8 ms·

> Very few engineers want to maintain relationships with customers, interview users to identify potential features, manage leadership, play politics for resourc

> Very few engineers want to maintain relationships with customers, interview users to identify potential features, manage leadership, play politics for resource allocation, and so on Ah, so that's what a product manager is supposed to do. When product managers were introduced at a company I worked at, they did very little of any of that. They certainly weren't speaking to customers. They weren't technical, so they weren't managing our Jira tickets. And "managing leadership" fell mostly on our managers' plates. I think the PMs mostly had meetings, talked to leadership, talked to engineers, wrote documents, and presided over the (now very long) sprint planning meetings. I can imagine product managers that did your list of things being a lot more valuable.

jpatt 3y ago
Sounds a lot more like a project or program manager than a product manager.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Nevertheless it is the role called "product manager" at many companies.
- moandcompany 3y ago
  And ironically it seem like the things you'd positively attribute here to a product manager used to be/are actually part of the scope of what was traditionally a "project manager" or "program manager." For example, look at the scope and definition of a "program manager" from Microsoft or the US DoD in the 1980s, 1990s+, as well as literature describing the role of a program manager and the discipline from that time.
  - lukevp 3y ago
    Why’s that ironic? There didn’t used to be frontend / backend / full stack devs either. As software engineering has matured and grown in scale, more subdivision of responsibilities is a natural outcome of that. We’re not all just directly writing code on mainframes and our customers aren’t just < 1k of users who directly call us on the phone if something goes wrong anymore, it’s millions of people using services 24x7 now. MS wasn’t making real-time collaboration systems and cloud sync in the 80s and 90s. They were making a stand-alone offline machine that barely could install device drivers and didn’t know what the internet was. Completely different products, and much simpler.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      What subdivision of responsibilities? Clients and servers were divided for as long as clients and servers existed. Full stack is aggregation of responsibilities. DevOps too. Dedicated QA is rare now. Most companies with product managers have fewer customers and less complex products than 1990s Microsoft.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yep, a common pitfall is to not understand how product managers are supposed to do, and thus they just do project management, which often has neutral or negative value.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    I've seen competent project managers work very hard to achieve that neutral-value proposition. I haven't yet seen any one succeed. In my experience, as soon as you decide your projects will be formal and managed, you are already doomed to that negative value.
    - midasuni 3y ago
      Sometimes you need a formal project. We’re kitting out a new office over the next couple of years, it’s a major programme of multiple projects, all which interact. At the end of it though we have a building fit for purposes following the plans currently set. I’m sure those plans will adjust a little, but the end date is January 2025, or July, or something - I’m sure the date will slip. You can’t build a £20m facility with a series of sprints.
      - marcosdumay 3y ago
        Well, the Empire State Building was famously built as a series of sprints... You need a formal design. This doesn't mean you need a formal project. Some amount of planning ahead very obviously helps, but how much is debatable, and when you have people whose sole specialization is "planning ahead", you are certainly past the point where it's too much. Anyway, the most valuable people are the ones "planning behind", looking for what was left broken and could be done better from now on. Project management defines those people out of existence.
        trog 3y ago
        Think of the "formal project" is the API by which executing the design can be understood by all stakeholders. It is a high level abstraction that allows all parties to understand what they need to do and when they need to do it. For large projects it is simply essential - you need your external vendors to plan their availability, months or sometimes years in ahead, so that they can commit to the timeline. If you're lucky enough to work on large software projects where there are no managers or other stakeholders asking "and how long will this take, exactly?" then maybe the design is enough. But pretending planning ahead on large projects that is something that will just happen by osmosis or people "just doing it" simply won't work. Good project managers who do what they're supposed to are worth their weight in gold (just like good product managers).
glimshe 3y ago
It sounds like you had a project manager, not a product manager. A good product manager is very valuable.
- ragestorm 3y ago
  Agree. Similar to a developer vs. SWE.
  - boredtofears 3y ago
    there is no difference between a developer and an SWE except a fancy title
    - jefftk 3y ago
      Which one is fancier?
      - JCharante 3y ago
        Software Development Engineer is the one title to rule them all
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    Disagree. Project manager is extremely different to product. Dev vs SWE is completely arbitrary
  - coldtrait 3y ago
    [dead]
  - elicksaur 3y ago
    What do you see as the difference between a developer and a SWE?
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      One is DevOps and one is a programmer
jack_h 3y ago
It changes between companies. At my company the Product Owner is the one who maintains the relationship with customers. Product Managers are there for prioritizing the feature requests. We also have Project Managers for inter-project dependency tracking and Engineering Managers for resource allocation and work output.
haizhung 3y ago
I think that’s the challenging part. A product manager is supposed to stuff holes in your team that no one else currently does. Do you have a strong TL with a good product sense? Then the PM should probably spend their time talking to customers, and not interfere with the engineering team so much. Do you have a good UX team, but the engineering team is just a bit too big to be comfortable? Then the PM should work with the team to streamline communications and processes. The hard part about this is that on the one hand, you need a PM that is experienced enough that they can set up processes and be disciplined enough to make sure they are followed. On the other hand, you need a PM that is able to embrace the chaos on aspects of the teams organization where it is beneficial for the team. Oh, and also they should be a domain expert, if possible. Know SQL. Know how to talk to management. Etc. I think if you have a good one, it is a strong force multiplier for the team. If you have a bad one, it is a force subtractor. And it is extremely difficult to tell beforehand (or even while they are actually working in that team!) which kind of PM you have. It’s one of those roles that, if it’s done perfectly, people won’t be sure whether you have done anything at all. But I agree with the premise that there are probably too many bad ones in circulation right now.
bruce511 3y ago
There are certainly more bad managers than good ones. (Just like programmers.) So it follows there will be more anecdotes about bad managers than good ones. With respect, if you've never had a good, or great, manager then I understand it'll be hard to envision a good one. I say this not to invalidate your anecdote but yo say that managers, like programmers, are not created equal and they cannot just be swapped like burgers at macdonalds.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
My experience with product managers is that they wedge themselves between the business and the technical teams and then wield political power while doing very little. I'm currently trying desperately to get two different PM's to talk to each other so we can be consistent with permissions sets across two different projects. Both projects use the same set of API's. One of the PM's is basically incognito, the other has actively been trying to avoid doing any of the work. But the technical teams will get blamed for this, I know because I've watched these same PM's blame the technical teams for their own failings on other projects. I'm with the article, fuck Product Managers, grab a senior developer and let him or her spend part of their time interfacing with business while also teaching the younger developers the skills necessary to do it. The problem isn't that their responsibilities aren't useful, it's that there shouldn't be a role dedicated to their responsibilities, it immediately draws moats around everything and suddenly the need for communication and collaboration jumps through the roof because the people in that role don't understand the technology the way a senior developer would. There's a segment of the developer population that wants to put their head in the sand, do their job, and clock out. These developers are low value and will never be able to take on the role described above.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > My experience with product managers is that they wedge themselves between the business and the technical teams and then wield political power while doing very little. There's a large number of companies where the company is the one wedging the PMs there. My view is that a PMs job should include (but not be limited to) diplomacy, negotiation and facilitation. But if your heart isn't in that (and it can be easy to become disheartened), then it easily becomes "politics", and the worst parts of politics, at that.
- foota 3y ago
  I wonder if part of the gap here is about whether a company is B2B or B2C. In my experience at a largely B2B company, the product managers are people that aren't necessarily technical, but have experience in the relevant domain and meet with customers to find out what they need and coordinate launches etc., with them. I don't know if the same role makes as much sense at a B2C company, so maybe people are B2Bs see their value and people at B2C companies don't as much?
alexchantavy 3y ago
I feel like that list of responsibilities describes a staff engineer too

