[HN Gopher] Product Shouldn't Be Left to Product Managers ___________________________________________________________________ Product Shouldn't Be Left to Product Managers Author : mooreds Score : 134 points Date : 2022-06-02 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (candost.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (candost.blog) | righttoolforjob wrote: | Product Managers today are many times attempting to be shitty | tech leads rather than actual product managers, which is a | completely different job. If a product manager has more than a | superficial opinion about what engineering is doing, then they | are not a product manager (more than by title). They should feed | the why and when to engineering, nothing more. When do the market | opportunities exist and why? Collect and feed the data to | engineering (as well as other stakeholders). They should not be | the customer proxy, not lead engineering teams, nor be some go-to | person for "final decisions" on design matters. | mips_avatar wrote: | It sounds like you are dealing with a technical program | manager. TPM does/should engage technically, and overlaps | responsibilities with an engineering manager. Not every project | requires a TPM so perhaps yours only requires an engineering | manager/tech lead. | righttoolforjob wrote: | None of what you are saying makes any sense to me. This is | another big problem in the software industry, that roles with | the same name can vary wildly. A little bit like "agile" not | ever quite looking the same and not ever quite working. | | A program manager for me, any kind, relates to the function | of leading and coordinating multiple interrelated projects, | towards a common goal. | mips_avatar wrote: | Yes, as I said not every project needs a TPM. So if your | product manager is trying to take on a TPM role for a | project contained within your team, they aren't really | adding value. | enjo wrote: | Everyone in this thread needs to read this: | https://www.jpattonassociates.com/dual-track-development/ | polote wrote: | Very HN article. The only job that matter in an organization is | developers, product managers are useless, marketing is when you | don't have a product, sales people are liars, Support people | prevent developers to know the problems and so on. | | It's cool sometime to have developers with a product mindset, | because they understand better the value they are bringing and | can help brainstorming. But first if you had only product-mindset | people everyone would want to ship different features and nothing | would be shipped. And also the more time developers spend | understanding customers the less time they spend coding. | | I should probably write a satirical article arguing that "Coding | should not be left to developers as product managers should code | things much closer from their plan" | devoutsalsa wrote: | You're not seeing the bigger picture. Within developers, you | have the 10x developers. But within that, there is the 100x | developer... all of a company's success can be attributed to a | 500kg neckbeard in the basement powered by a caffeine-adderall | intravenous drip (for playing video games, all the actual work | is outsourced to that one guy in Afghanistan => | https://www.theonion.com/more-american-workers- | outsourcing-o...) | MrJohz wrote: | I don't think the article is saying what you're describing at | all, or at least, if it is then I missed it. | | As I understand it, the article is basically just claiming that | to become an outstanding engineer, you can't just code what | you're told to code, you need to understand why any particular | feature is needed. Obviously that doesn't replace user | research, project management, business leadership and strategy, | or anything like that - no developer will also be an expert in | all of those things, and a good business, like any team, has | differentiated roles. But a strong developer understands what's | going on in other places - they understand the overall business | strategy, even if they wouldn't be able to come up with a | strategy on their own; they understand how users are | interacting with their product, even if they aren't doing the | user research themselves, and so on. | | I've worked with a number of developers for whom this sort of | thing was a complete mystery - they could program very well, | but if they were told one day to build one thing, and the next | day to build the opposite, they'd just go away and do that, and | never question why their instructions made no sense. Whereas a | more senior developer would want to understand why they're | getting contradictory instructions, and try and explore whether | there's a non-contradictory solution. | polote wrote: | Well here is the conclusion of the post | | > Simply put, instead of expecting someone (e.g., product | managers) to tell you which product features to develop, you | should be able to tell what are the most critical problems | your users or product are facing and find the best solutions | that fit into your product and engineering strategy. | nrawe wrote: | I agree with your sentiment about the pros/cons of developers | having product mindset. | | I don't know that this a HN-specific thing, but I think roles | very easily become tribes, and everyone thinks their tribe is | superior. E.g. I know architects who think product and | engineers serve architecture, I know