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It's a fairly harsh take, as a whole, but there's parts of this that absolutely ring true. Once you get that "product org" in a company, it tends to progress th

It's a fairly harsh take, as a whole, but there's parts of this that absolutely ring true. Once you get that "product org" in a company, it tends to progress the way the author describes, with committees and OKRs and review cycles and planning and a lot of bureaucracy. I took, naively, a product manager job at one place I worked, thinking it would finally give me formal control over the product that I'd been previously asserting through influence - very successfully - in my client-facing sales engineering role. Of course as soon as I got in the chair I discovered it was a highly-constrained clerical job that I was completely unsuited to. Managing tickets and a backlog; coordinating decisions instead of making them; writing interminable powerpoint reports; the most creative thing was putting together a process for the company to follow in formalizing its product roadmaps. I lasted six months before running away. The function is quite useful in supplying some visibility into what's getting built and in managing conflicting priorities for a growing product, but one thing it is not is shaping or controlling the evolution of the product in any way. It's a sorting, filtering, and (if you're lucky) a data collection function, producing an auditable decision trail and an impression of maturity in decision making which helps the MBAs higher up sleep a little easier.

squirrel6 3y ago
I agree. So, I think the question is, how do you effectively implement stewardship and accountability on product matters without having an organization strictly dedicated to it? The author doesn’t give much of a framework here
deleted 3y ago
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carlivar 3y ago
Ultimately the issue is a lack of clear roles and responsibilities of a PM role defined, and a lack of accountability. I agree with you that the "product org" is an entity that can become a political and bureaucratic entity rather than an enabler. Personally, I think the Product role should be embedded within engineering teams and report up to the same leaders (level is debatable) so that a bad PM can be dealt with just like a bad engineer. Of course if your company can't get rid of bad engineers either, you have other problems.
cmuguythrow 3y ago
Just to offer you another perspective: In all of the (B2C) companies in which I have worked as a PM (three, across two different industries), I have been closely involved in shaping and controlling the evolution of the product. My normal month has always consisted of creating anywhere from four to twelve unique proposals (PRDs) for new features for the company to build, with the number created varying based on the size of the company and the amount of process needed as a result. But regardless, it has always looked like: "Our users currently have X problem, and we should build Y to solve it. Y looks like this...". Yes this comes with some coordination and communication challenges, but those are always in service of figuring out what to build next. I understand not all PM roles are like this, but I do disagree that PM never gets better than "sorting/filtering/decision maturity theatre". I am curious: if you were simply ordering an existing backlog, who was defining the new items to add to the backlog?
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Is that not a straight up engineering job? A good chunk of "engineer school" is practicing "customer has an issue, design a solution" type problems, in-between all the math.
  - melevittfl 3y ago
    Customers are rarely able to express their underlying issue. They usually communicate what they think the solution is. A good product person is able to drill down to the fundamental problem the customer really has and articulate that to engineers. Also, good product people should be evaluating the customers problem in terms of the whole market. After all, engineering is a limited resource. So you need to solve the problems that exist for your target market, not just a single customer. Of course, I’ve seen good engineers who can do this, but it takes time and effort to sift through all of the customers issues and work out which ones to solve. So product managers are focused on this to free up the good engineers to design solutions to those problems.
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      >Customers are rarely able to express their underlying issue. They usually communicate what they think the solution is. In my experience the vast majority of PMs do exactly this. Half of my job since I became a staff+ engineer almost a decade ago is taking “solutions” from product managers and trying to figure out what they really want.

squirrel6 3y ago

I agree. So, I think the question is, how do you effectively implement stewardship and accountability on product matters without having an organization strictly dedicated to it? The author doesn’t give much of a framework here

deleted 3y ago

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carlivar 3y ago

Ultimately the issue is a lack of clear roles and responsibilities of a PM role defined, and a lack of accountability. I agree with you that the "product org" is an entity that can become a political and bureaucratic entity rather than an enabler. Personally, I think the Product role should be embedded within engineering teams and report up to the same leaders (level is debatable) so that a bad PM can be dealt with just like a bad engineer. Of course if your company can't get rid of bad engineers either, you have other problems.

cmuguythrow 3y ago

Just to offer you another perspective: In all of the (B2C) companies in which I have worked as a PM (three, across two different industries), I have been closely involved in shaping and controlling the evolution of the product. My normal month has always consisted of creating anywhere from four to twelve unique proposals (PRDs) for new features for the company to build, with the number created varying based on the size of the company and the amount of process needed as a result. But regardless, it has always looked like: "Our users currently have X problem, and we should build Y to solve it. Y looks like this...". Yes this comes with some coordination and communication challenges, but those are always in service of figuring out what to build next. I understand not all PM roles are like this, but I do disagree that PM never gets better than "sorting/filtering/decision maturity theatre". I am curious: if you were simply ordering an existing backlog, who was defining the new items to add to the backlog?

AlotOfReading 3y ago
Is that not a straight up engineering job? A good chunk of "engineer school" is practicing "customer has an issue, design a solution" type problems, in-between all the math.
- melevittfl 3y ago
  Customers are rarely able to express their underlying issue. They usually communicate what they think the solution is. A good product person is able to drill down to the fundamental problem the customer really has and articulate that to engineers. Also, good product people should be evaluating the customers problem in terms of the whole market. After all, engineering is a limited resource. So you need to solve the problems that exist for your target market, not just a single customer. Of course, I’ve seen good engineers who can do this, but it takes time and effort to sift through all of the customers issues and work out which ones to solve. So product managers are focused on this to free up the good engineers to design solutions to those problems.
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    >Customers are rarely able to express their underlying issue. They usually communicate what they think the solution is. In my experience the vast majority of PMs do exactly this. Half of my job since I became a staff+ engineer almost a decade ago is taking “solutions” from product managers and trying to figure out what they really want.