jpatt 3y ago

Sounds a lot more like a project or program manager than a product manager.

ajkjk 3y ago
Nevertheless it is the role called "product manager" at many companies.
moandcompany 3y ago
And ironically it seem like the things you'd positively attribute here to a product manager used to be/are actually part of the scope of what was traditionally a "project manager" or "program manager." For example, look at the scope and definition of a "program manager" from Microsoft or the US DoD in the 1980s, 1990s+, as well as literature describing the role of a program manager and the discipline from that time.
- lukevp 3y ago
  Why’s that ironic? There didn’t used to be frontend / backend / full stack devs either. As software engineering has matured and grown in scale, more subdivision of responsibilities is a natural outcome of that. We’re not all just directly writing code on mainframes and our customers aren’t just < 1k of users who directly call us on the phone if something goes wrong anymore, it’s millions of people using services 24x7 now. MS wasn’t making real-time collaboration systems and cloud sync in the 80s and 90s. They were making a stand-alone offline machine that barely could install device drivers and didn’t know what the internet was. Completely different products, and much simpler.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    What subdivision of responsibilities? Clients and servers were divided for as long as clients and servers existed. Full stack is aggregation of responsibilities. DevOps too. Dedicated QA is rare now. Most companies with product managers have fewer customers and less complex products than 1990s Microsoft.
sanderjd 3y ago
Yep, a common pitfall is to not understand how product managers are supposed to do, and thus they just do project management, which often has neutral or negative value.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  I've seen competent project managers work very hard to achieve that neutral-value proposition. I haven't yet seen any one succeed. In my experience, as soon as you decide your projects will be formal and managed, you are already doomed to that negative value.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Sometimes you need a formal project. We’re kitting out a new office over the next couple of years, it’s a major programme of multiple projects, all which interact. At the end of it though we have a building fit for purposes following the plans currently set. I’m sure those plans will adjust a little, but the end date is January 2025, or July, or something - I’m sure the date will slip. You can’t build a £20m facility with a series of sprints.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      Well, the Empire State Building was famously built as a series of sprints... You need a formal design. This doesn't mean you need a formal project. Some amount of planning ahead very obviously helps, but how much is debatable, and when you have people whose sole specialization is "planning ahead", you are certainly past the point where it's too much. Anyway, the most valuable people are the ones "planning behind", looking for what was left broken and could be done better from now on. Project management defines those people out of existence.
      - trog 3y ago
        Think of the "formal project" is the API by which executing the design can be understood by all stakeholders. It is a high level abstraction that allows all parties to understand what they need to do and when they need to do it. For large projects it is simply essential - you need your external vendors to plan their availability, months or sometimes years in ahead, so that they can commit to the timeline. If you're lucky enough to work on large software projects where there are no managers or other stakeholders asking "and how long will this take, exactly?" then maybe the design is enough. But pretending planning ahead on large projects that is something that will just happen by osmosis or people "just doing it" simply won't work. Good project managers who do what they're supposed to are worth their weight in gold (just like good product managers).

