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Deeply flawed analogy. Engineers operate in the same organizational structure as PMs. Also, in product feature teams it is up to the debate whether PMs provide

Deeply flawed analogy. Engineers operate in the same organizational structure as PMs. Also, in product feature teams it is up to the debate whether PMs provide any value, if you put engineers closer to customers. For the PM role to work, they need to convey customer requirements to product requirements. I have never seen a PM do a better job at this in comparison to just sending a TL to a video call with a client.

pjmlp 1y ago
All the projects I have been part of where this idea took place, either were a complete failure, or eventually one engineer sacrificed themselves into a PM role to help steer the cat herd into something sensible. Unless it is a team of senior folks with top skills, the team manages itself never works.
crazygringo 1y ago
> Engineers operate in the same organizational structure as PMs. I don't know what this means. Engineers are not generally spending half their time talking to management, marketing, sales, customers, and other stakeholders. > Also, in product feature teams it is up to the debate whether PMs provide any value, if you put engineers closer to customers. For the PM role to work, they need to convey customer requirements to product requirements. I have never seen a PM do a better job at this in comparison to just sending a TL to a video call with a client. Great, but ten different clients want ten different product requirements, that in fact contradict each other. And it takes ten hours of calls to talk to those ten customers. Plenty of engineers could certainly do the PM job. Many PM's come from engineering. But the point is that it's far more efficient and effective to have one person doing that, and let engineers do the engineering. That's the value. As an engineer, do you want to spend 20 hours every week talking to customers and writing feature specifications and managing a backlog? Or do you want to do, you know, engineering? Just because you could do the PM job doesn't mean that's an efficient use of your time, or what you enjoy doing.
- gregorygoc 1y ago
  Any efficiency gains which come from cleaner organization structure are gone because of the lossy translation mechanism between a PM and Eng team. You can argue that good PMs translate requirements perfectly, but this is a rare skill and I’m just saying I’ve never seen it from someone in this role. Perceived enjoyment of one’s role is a separate topic, but not completely orthogonal. If someone just wants to code and they force them to be a PM then their personal productivity might drop. This is why I asserted in the beginning I’m talking about feature teams, where a role fit I described is more likely. As engineering becomes less expensive with generative models I can imagine efficiency tilts even further in favor of engineers doing more PM-like work.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    > As engineering becomes less expensive with generative models So, not in this decade?
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    > You can argue that good PMs translate requirements perfectly, but this is a rare skill and I’m just saying I’ve never seen it You can also argue that good devs translate requirements into code perfectly with zero bugs, but it's also a rare skill and I've never seen that. Because in the real world, nobody's perfect. The good news is you don't need to be perfect to still add lots of value. Demanding a standard of perfection from others, that I would hazard to guess you do not meet yourself, is rather uncharitable.
    - gregorygoc 1y ago
      For the right set of requirements I can fix bugs in my system with significantly less effort, than rewriting a system which was built with wrong assumptions to begin with. Again, wrong analogy. I don’t demand perfect analogies though. Treat this as rather charitable gesture.
- icedchai 1y ago
  Exactly that. Generally, engineers want to build and not go to meetings all day. The problem happens with the PMs who are supposed to be doing this work don't do it, or do it poorly. You wind up with miscommunications: missing requirements, misunderstood edge cases, etc. This pisses people off big time.

pjmlp 1y ago

All the projects I have been part of where this idea took place, either were a complete failure, or eventually one engineer sacrificed themselves into a PM role to help steer the cat herd into something sensible. Unless it is a team of senior folks with top skills, the team manages itself never works.

crazygringo 1y ago

> Engineers operate in the same organizational structure as PMs. I don't know what this means. Engineers are not generally spending half their time talking to management, marketing, sales, customers, and other stakeholders. > Also, in product feature teams it is up to the debate whether PMs provide any value, if you put engineers closer to customers. For the PM role to work, they need to convey customer requirements to product requirements. I have never seen a PM do a better job at this in comparison to just sending a TL to a video call with a client. Great, but ten different clients want ten different product requirements, that in fact contradict each other. And it takes ten hours of calls to talk to those ten customers. Plenty of engineers could certainly do the PM job. Many PM's come from engineering. But the point is that it's far more efficient and effective to have one person doing that, and let engineers do the engineering. That's the value. As an engineer, do you want to spend 20 hours every week talking to customers and writing feature specifications and managing a backlog? Or do you want to do, you know, engineering? Just because you could do the PM job doesn't mean that's an efficient use of your time, or what you enjoy doing.

gregorygoc 1y ago
Any efficiency gains which come from cleaner organization structure are gone because of the lossy translation mechanism between a PM and Eng team. You can argue that good PMs translate requirements perfectly, but this is a rare skill and I’m just saying I’ve never seen it from someone in this role. Perceived enjoyment of one’s role is a separate topic, but not completely orthogonal. If someone just wants to code and they force them to be a PM then their personal productivity might drop. This is why I asserted in the beginning I’m talking about feature teams, where a role fit I described is more likely. As engineering becomes less expensive with generative models I can imagine efficiency tilts even further in favor of engineers doing more PM-like work.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  > As engineering becomes less expensive with generative models So, not in this decade?
- crazygringo 1y ago
  > You can argue that good PMs translate requirements perfectly, but this is a rare skill and I’m just saying I’ve never seen it You can also argue that good devs translate requirements into code perfectly with zero bugs, but it's also a rare skill and I've never seen that. Because in the real world, nobody's perfect. The good news is you don't need to be perfect to still add lots of value. Demanding a standard of perfection from others, that I would hazard to guess you do not meet yourself, is rather uncharitable.
  - gregorygoc 1y ago
    For the right set of requirements I can fix bugs in my system with significantly less effort, than rewriting a system which was built with wrong assumptions to begin with. Again, wrong analogy. I don’t demand perfect analogies though. Treat this as rather charitable gesture.
icedchai 1y ago
Exactly that. Generally, engineers want to build and not go to meetings all day. The problem happens with the PMs who are supposed to be doing this work don't do it, or do it poorly. You wind up with miscommunications: missing requirements, misunderstood edge cases, etc. This pisses people off big time.