6 ms·
I never had a great impression of PMs when I was at Microsoft. The enduring image is, after asking a pointed question or raising an objection, watching some PM
by bcbrown 12y ago
I never had a great impression of PMs when I was at Microsoft. The enduring image is, after asking a pointed question or raising an objection, watching some PM respond with a bunch of meaningless verbiage while nodding their head as if they're agreeing, when in fact they're disregarding every dissenting view.
That said, PMs at MS have a very challenging job, at least in the parts of Windows where I worked. The joke about MS being a bunch of separate orgs at war with each other was very real, and PMs were the ones who had to cajole, convince, and sell other teams on why they should spend their time doing something that would enable the PM's team to do something they wanted to do. They were the ones who chased people down and got them to agree to do something necessary.
- kyllo 12y agoIn other words they play the politics to free up the devs to focus on writing code. Yep, that's what PMs are for.
- javierluraschi 12y agoFocus on getting rid of the politics, right? Otherwise you end up having to PM-up and hire more PMs to out-PM the other org. Fun times.
- kyllo 12y agoWell, you can never get rid of politics, they're like death and taxes. You can only make the politics more equitable by setting up a system that distributes power more evenly and resists its concentration in the hands of the greedy.
- javierluraschi 12y agoI agree, politics will never disappear completely. In a democracy, we vote, we elect representatives, etc. But the amount of people in society that dedicate their lives completely to politics is low. Maybe 1% of the population works in politics at most? Anything higher than that in a corporation, is probably a sign of inefficiency.
- kyllo 12y agoAgree, many workers having to spend a large portion of their time politicking is highly inefficient. Someone has to put their head down and do the actual work at some point. But at the same time I think understanding politics and power, and having a little political skill, is important for everyone because it's how you convince others to help you get things done. People who see office politics as an inscrutable evil just get frustrated when they can't convince anyone to listen to their opinions. And they're easier to exploit and manipulate. Knowing how the political game works is the best way to protect yourself from those who would play it against you. And if you're too busy doing actual work to play the game, then you need a good PM who you really trust to play it on your behalf.
- javierluraschi 12y agoWho "exploits and manipulates" developers? If the answer is their dev manager/lead, good, that's their "job" (being sarcastic here); but yeah, I expect from my boss to give me some direction when needed. However, I think you are pointing out that devs get "exploited and manipulated" by, surprise, other PMs. I really can't think of someone else that is good at this. So yeah, just remove PMs that are specialized in "politics". Now, if you remove "politics" PMs then you could argue that customer support, cross-team requests, etc. will impact developers. In this case, dev managers/leads should prioritize those requests and it should be painful to take away dev time to serve other tasks. If it's painful you will probably invest time in fixing the customer support issue rather than managing your customers. If you are spending too much time serving marketing requests, maybe you just have a bad product that needs improvements before it gets shipped, etc. I really don't believe easing politics is the way to go.