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Most Product Managers should just be Project Managers

7 points by EricHolden12 ↗ HN
The rise of the tech industry has no doubt brought a surge in interest of people wanting to work in tech. The stereotypes of paid lunches, flexible working hours, unlimited PTO, work from anywhere, and not least of all the compensation has made many suddenly want to be a designer, developer, or PM.

Here’s the cold hard truth. Most of these career u-turners are bad for tech. They often do bootcamps or online courses to get some worthless accreditation but don’t understand technology.

The worst culprits are PMs.

Backed with some MBA degree or something like Chem Eng, Mech Eng etc they believe they can do the job. Most couldn’t successfully update their phone OS.

And these are the folks designers and developers have to fight tooth and nail to convince them about the rationale for their decisions, to teach them about the nuances of tech, to make a case for why something needs more time to build or design.

They just don’t get it.

I hope the year 2024 brings a recalibration in companies to thoroughly examine their team structures and to create a process that lets builders build.

Or at the very least, let’s just change Product Manager to Project Manager and let the people who do the work figure out how to do it, and let the project manager slice and dice timelines and communication.

7 comments

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uoaei
It's always interesting to see which majors/backgrounds are singled out as culprits or as part of the problem. I've noted over the years that physicists are never named in such callouts. I've always found physicists to be capable of figuring out the nuances that those in narrower disciplines may struggle with and I'm interested to hear what others' experiences are.
pinewurst
Speaking as a recently retired PM who knew my business cold, my biggest challenge was designers and developers who prioritized resume enhancement over even the semblance of business/customer success. Not wanting to implement critical functionality because it was “too hard” vs hard selling me on how Rust would change my life (like Scientology) if I’d support a total rewrite.
EricHolden12
You are a great example.

It’s this mentality which is the problem — that only PMs are thinking about customer/biz success and so they must prioritize and figure out what everyone should work on and when it should be done.

Let’s do a rewrite in Rust. What does this engineer know that we don’t? Why would they say something so incredulous. What if they are thinking about the customer and biz but from a different angle.

Builders - people writing code and designing the actual functionality and experiences somehow became strictly “resources”. The thing that made tech great and allowed for so many companies to flourish was the tech/geek/nerd/hacker spirit that let those who write code decide what to do and how to do it.

Now, we’ve McKinsey’d the whole thing into boring processes that make work for people who don’t design or code. Jira, Google Docs, Slack, etc etc etc

pinewurst
I try. :)

More seriously I agree with you about the corrosive and draining effects of useless, stupid process and the worthlessness of management consultant parasites.

At least in my previous business, strategic infrastructure, many developers writing software (and often those designing/choosing hardware platforms) really didn’t know how customer users were actually using products or even seemed to care much. Certainly much earlier in the company’s history there was close connectivity between engineering and users, but they diverged long ago.

I’m certainly not trying to lay down a “class” vibe that PM’s are (hah!) superior beings, as I know enough fool PM’s (usually those risen to VP level :). My point here is that we’re _all_ bozos on this bus and should work better with each other for a better end result for all.

tomohawk
Working with a PM now who is a former software dev. Not sure which is worst. PMs with no technical clue, or PMs with obsolete technical clues.
joegahona
Both can be bad. I will say that the best PM I ever worked with had zero technical skills beyond HTML and CSS. She was a master of clarity and communication, and she knew how to give developers what they needed to focus. At some point, technical ignorance is a liability, of course -- but I've worked with many "technical PMs" who are too tempted to "get their hands dirty" and cause more harm than good. If a non-technical PM knows what they don't know, that can be a benefit not a curse.

The other thing, related to the OP -- a good program (project) manager is worth their weight in gold, and I'm not sure a bad PM can just fall into that role instead. Good PMs help define the "what" -- what's getting build, for whom, what problems it solves, etc. Program managers do the "when" and socialize schedules, red/yellow/green charts, etc.