glimshe 3y ago

It sounds like you had a project manager, not a product manager. A good product manager is very valuable.

ragestorm 3y ago
Agree. Similar to a developer vs. SWE.
- boredtofears 3y ago
  there is no difference between a developer and an SWE except a fancy title
  - jefftk 3y ago
    Which one is fancier?
    - JCharante 3y ago
      Software Development Engineer is the one title to rule them all
- willsmith72 3y ago
  Disagree. Project manager is extremely different to product. Dev vs SWE is completely arbitrary
- coldtrait 3y ago
  [dead]
- elicksaur 3y ago
  What do you see as the difference between a developer and a SWE?
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    One is DevOps and one is a programmer

jack_h 3y ago

It changes between companies. At my company the Product Owner is the one who maintains the relationship with customers. Product Managers are there for prioritizing the feature requests. We also have Project Managers for inter-project dependency tracking and Engineering Managers for resource allocation and work output.

haizhung 3y ago

I think that’s the challenging part. A product manager is supposed to stuff holes in your team that no one else currently does. Do you have a strong TL with a good product sense? Then the PM should probably spend their time talking to customers, and not interfere with the engineering team so much. Do you have a good UX team, but the engineering team is just a bit too big to be comfortable? Then the PM should work with the team to streamline communications and processes. The hard part about this is that on the one hand, you need a PM that is experienced enough that they can set up processes and be disciplined enough to make sure they are followed. On the other hand, you need a PM that is able to embrace the chaos on aspects of the teams organization where it is beneficial for the team. Oh, and also they should be a domain expert, if possible. Know SQL. Know how to talk to management. Etc. I think if you have a good one, it is a strong force multiplier for the team. If you have a bad one, it is a force subtractor. And it is extremely difficult to tell beforehand (or even while they are actually working in that team!) which kind of PM you have. It’s one of those roles that, if it’s done perfectly, people won’t be sure whether you have done anything at all. But I agree with the premise that there are probably too many bad ones in circulation right now.

bruce511 3y ago

There are certainly more bad managers than good ones. (Just like programmers.) So it follows there will be more anecdotes about bad managers than good ones. With respect, if you've never had a good, or great, manager then I understand it'll be hard to envision a good one. I say this not to invalidate your anecdote but yo say that managers, like programmers, are not created equal and they cannot just be swapped like burgers at macdonalds.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

My experience with product managers is that they wedge themselves between the business and the technical teams and then wield political power while doing very little. I'm currently trying desperately to get two different PM's to talk to each other so we can be consistent with permissions sets across two different projects. Both projects use the same set of API's. One of the PM's is basically incognito, the other has actively been trying to avoid doing any of the work. But the technical teams will get blamed for this, I know because I've watched these same PM's blame the technical teams for their own failings on other projects. I'm with the article, fuck Product Managers, grab a senior developer and let him or her spend part of their time interfacing with business while also teaching the younger developers the skills necessary to do it. The problem isn't that their responsibilities aren't useful, it's that there shouldn't be a role dedicated to their responsibilities, it immediately draws moats around everything and suddenly the need for communication and collaboration jumps through the roof because the people in that role don't understand the technology the way a senior developer would. There's a segment of the developer population that wants to put their head in the sand, do their job, and clock out. These developers are low value and will never be able to take on the role described above.

FireBeyond 3y ago
> My experience with product managers is that they wedge themselves between the business and the technical teams and then wield political power while doing very little. There's a large number of companies where the company is the one wedging the PMs there. My view is that a PMs job should include (but not be limited to) diplomacy, negotiation and facilitation. But if your heart isn't in that (and it can be easy to become disheartened), then it easily becomes "politics", and the worst parts of politics, at that.
foota 3y ago
I wonder if part of the gap here is about whether a company is B2B or B2C. In my experience at a largely B2B company, the product managers are people that aren't necessarily technical, but have experience in the relevant domain and meet with customers to find out what they need and coordinate launches etc., with them. I don't know if the same role makes as much sense at a B2C company, so maybe people are B2Bs see their value and people at B2C companies don't as much?

alexchantavy 3y ago

I feel like that list of responsibilities describes a staff engineer too