engineers who think they | know better than product and give the "yeah-yeah" to | architects, I know product managers who hate architecture and | engineers because they don't see the progress they want. | | I often see this as a struggle for power, normally in | situations where there isn't good psychological safety/team | focus/communication, which leads to a scramble for authority. | Der_Einzige wrote: | I don't care if you view that line of thinking as something | worse satirizing. Companies who treat developers as kings and | get out of their ways produce amazing products, content, and | experiences. Valve is my favorite example of this. More | companies should strive to be like them. | JJMcJ wrote: | Best product managers seem to have one foot still in the user | community. | | This is more common for internal applications, where you have a | PM and likely one or more actual users involved in the project. | | That means when there is a new requirement two days before go- | live, there's usually a meaningful reason, not just that a VP had | a flash of inspiration the night before. | [deleted] | quelltext wrote: | The best experiences I had were working on products I cared about | deeply in a way a PM should AND there actually was a PM involved | who did care about them. In fact everybody involved should. | | However, in a project there is a bunch of stuff you need to do | that's mainly specific to product management. Tracking the | feedback, talking to users, coordination with other product | teams, covering the nontechnical pieces, etc. Every stakeholder | does their thing. The PM in most cases doesn't code, a legal or | compliance stakeholder doesn't try to talk to users or come up | with product feature roadmaps, the engineers don't create the | artwork etc. | | The shittiest experience is when you work on a product with a | formal PM but you wonder what it even is they are doing, not | engaging in shaping the details just signing off, not talking to | stakeholders, etc. and you, the engineer, has to fill in. Buuut | you also cannot just do whatever because the PM exists and needs | to be consulted. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | You could say this for almost any primarily supportive role. | Individuals forget these roles bring nothing on their own and | exist entirely to empower ICs. Conversely, that means they can | disenfranchise ICs and be a net loss just as easily. | | They aren't useless, but one could argue the industry needs a | reality check on how many of these supportive roles need to | exist (in terms of quantity) and how many of these individuals | are contributing anything. There are plenty of bad stories | ranging from "benevolent but capable" to "clearly power | tripping and a drain". | OkayPhysicist wrote: | Part of this problem, IMO, is that we as a society have | largely eliminated subordinate supporting roles, in favor of | adding more organizational work to both the ICs and | management tier. Which leads to needing more managers, which | leads to beaurocratic bloat as the people who have the power | to make decisions end up being in a position where increasing | management overhead improves their standing. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | It all went downhill once we decided ICs should not only | take care of the bureaucracy, but also adapt to supporter | roles rather than the other way around. I won't rail | against the usefulness of soft skills, but requiring almost | every IC to be a well-spoken social butterfly just seems | lazy in the face of the ridiculous number of supporting | roles. | | Ideally it'd be more 50/50 (help-me-help-you kind of deal), | but right now it feels incredibly one-sided at most places. | [deleted] | Jare wrote: | I've seen and lived what you describe on occasion and it sucks. | Managing the features does not mean deciding them, just like | programming the features does not mean deciding them. Same for | all disciplines. Establishing the process and responsibilities | around which decisions are made is the hardest part of | directing a project, and the default often ends up becoming "I | direct thus I decide". | aqme28 wrote: | I've had that product manager before. The real Shittiest PM | isn't the one who's absent, it's the one who does too much but | not well. Constantly shifting priorities, unclear, yet rigid | guidance, and unrealistic targets. | steveBK123 wrote: | I have a PM who basically makes A/B choices as presented by | tech leads, and leaves it to tech leads/devs to meet with | users.. | golover721 wrote: | Unfortunately I have found that a really good Product Manager is | an extremely rare thing. However the best organizations and teams | I have worked on have always had strong product management. There | seems to be a general lack of education and training on how to be | a product manager. Too often folks from other disciplines, such | as Engineering transfer into the role with no training whatsoever | and end up doing a terrible job with it. | germinalphrase wrote: | To bridge off of this comment, has anyone found a particular | Product Management resource or training that is an effective | on-ramp to doing the job well? | fudgy wrote: | Inspired: https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech- | Products-Custome... | | Empowered: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LPKRD5L/ | | Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: https://www.amazon.com/Good- | Strategy-Bad-Richard-Rumelt/dp/1... | rshm wrote: | Wonder if someone can share their experience with product driven | teams as in | | https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-us/insights/blog/project-vs-... | | One recurring issue i have seen on my team is that project | managers are acting like architects and tech leads (like other | comment mentioned here). Wondering if the same thing. | [deleted] | jkkorn wrote: | Im always happy when I bump into articles like this one. | | In general I think it's ultimately irresponsible to centralize | ideation on one stakeholder. | | Wrote a piece with a similar opinion here: | https://jonathankorn.substack.com/p/your-teams-relationship-... | TameAntelope wrote: | There are only 40 hours in a productive work week (if you care | about your health). In those 40 hours you simply cannot do | everything needed to manage a software project. So we specialize. | Some folks focus more on one set of problems, and others focus on | other sets of problems. | | There should be a good amount of crossover, but having | "specialists" who "own" aspects of a software project has been | found, over and over again, to be the most effective way of | managing a software team. | | Two roles that _do not_ fit into one person 's brain are Product | Manager and Software Engineer. Should a Software Engineer be | knowledgeable about what the Product Manager is doing? Yes. | Should the Product Manager be knowledgeable about what the | Software Engineer is doing? Yes. Should those roles be merged? | Absolutely not. | | Product ownership _should_ be left to the Product Managers. | Product vision, purpose, and strategy should be available to | everyone, and everyone should have a say, but to think that | Software Engineers should also do Product Management is ignoring | how much work both jobs entail. | | I write all of this having actually read the article, and knowing | the article doesn't actually say anything I'm disagreeing with | here, but I feel it's important enough to say these things | anyway. | | Software Engineers are in those roles not because they cannot do | other roles, but because someone needs to write the software, and | writing software is a hard enough job that it's more or less the | only thing a Software Engineer should need to focus on. I think | people forget that sometimes. | DragonStrength wrote: | What if your users are developers or engineers? I haven't had a | ton of luck with my specific niche and product management | (niche domain; final product is a library developers code | against) across multiple companies. I can imagine your | statements can apply to some future market where we have plenty | of engineers, but in the US, we have a shortage. It's hard to | imagine how to use your advice when we cannot find enough | engineers with the domain and technical skill combo. Let alone | one to convert to product. What do we do for the rest of my | career which will probably continue to have a shortage of | engineers? | | Our solution is to trust the experts, but certainly there must | be something better than "whatever the current engineer | thinks." | eightysixfour wrote: | > What if your users are developers or engineers? | | What if they're kindergarten teachers, in medical sales, | rocket scientists, or Amazon deliver drivers? | | Part of the Product Manager's job is to understand and get in | the head of the user, if they can't do it for your users | they're the wrong Product Manager. If they're relying on the | engineers they the wrong Product Manager. | [deleted] | [deleted] | siva7 wrote: | This! I've seen so many teams and products spectacularly | failing because someone thought that the lead developer should | also be the product manager. For all the hate that software | development frameworks like scrum get - the one thing it gets | really right is that there are roles that should never be | merged in a functional team. | lamontcg wrote: | I spent 10 years working as a software engineer on a product | that I was originally a customer of. | | I found it really weird that so many engineers and product | managers in the company never really used the product the | company produced at all. | | I don't think that engineers should really be product managers, | as an introvert I certainly didn't have the patience to sit in | all the meetings that the PMs took every week, which is why I | leaned on real actual PMs to do that. However, senior engineers | ought to develop at least some Product Management Brain and | spend a bit of time literally just using the product like a | user and not as a developer. | | I don't think software development should be the only thing | developers do, at the strict exclusion of all else. They need | the ability to be deep in some code and go "wait, is this | complicated garbage actually what customers really want?" and | throw a mental exception and go have a chat with the PM and | determine if the requirements have gotten wildly off course. | The mentality of "PMs determine the requirements, I just write | the code" is a recipe for a really poor product. | DrJokepu wrote: | Eh, some software engineers are good at product. Some are even | good at charming clients. You got to understand the people you | work with and adjust the processes and roles to match that, not | the other way around. | kettlecorn