> How could a non-technical person decide what is to be built? Agreed. My somewhat controversial position is that the rise to power of product management has r

> How could a non-technical person decide what is to be built? Agreed. My somewhat controversial position is that the rise to power of product management has ruined silicon valley. We now have non-technical PMs making decisions about technical details and prioritizations they are not qualified to have an opinion on. This leads to endless technical debt, security vulnerabilities, scalability problems, fragile systems, etc. It used to be that PMs brought in requirements from actual customers and provided reasoned direction on where the product should go given what customers wanted and the competitive landscape. This was taken as a strong signal by engineering but ultimately it was engineering leadership that decided how to fit it into the roadmap along with all the other factors mentioned above (sane architecture, security, scalability, etc). Today in most organizations, these other factors have no seat in the table and we only have PMs managing jira sprint stories, with the inevitable outcome of lousy products.