask "who should be involved in this conversation" and my response was "product and technical so we can advise". Product responded after me with "Product" and the lack of technical there was deafening. It becomes a power play, the theory of the different departments works out about as well as putting a racist and a black man in a room to collaborate on race relations.

taude 4y ago
theres a lot of orgs where product people will be onshore and the technies offshore, so the model and barrier kind of makes sense (for this operating model), and typically the Product people will be the more expensive/smarter/critical resource in this case.
- kenhwang 4y ago
  In my personal experience, that model has rarely led to a good product, good technical implementation, or even good development velocity.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  In this setup you need onshore to manage that offshore team or you're just asking for pain.
rektomatic 4y ago
>very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people I'm guessing you work in the technical side of things?
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  - ButterBiscuits 4y ago
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      - ButterBiscuits 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
esotericimpl 4y ago
The key to this is to only hire "product" people who grew out of either Design or Engineering, Anyone who started as "product" is a wanna be general who provides minimal value. My usual first question to any product candidate is do you find yourself coming from a Design, UX, or Engineering background?
- cj 4y ago
  I’ve had luck hiring people with “dev bootcamp” level experience who didn’t excel as an engineer post-bootcamp, but know enough technical jargon to communicate, collaborate, and understand engineers. Often these are people who became bored with day to day coding having more interest in the business side of the company
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- lliamander 4y ago
  People with relevant industry experience, even if non-technical, are also good candidates for product roles.
noobker 4y ago
>very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people Intelligence is multifaceted. That business listens to product and not to engineers could be seen as a type of social intelligence of which engineers are notoriously unskilled. Regardless, framing any portion of your organization as "smarter than" (implicitly "better than") isn't going to help in terms of fostering collaboration.
- MajimasEyepatch 4y ago
  Also a lot of PMs are former engineers. One could argue a person capable of doing both at a high level is "smarter" than a person who cannot. Certainly they would have a unique perspective compared to people who have only been on one side or the other. But like you said, intelligence is multifaceted, and comparing people's intelligence is pointless and divisive.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    PM is not product, when they get separated from technical in companies, they're literally product, as a team. But more importantly, most of the time what happens is these people have 2, maybe 3 years of experience. They've done enough to be able to roughly understand technology, and that experience helps them communicate with the technical side, but in no way shape or form does that mean they would come anywhere close to that 20 year old vet on the development team. But the flip side isn't true. In companies without that strong delineation between them, it's the 20 year old vet who would be doing what product is doing. Companies who do this are too compartmentalized and they become extremely slow as a result. It's all in an effort to keep technical from having an outsized influence.
    - sarchertech 4y ago
      I have never understood why companies consistently hire people right out of college (often with random degrees unrelated to anything relevant) to tell a team of engineers with 10-20 years of experience what (and often how) to build. Back when I was new, engineers worked directly with subject matter experts and the occasional business analyst. Now we’ve mostly replaced SMEs with product, and I don’t think it’s working out.
robocat 4y ago
> putting a racist and a black man in a room Suggestion: Avoid prickly metaphors. Especially ones that imply reader is situated in a particular country? Reason: Everyone can be racist. In a place with only black men, is nobody a racist? Disclaimer: White guy on an Island. Sorry for off-topic content, I try not to make it a habit. I am generally against PC bullshit.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Did you understand the point? Then communication happened, and oddly enough, communicating succinctly was more important than listing out all possible combinations in an effort for perfection.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Your tone comes across to me as “snarky” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment completely ignores my point! My point is that I want conversations on this site to be worthwhile, and divisive thinking tends to destroy that. Your example “black man” is unnecessary and creates a divisive context. I think you make the same category of error in your implied definitions of “engineer” and “intelligence”. If you might spend some time to read through the comment tree below your GP comment, and try and understand why various people are reacting, I think that would help you and the HN community. Aside: Yes, I did understand “the point” which was written about in the article. Disclaimer: I have no HN superpowers. Edit: What outcome do you want for yourself by commenting here? For me, I want to read insightful comments, and I want to practice my thinking by challenging myself to think about topics that others know more about.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      your post was unnecessary, delete it and move on.
tristor 4y ago
> The thing to understand is that very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people. Weird. I was an engineer for about 13 years, and I was good at it by the accounts of others. I’ve now been a PM for 6 years and most of the engineers I looked up to along the way have either become PMs, EMs, or Architects. All of us are well above average IQ. We didn’t lose any IQ points by changing job roles. I would suggest that if the basis of your world view is that other people are less intelligent than you due to their job role that you may wish to rethink it. You are placing way too much emphasis on the wrong thing and prejudging your (current and future) work colleagues based on an inaccurate stereotype.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  And I would suggest that the wording of "very likely" implies statistics. The people that need to understand this are the product people, not the developers, who are the ones treated as if they cannot understand.

taude 4y ago

theres a lot of orgs where product people will be onshore and the technies offshore, so the model and barrier kind of makes sense (for this operating model), and typically the Product people will be the more expensive/smarter/critical resource in this case.

kenhwang 4y ago
In my personal experience, that model has rarely led to a good product, good technical implementation, or even good development velocity.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
In this setup you need onshore to manage that offshore team or you're just asking for pain.

rektomatic 4y ago

>very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people I'm guessing you work in the technical side of things?