wrote: | What makes the "Product Manager" role tricky is every person | and every organization has a wildly different sense of what | they do. | | You argue that there's not enough room in a person's brain for | Software Engineering _and_ Product Management, but "Product | Management" often includes planning, strategy, coordination, | vision, culture, anything vaguely leadership, and general | "adulting". To call all of that mushed together a "discipline" | makes no sense. | | Skills like coordination and vision are just as orthogonal from | each-other as software engineering. | | As a result the best PMs are often those who know what control | to _give up_ to make the role / team function better. | | I've even been on teams where engineers seem hesitant to | organize fun events because it may be perceived as stepping on | a PM's turf, which is absurd! | | I think teams and PMs would benefit from splitting up the role. | I'd love to see the creation of roles like "Associate Producer" | (as borrowed from the film industry) that have a primary task | of keeping things running smoothly without a strong focus on | creative or technical leadership. | QuercusMax wrote: | Isn't that Associate Producer role something like a Program | Manager (PgM) / Technical Program Manager (TPM)? That's been | my experience at Google. | klabb3 wrote: | Yeah. Our problem at $FAANG was that PMs were incentivized by | the "footprint" they had on the product. Makes sense maybe | when doing greenfield, or for a major revamp, but man did it | fuck up existing long-term projects that were essentially in | maintenance mode. | | You'd see PMs join, change direction, narrowly grabbing a | promo and leaving only to be repeated again by the next guy. | Each time, the product became more complicated and much less | focused. | | Things like vision and strategy shouldn't factor into any | performance review for at least 2 years, for long term | projects. Until you know deeply (a) how everything works and | (b) the cost of changing things, nobody should be allowed | anywhere near those big buttons. | | The only ones who knew that were the senior engineers who had | been around forever. And they're not liked by management, | because they tend to be nay-sayers, and they often like how | things are. But if you asked management if they were willing | to break existing customers the answer at the end of the day | was always no. Yet they all wanted new and shiny things, in | denial of the feasibility and especially cost. | suyash wrote: | Exactly at an IC level (specially for an engineer), it's best | to become an expert and specialize, that is how you can bring | most value to the organization. | winternett wrote: | Every board meeting now probably whittles down to complaints | about the CEO's erratic behavior and then a review of earnings. | | The world has gone into survival mode and that creates the worst | kinds of people and products... Many of these companies running | on profit auto pilot will fail, and that may be the best thing to | happen because they really stopped doing the good they were | created for in bids to attract and codify investors. | | They'll hopefully be replaced by better companies that bring back | innovation. We really haven't been innovating game-changing IT | for years now in my opinion, I think that disruption will only | happen when these legacy companies get accountable product owners | that know what they are doing and when they stop looking | primarily and only at the wrong (ROI) cues for product | development. | renox wrote: | Meh article, sure as a dev you'll be a better Dev if you learn | about the product requirements like a PM does, you'll also be a | better Dev if you learn how to deploy the product becoming a | DevOps, if you become a language expert, a SCM expert, a build | expert, an OS expert... | LennyWhiteJr wrote: | I agree with the author, but it's also possible to take the other | extreme where engineers think they don't need any input from | product. | drewcoo wrote: | > Up until my mid-level engineering, I didn't think about the | product. | | I think our career yardsticks are very different. | | Engineering is all about designing within constraints. Someone | who's not designing to meet business constraints isn't doing a | real engineering job for the company. | | Learning patterns and practices would be something you'd do in an | apprenticeship if software worked like real engineering. Or if it | worked like academics. Or like a trade. But you'd learn that | while you also learned about how that all fit the larger context | because that's part of working your way to journeyman (whatever | that's called now). | | So . . . I agree with the author, but I don't see a need to | attack product folks. We so-called engineers should probably take | our craft more seriously. | tristor wrote: | As someone who moved from Engineering to Product Management, I | agree with this article for the most part. It's really important | that Engineers grow their product sense and other product skills. | Not just so you can communicate effectively within your org with | other teams and with your PM, but because it helps you empathize | for your customers. | | The thing a lot of engineers (including myself at one point my | career, perhaps) lack is empathy for their customer. Your job | isn't to write code, your job is to solve problems for the | customer. The