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How will you define a good PM? I have been looking for this definition for a while. In my startup experience, it seems to me the best PMs are the CTO and the e

How will you define a good PM? I have been looking for this definition for a while. In my startup experience, it seems to me the best PMs are the CTO and the early engineers who has near infinite business and user context.

whstl 1y ago
Same experience, IME founders make amazing PMs, because they care about the company and they care about people not wasting their time. Not OP, but I can answer: They're ok with ideas coming from someone else, check the ego at the door and listen to both engineers and customers. They make engineers work less and produce more value. Most important, they don't have a "vision", they help organize the team so the team has a shared vision built by the team. EDIT: Also: They're not competing with the engineering manager or lead developer for some sort of leadership. They're talking with customers instead of asking sales to do it. They're working on the product aspect of tasks instead of offloading them to engineers.
- icedchai 1y ago
  yes! The best PMs I've worked with have been founders.
- jamesfinlayson 1y ago
  > They're not competing with the engineering manager or lead developer for some sort of leadership. Yep. Most of the managers that I've had that have been promoted from engineering have felt that their role is also tech lead, and have been poor at both being a tech lead and a product manager.
  - whstl 1y ago
    Definitely agree. I worked one of those in the past, and the attempts at micromanagement were not only absurd but very disruptive. I now prefer "non-technical" PMs to "half-technical".
icedchai 1y ago
Communicates well, focuses on the people, problems and solutions, not tools and processes. Example: good PM will build a mock up of a UI, go over it in detail with engineers, then let them break up their own work. They are focused on the actual product. Bad PM will write 10 Jira tickets without any real context, assign them without discussion, then add 20 different tracking fields that nobody will use.
NickC25 1y ago
Was a PM before I went off and started my own non-tech company. My definition of a good PM is someone who can champion both customers/users and developers concurrently, while sticking to the company's value prop and competitive edge. In some cases, it's boiling down the needs of the customer into something achievable before sales gets in the way with over-promising and under-delivering. In other cases, it's telling the executives to stop wasting engineering's time with excessive meetings and scope-creep. It could be simply going and getting the engineers coffee. It could also be telling engineering to stop over-engineering the MVP and to simply get what needs to be done, done. In simple terms, someone who can go to bat for any facet of the company at any time externally or internally, in order to make sure right product is being built in a timely manner that aligns with both business needs and most importantly, customer needs.
- qznc 1y ago
  Trying to make it more like a checklist: * Do the developers know what the customers want? * Do the customers have realistic expectations? If yes to both, then the PM in between is doing a good job. Bonus points if higher management is aware of that.
  - NickC25 1y ago
    Exactly. A good PM should effectively get out in front of the sales team to make sure customers/users feel heard and understood, and also to communicate to the customers/users what is and isn't possible within a given period of time. A good PM should also know how to communicate a "no" to anyone in the business cycle from anyone else in the business cycle. Their job is effectively to be the firewall/filter from one team to another. No, customers don't want Feature XYZ even though engineering wants to build it No, engineering can't build Feature ABC even if a customer wants it No, sales cannot promise Feature 123 to customer, especially without checking with engineering first. No, executives can't force engineering to focus on the CMO's pet project, or force sales to hit numbers if the product sucks or isn't what the market wants And so on
nicoburns 1y ago
> it seems to me the best PMs are the CTO and the early engineers who has near infinite business and user context. That's basically the role of the PM: to have all the business and user context and to use that to harmonise vision between the various "stakeholders" (parts of the business, users/clients, etc). But one doesn't have to be the CTO or an early engineer to have this context/skillset.

whstl 1y ago

Same experience, IME founders make amazing PMs, because they care about the company and they care about people not wasting their time. Not OP, but I can answer: They're ok with ideas coming from someone else, check the ego at the door and listen to both engineers and customers. They make engineers work less and produce more value. Most important, they don't have a "vision", they help organize the team so the team has a shared vision built by the team. EDIT: Also: They're not competing with the engineering manager or lead developer for some sort of leadership. They're talking with customers instead of asking sales to do it. They're working on the product aspect of tasks instead of offloading them to engineers.

icedchai 1y ago
yes! The best PMs I've worked with have been founders.
jamesfinlayson 1y ago
> They're not competing with the engineering manager or lead developer for some sort of leadership. Yep. Most of the managers that I've had that have been promoted from engineering have felt that their role is also tech lead, and have been poor at both being a tech lead and a product manager.
- whstl 1y ago
  Definitely agree. I worked one of those in the past, and the attempts at micromanagement were not only absurd but very disruptive. I now prefer "non-technical" PMs to "half-technical".

icedchai 1y ago

Communicates well, focuses on the people, problems and solutions, not tools and processes. Example: good PM will build a mock up of a UI, go over it in detail with engineers, then let them break up their own work. They are focused on the actual product. Bad PM will write 10 Jira tickets without any real context, assign them without discussion, then add 20 different tracking fields that nobody will use.

NickC25 1y ago

Was a PM before I went off and started my own non-tech company. My definition of a good PM is someone who can champion both customers/users and developers concurrently, while sticking to the company's value prop and competitive edge. In some cases, it's boiling down the needs of the customer into something achievable before sales gets in the way with over-promising and under-delivering. In other cases, it's telling the executives to stop wasting engineering's time with excessive meetings and scope-creep. It could be simply going and getting the engineers coffee. It could also be telling engineering to stop over-engineering the MVP and to simply get what needs to be done, done. In simple terms, someone who can go to bat for any facet of the company at any time externally or internally, in order to make sure right product is being built in a timely manner that aligns with both business needs and most importantly, customer needs.

qznc 1y ago
Trying to make it more like a checklist: * Do the developers know what the customers want? * Do the customers have realistic expectations? If yes to both, then the PM in between is doing a good job. Bonus points if higher management is aware of that.
- NickC25 1y ago
  Exactly. A good PM should effectively get out in front of the sales team to make sure customers/users feel heard and understood, and also to communicate to the customers/users what is and isn't possible within a given period of time. A good PM should also know how to communicate a "no" to anyone in the business cycle from anyone else in the business cycle. Their job is effectively to be the firewall/filter from one team to another. No, customers don't want Feature XYZ even though engineering wants to build it No, engineering can't build Feature ABC even if a customer wants it No, sales cannot promise Feature 123 to customer, especially without checking with engineering first. No, executives can't force engineering to focus on the CMO's pet project, or force sales to hit numbers if the product sucks or isn't what the market wants And so on

nicoburns 1y ago

> it seems to me the best PMs are the CTO and the early engineers who has near infinite business and user context. That's basically the role of the PM: to have all the business and user context and to use that to harmonise vision between the various "stakeholders" (parts of the business, users/clients, etc). But one doesn't have to be the CTO or an early engineer to have this context/skillset.