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"It has to be the only voice"... what? I'm a product manager at a tech company, and the job is listening to that cacophony & prioritizing. Sometimes that's des

"It has to be the only voice"... what? I'm a product manager at a tech company, and the job is listening to that cacophony & prioritizing. Sometimes that's design, sometimes not. It's not black and white

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Program managers* make poor designers, at least in my large company. They often have no training in UX, and all their UX experience is mixed with other stuff that tends to cloud it. Having real UXDs doing the product design is much much better than "design by PM" (its like, do you want your PM to write code for the product also? of course not!) * I know there is a difference between program and product mangers, the latter being more focused on marketing. Edit: keeping it classy with the downvotes, clearly I struck a nerve (more citations in child post).
- olegious 11y ago
  If you think the only difference between project and product managers is "the latter being more focused on marketing," you must work with some terrible product managers...
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    At my company this is true [1]. I personally don't get to work with product managers (who work in biz dev mostly and do not work with developers/researchers/etc...), only program managers. From wiki: > Diverse interpretations regarding the role of the product manager are the norm. The product manager title is often used in many ways to describe drastically different duties and responsibilities. Even within the high-tech industry where product management is better defined, the product manager's job description varies widely among companies. This is due to tradition and intuitive interpretations by different individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager I only mentioned it because I was intentionally talking about project managers, who are often confused with product managers anyways, e.g. see: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/42629-100151081 https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/42629-100151081 [1] http://www.quora.com/What-does-a-Microsoft-Product-Manager-do http://www.quora.com/What-does-a-Microsoft-Product-Manager-d...

seanmcdirmid 11y ago

Program managers* make poor designers, at least in my large company. They often have no training in UX, and all their UX experience is mixed with other stuff that tends to cloud it. Having real UXDs doing the product design is much much better than "design by PM" (its like, do you want your PM to write code for the product also? of course not!) * I know there is a difference between program and product mangers, the latter being more focused on marketing. Edit: keeping it classy with the downvotes, clearly I struck a nerve (more citations in child post).

olegious 11y ago
If you think the only difference between project and product managers is "the latter being more focused on marketing," you must work with some terrible product managers...
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  At my company this is true [1]. I personally don't get to work with product managers (who work in biz dev mostly and do not work with developers/researchers/etc...), only program managers. From wiki: > Diverse interpretations regarding the role of the product manager are the norm. The product manager title is often used in many ways to describe drastically different duties and responsibilities. Even within the high-tech industry where product management is better defined, the product manager's job description varies widely among companies. This is due to tradition and intuitive interpretations by different individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager I only mentioned it because I was intentionally talking about project managers, who are often confused with product managers anyways, e.g. see: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/42629-100151081 https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/42629-100151081 [1] http://www.quora.com/What-does-a-Microsoft-Product-Manager-do http://www.quora.com/What-does-a-Microsoft-Product-Manager-d...