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
- ButterBiscuits 4y ago
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    - ButterBiscuits 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

esotericimpl 4y ago

The key to this is to only hire "product" people who grew out of either Design or Engineering, Anyone who started as "product" is a wanna be general who provides minimal value. My usual first question to any product candidate is do you find yourself coming from a Design, UX, or Engineering background?

cj 4y ago
I’ve had luck hiring people with “dev bootcamp” level experience who didn’t excel as an engineer post-bootcamp, but know enough technical jargon to communicate, collaborate, and understand engineers. Often these are people who became bored with day to day coding having more interest in the business side of the company
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lliamander 4y ago
People with relevant industry experience, even if non-technical, are also good candidates for product roles.

noobker 4y ago

>very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people Intelligence is multifaceted. That business listens to product and not to engineers could be seen as a type of social intelligence of which engineers are notoriously unskilled. Regardless, framing any portion of your organization as "smarter than" (implicitly "better than") isn't going to help in terms of fostering collaboration.

MajimasEyepatch 4y ago
Also a lot of PMs are former engineers. One could argue a person capable of doing both at a high level is "smarter" than a person who cannot. Certainly they would have a unique perspective compared to people who have only been on one side or the other. But like you said, intelligence is multifaceted, and comparing people's intelligence is pointless and divisive.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  PM is not product, when they get separated from technical in companies, they're literally product, as a team. But more importantly, most of the time what happens is these people have 2, maybe 3 years of experience. They've done enough to be able to roughly understand technology, and that experience helps them communicate with the technical side, but in no way shape or form does that mean they would come anywhere close to that 20 year old vet on the development team. But the flip side isn't true. In companies without that strong delineation between them, it's the 20 year old vet who would be doing what product is doing. Companies who do this are too compartmentalized and they become extremely slow as a result. It's all in an effort to keep technical from having an outsized influence.
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    I have never understood why companies consistently hire people right out of college (often with random degrees unrelated to anything relevant) to tell a team of engineers with 10-20 years of experience what (and often how) to build. Back when I was new, engineers worked directly with subject matter experts and the occasional business analyst. Now we’ve mostly replaced SMEs with product, and I don’t think it’s working out.

robocat 4y ago

> putting a racist and a black man in a room Suggestion: Avoid prickly metaphors. Especially ones that imply reader is situated in a particular country? Reason: Everyone can be racist. In a place with only black men, is nobody a racist? Disclaimer: White guy on an Island. Sorry for off-topic content, I try not to make it a habit. I am generally against PC bullshit.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
Did you understand the point? Then communication happened, and oddly enough, communicating succinctly was more important than listing out all possible combinations in an effort for perfection.
- robocat 4y ago
  Your tone comes across to me as “snarky” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment completely ignores my point! My point is that I want conversations on this site to be worthwhile, and divisive thinking tends to destroy that. Your example “black man” is unnecessary and creates a divisive context. I think you make the same category of error in your implied definitions of “engineer” and “intelligence”. If you might spend some time to read through the comment tree below your GP comment, and try and understand why various people are reacting, I think that would help you and the HN community. Aside: Yes, I did understand “the point” which was written about in the article. Disclaimer: I have no HN superpowers. Edit: What outcome do you want for yourself by commenting here? For me, I want to read insightful comments, and I want to practice my thinking by challenging myself to think about topics that others know more about.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    your post was unnecessary, delete it and move on.

tristor 4y ago

> The thing to understand is that very likely your technical people are smarter than your product people. Weird. I was an engineer for about 13 years, and I was good at it by the accounts of others. I’ve now been a PM for 6 years and most of the engineers I looked up to along the way have either become PMs, EMs, or Architects. All of us are well above average IQ. We didn’t lose any IQ points by changing job roles. I would suggest that if the basis of your world view is that other people are less intelligent than you due to their job role that you may wish to rethink it. You are placing way too much emphasis on the wrong thing and prejudging your (current and future) work colleagues based on an inaccurate stereotype.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
And I would suggest that the wording of "very likely" implies statistics. The people that need to understand this are the product people, not the developers, who are the ones treated as if they cannot understand.