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It makes me wonder whether companies should consider hiring more people dedicated to dealing with the red tape to unblock engineers. I suppose managers to a cer

• acedTrex 4y ago
  This is what a squad lead is SUPPOSED to be doing
• kneebonian 4y ago
  Their called PMs (with P being Project, or Product, or Planning or whaterver) They tend to be people who couldn't cut it as actual engineers, and so they end up in administrative roles, the ones that OP lambasted as writing stories to write stories, and causing more work, because they need things explained to them slowly and with crayons, and that takes more time, because the engineers just want to be left alone meanwhile the PM gets yelled at by customers, and decides to side with the customers and is just one more person yelling at the devs.
  • idiotsecant 4y ago
    This is absolutely a mis-characterization of the average PM, in my experience. If the PMs in your organization act like this you've got bad PM management. The PMs I work with are professional cat-herders and bullshit-filters (both engineer bullshit and management bullshit). They keep projects pushing in the right direction, ask insightful questions to help remove blockers, and are overall a force multiplier.
  • jimbokun 4y ago
    I am extremely grateful for the product manager I work with most often. He saves me a lot of time by organizing communication with other people in the organization that I now don't have to.
  • di456 4y ago
    > They tend to be people who couldn't cut it as actual engineers I don't doubt your experience but it's also a harsh generalization. I've worked with many TPM's who were skilled engineers. It can be a path to transition to management and test the waters before taking on formal management responsibility. Or some people just think differently and are good at managing organizational complexity and finding the actual needs before starting to build things.
• pg5 4y ago
  If your managers aren't doing that, they're neglecting their duties