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Speaking as a technical lead with a decade and a half of experience shipping web products solo and with small teams never exceeding 10 people, I can assure you
by dasil003 14y ago
Speaking as a technical lead with a decade and a half of experience shipping web products solo and with small teams never exceeding 10 people, I can assure you that there very much is a place for a product manager in a great many products. In fact we just hired a product manager and it's a huge weight off my shoulders. Requiring all developers to be responsible for strategic thinking at all times is at odds with low-level focus needed to ship great software. A good PM is someone developers can trust to have the high level picture in mind at all times so the devs can focus on the necessary details.
- Gormo 14y agoI believe he's referring to project managers, not product managers. The latter certainly have a crucial role in understanding how the product fits into the market, and undertaking the kind of strategic thinking you're talking about. The role of the former, however, is usually to manage work scheduling and intra-team coordination, which, the OP is arguing, is something that programmers can generally handle on their own.