value a company generates with it's software is by | taking on customer problems and making it their problem to solve. | Solving the problem is fundamentally the most important thing. | But to understand the problem you need to understand the | customer, and that requires empathy. | | Anything you do in your career that improves your empathy towards | your customers will make you a better engineer because you'll | make better decisions at every turn in ways which grow the | business and improve customer QoL. Maybe along the way you'll | also learn the value of PMs and maybe decide you might rather be | one... that's kind of what happened with me. | zucked wrote: | As someone who is in the product realm, one thing that has | frustrated me about engineers is how difficult it can be to get | Engineers to see see where the puck is going, let alone to | skate to it. Many seem to want to operate much like a computer | - they take a literal input and give an exact output. | | It's so rare, and lovely, when you run into an engineer who can | not only figure out how to do the task they're being assigned, | but run through the next couple of steps in the future taking | the team strengths, company strategy, and product shortcomings | into account. | SgtBastard wrote: | As someone who employs both product managers and engineers, | if you spoke about (let alone to) an engineer like this in my | earshot, you'd be given a box to pack your things. | | You're not nearly as valuable as you think you are. | truthwhisperer wrote: | hcarvalhoalves wrote: | I'm skeptical of the role of PMs - it often feels like a lossy | communication layer between stakeholders, and engineering has to | get involved in some level of detail to understand what has to be | built anyway. I would rather encourage engineers to get involved | and understand the domain and the project than rely on this role. | mason55 wrote: | > _engineering has to get involved in some level of detail to | understand what has to be built anyway_ | | Of course, that's a big part of the role for a senior engineer. | | But if you're building a real product, and not just a | collection of random one-off features that customers ask for | explicitly, then there's a whole set of work that needs to be | done to enable good decision-making. It starts with defining | who your customers are and what are the problems you're trying | to solve for them. It goes all the way through gathering | feedback from customers in a meaningful way. | | > _I would rather encourage engineers to get involved and | understand the domain and the project than rely on this role._ | | The fact that you use the word "project" is interesting. | | If someone comes to you and says "here's a project I need you | to build for me" (could be custom development for an external | customer, could be an internal stakeholder who gets to dictate | custom development) then the role of product manager doesn't | make sense. | | If, instead, you're building something based on a need that you | believe the market isn't meeting, then the role of product | manager makes a lot more sense. The product manager IS the | stakeholder in this case. They are the one identifying unmet | needs in the market, possible customers, business problems to | solve, etc. For a team trying to build something new that is | expected to be sold to lots of customers, just the part of | defining the market is hugely valuable, because it gives the | team a starting point to evaluate any solutions they come up | with. | ako wrote: | Main role of the PM is to prioritize: what get build/shipped | first, what later, what not? | | To do this a PM has to balance and understand the needs of the | customers, the potential customers, the direction of the | company, the direction of the market, the capabilities of the | competition. | | The engineering details are better left to the software | engineers, architects, key users and UXers. | tlogan wrote: | One of the most important role of PMs is to tell the team what | not to implement. Or which feature to remove. | | I worked with a couple of good PMs which were good at that: and | product and profits really improved. The worse PMs are the one | which just say: customer x wants y - we need to implement y. | Without thinking of market landscape, future, training costs, | etc. | nlh wrote: | It's good to be skeptical, but I think the role is critical if | done right. Someone described a good PM as "a conductor keeping | the orchestra in sync". And even as you described - someone | needs to be the layer to gather feedback from customers, make | sure it's feasible to build, decide what to build vs. what not | to build and when, make sure executives are happy, keep the | designers on track and focused, etc. | | If that layer is lossy, then you simply have a bad PM (which | doesn't mean there should be NO pm, it just means you need a | better one.) | | Do you as an engineer want to be doing design reviews and | giving feedback on page layout and usability? Do you want to be | on 20 customer calls talking about the business, showing demos, | and getting feedback? Do you want to present to the board what | your next few releases are going to look like? Do you want to | maintain a product strategy so that you have a source of truth | to answer "should we build this?" | | You may say "yes" for some of those some of the time, and | that's great and important. But if you're saying "yes" to all | of that all of the time, then congrats, you're not actually a | full-time engineer, you're a PM who knows how to code :) | phillipcarter wrote: | > I would rather encourage engineers to get involved and | understand the domain and the project than rely on this role. | | What confidence do you have that an engineer would be less | lossy in this role? It's a full-time thing when done right. | dboreham wrote: | PM is just an adult you need when the developers are... | juancn wrote: | A good PM is an advocate for the customer, but the role also | ends up having to balance needs from Engineering and company | vision. | | If you work with a great PM, it's fantastic. They can bring | clarity to product in a way no other role can. | efitz wrote: | This article is a worthwhile read and I can't recommend it enough | to anyone who wants to hit senior/staff/principal engineer or | above. | | Technical skills are not enough. You're not hired to write | software; you're hired to write software that solves problems. | Once you realize this; you'll develop skills that complement your | technical skills and amplify your effectiveness and value. | | Expecting to be given a requirements doc or spec and then | delivering an interesting solution is rare. Building exceptional | solutions requires you to intimately understand the problem space | and how your software's users will think, and solving the | problems that they might not have even known about. | | Anyway read the fine article. | juancn wrote: | The best products I've worked for took input (mainly) from three | sources: | | - Product Managers: a.k.a. the voice of the customer, what | customer want and need | | - Engineering: what's possible, rethinking the product from the | tech POV, to create delightful experiences. | | - Executives: Vision about what the company should be in the long | term | | All these crossed by a strong design team, to make sure we've a | coherent UI, internationalization teams, accessibility, | documentation, support, etc. | | When all these align, it's a magical experience where you feel | you're making something useful. Your product not just does what | is requested, but it solves problems for customers they didn't | know they had in the first place, because they had no way of | framing it, competitors start playing catch-up, and you end up in | the lead defining a market. | | Typically you also end up having magnific engineering challenges | with solutions that will make you proud of having built them. | | As usual, always think about what's valuable and why, and push | for that. | daigoba66 wrote: | This, frankly, is the real definition of a unicorn software | company. | [deleted] | dymk wrote: | I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with a unicorn - a | unicorn is on a fast growth trajectory, with a large and | reasonably-likely upside. Not necessarily one that where PMs, | execs, and eng can finish each others' sentences, they're so | well attuned. | daigoba66 wrote: | I'll admit that I didn't make it clear the sarcasm/joke. | But I was playing on the fact that a unicorn is a mythical | creature, just as mythical as this functioning proddev | team. | projektfu wrote: | I thought they meant unicorn, as in the unicorn love | partner who has all the great qualities and doesn't exist, | rather than the VC unicorn, a quick-to-a-billion company. | magicink81 wrote: | I'm sure I'm not the only one in the audience interested in | more details about how the specific team you may be talking | about was organized to come together, operated, and evolved. | Great to hear about the key role of designers being recognized. | Kalanos wrote: | well, yeah. everyone helps ideate on the product. you could write | the same post and replace all the engineering terms with sales | stuff or science stuff. for example, in biotech, it's not just | about tech. | | counter argument: product managers that aren't technical are just | product marketers | nickdothutton wrote: | I think people have lost sight, or perhaps never understood, the | role of the product manager. The role of the product manager is | to manage the product through the product lifecycle. Concept, | R&D, launch, iteration/revision, maturity, decline and | retirement. I've been fortunate enough to bring new winning | products to market and to kill off a fair few. Both ends are | rewarding. | PraetorianGourd wrote: | I know the title is consistent with the article, but the | undertone of the title (to me) implies "because they will mess it | up" but really the context is because engineers hit a growth | ceiling without a product mindset. | | The title just verges in clickbait to me | scyzoryk_xyz wrote: | As a (young) PM - yes! | | How I wish engineers in my little company expressed a little more | curiosity about our users and how the things we make solve their | actual problems. Would be a huge load off my mind. | | However, I can't imagine our engineers taking over my job | entirely and being able to just do both. They're just not the | type of people who could handle talking to the marketing and | sales people. Not to mention the clusterfuck that is our actual | users and use cases. | toss1 wrote: | YUP | | If at all possible, have the actual architects and coders talking | directly to the end users. | | Avoid having the product managers talking to the user managers. | Avoid even more having executives talking to executives. (At | least exclusively, of course one needs customer executive input | to discover what they need, but that is really as other users, | e.g., of the reports generated). Keeping the discussions high- | level instead of coder-user is pretty much a guarantee of | multiple rewirtes, add-ons, extensions, cost and schedule | overruns, and generally poor results. Even when everyone is | sincerely working hard to get a good result, merely the result of | the 'telephone' game, and loss of key details which indicate real | issues and latent structures/processes that need to be taken into | account in the design... | | It may seem frivolous, but it is a key to successful projects, | whether as a consulting org or internal enterprise development. | mason55 wrote: | > _It may seem frivolous, but it is a key to successful | projects, whether as a consulting org or internal enterprise | development._ | | Sorry, but neither of those things usually require a product | manager because neither of them involve building a product. | | The role of product manager is basically THE key difference | between building custom software and building a product. | | When you're building custom software, you have a specific user | who is paying you to solve a specific problem for them. The | only measure of success is whether you solve their problem | (within time/money budget). For these kinds of things, you're | right, it's absolutely critical that the person with the | problem and the person solving the problem work closely | together. | | When you're really building a new product, you won't even have | any users and you won't have anyone paying you who's defining | success for you. Someone on your team needs to figure out who | are the customers you're trying to target, what problems are we | trying to solve for them, how can we solve those problems in a | way that's generic enough for us to sell it to multiple | customers, etc. That's all legwork that a (good) product | manager should be doing because, again, no one is proactively | defining it for the team. | toss1 wrote: | True, I was talking mostly about custom software, but I've | also turned that into products. | | >> Someone on your team needs to figure out who are the | customers you're trying to target, what problems are we | trying to solve for them, how can we solve those problems in | a way that's generic enough for us to sell it to multiple | customers, etc. That's all legwork that a (good) product | manager should be doing because, again, no one is proactively | defining it for the team. | | And this is exactly the task that should be done, NOT ONLY by | the project manager. Perhaps, if the PM has a stunning level | of deep knowledge of both the engineering capabilities and | the product's domain, (s)he might be able to make a good stab | at it. But getting actual engineers talking to actual | intended users and integrating that knowledge will still make | a better product. I'm sure there are some PMs that can pull | it off, but... | | How many times have you used a product and had to ask "how TF | this this even pass first user testing"?. They'd already | committed to what turns out to be a dumb design and it was | too late to fix it. | zeruch wrote: | The part that Product groups sometimes miss if they dont have | process/mechanisms in place for it, is feedback from field groups | (sales, TAMs, PS, VARs, et al) who bring direct, 'real world' | feedback... | vsareto wrote: | >Although these topics are not related to coding at all, they | make me a better engineer and engineering leader. | | This is fine for shallow problems in the business space, but | eventually you will get to harder problems and will need to | collaborate with experts. Experts are experts because they spend | many hours on those subjects. You are an expert at engineering | because you spend many hours on that subject. | | Don't let your recently acquired domain knowledge make you | overconfident enough to not reach out to experts. Everyone thinks | they know how something works until someone more knowledgeable | comes along. | | >instead of expecting someone (e.g., product managers) to tell | you which product features to develop, you should be able to tell | what are the most critical problems your users or product are | facing and find the best solutions that fit into your product and | engineering strategy. | | Which is fine if the problems are obvious and there are easy wins | to be had. Your solution's effectiveness is limited by your | expertise in the domain. | | This is a regular pattern I see, which is "developers pretending | to be experts at everything because they're good at picking up | knowledge and skills". There is a time component you can't skip | when acquiring domain knowledge. | | Additionally, while it's great to strive to be an expert in both | engineering and the domain, you're naturally doing two jobs for | the price of one. Many domain experts with a singular expertise | might also make more than developers striving to be double- | experts at the lesser price of a developer. | encoderer wrote: | I've served many roles in tech. Engineer, lead, manager, | director and now founder. | | My experience is that when a product manager has true | expertise, that product manager is respected easily by the | whole team. | | Likewise, when a product manager without specific expertise | proves adept at prioritizing and gains a reputation for quality | work, they are easily respected by the whole team. | | But in many cases the product manager is a Stanford MBA with a | couple former roles at other tech companies and has never | accomplished anything very impressive. And these hires are | corrosive for a product org. They get in and hire more just | like themselves. The problem is not the Stanford mba it's that | all they have is a Stanford mba and confidence in their own | skills. It's not enough to demand the respect of engineers who | have sometimes worked years in the domain. | gedy wrote: | > This is a regular pattern I see, which is "developers | pretending to be experts at everything because they're good at | picking up knowledge and skills". There is a time component you | can't skip when acquiring domain knowledge. | | Maybe that's true, but almost all the Product managers I've | worked with in multiple companies were not experienced in the | the domain we were working in either. They were mostly generic | "product people" from random other domains. So it wasn't a | stretch to say the engineers who had worked there knew more | about the domain than the product folks did. | vsareto wrote: | Even in that situation, the PM should be striving for more | domain knowledge than the devs. Devs shouldn't be expected to | pick up that slack. If they are, they should be compensated | for it. | ArnoVW wrote: | The funny thing is, developers will always have a more | precise and detailed domain knowledge. Because unlike the | PM, who can analyze the problem in the abstract and | approximate, the developer must produce working code. | | However it is very difficult to have empathy with the user | when you're trying to produce code. Also, you're generally | judged on your ability to 'finish US' quickly. So generally | you'll choose an approach 'that works'. Only to have the | feedback 'great, but why did you not think about this?' | spookthesunset wrote: | > However it is very difficult to have empathy with the | user when you're trying to produce code. | | Not only that, but as a dev you can get into a position | where what you decide to work on is based more on ease of | development or "fits cleanly with what we have now". | | There should be a balance. The PM should push for the | impossible and the engineers can tell the PM why that | won't work. Kind of... maybe not with that much hyperbole | in my assertion. | peteradio wrote: | > the developer must produce working code. | | Bingo, I can't (well won't) build a contradiction even if | its part of the spec. | | > Only to have the feedback 'great, but why did you not | think about this?' | | Even worse IMO: "Great, no problems!" every time. Ok, I'm | not that good, is anyone even running this shit? | mooreds wrote: | > This is a regular pattern I see, which is "developers | pretending to be experts at everything because they're good at | picking up knowledge and skills". There is a time component you | can't skip when acquiring domain knowledge. | | I wrote about this years ago: | https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/134 | | Both things can be true: it's good to have some product mindset | and you should also defer to the experts. In fact, they build | on each other, otherwise how can you communicate with the | experts? You have to have some common, shared language to do | so. They might learn engineering, but it's more likely a dev | will learn some of the domain. | taylodl wrote: | Absolutely true - but at the end of the day some _one_ has to | be vested with making the final decision. That 's what | Product Managers are for, they're vested with making the | final call. As you point out, good Product Managers won't be | overbearing overlords just like good engineers aren't simple | order takers. | ownagefool wrote: | Which decision? | | How a feature UX should work based on the PM having a fair | bit of expertise in the field? Maybe. | | What task you work on next? Maybe not. | | You see the problem with letting someone who's not an | expert in the work decided the work goes both ways. The PM | is in charge? Good luck getting patching on the backlog. | Don't consult the PM? Good luck getting the functionality | right. | | My takeaway is the PMs often aren't the experts in writing, | maintaining, or running a production system, thus they | probably shouldn't actually run the backlog. But said | production system is pretty useless without market fit, so | you want to strongly align with whoever your version of a | PM is. | taylodl wrote: | The Product Manager owns the _what?_ , they don't own the | _how?_ or _how long?_. They 're getting feedback and | directing the sales team, the marketing team, the | engineering team, the UI team, the QA team and the | support team. It should be easy for a competent | engineering team to get patching on the backlog - after | all, that's table stakes. Organizations struggling with | the mundane is the very definition of dysfunctional. | ownagefool wrote: | But very common. | | Which goes back to the point, maybe Product aren't master | of the universe directing all the teams, but just another | group of folks with relevant skills that should advise | and advocate, but not direct the others groups, whom are | the actual experts of their respective areas. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-02 23:00 UTC)