As a tech PM, I will still defer to the EMs decision on timelines. No point pushing or passing the pressure on a SDE for urgent business deliverables.

Spot on, both ‘good’ seed/A round startups I’ve seen delegate the program management of engg projects to EMs. EMs answer to cofounders when timelines not met - this leaves PMs in a high enthusiasm + willing to know/help state since engg deadlines aren’t owned by product.  
  
 Side question - I’m a PM in technical role (non-growth) but I do not have a tech degree. Am I a non tech PM?

Founder

If you are already in a technical role, you should be a Tech PM. Degrees don’t matter anyways once we’ve broken the PM entry barrier. My understanding is, if you’re well versed with System design and can whiteboard with the EM about potential solutions to the business problems, you’re technical enough.

Product Manager

All PMs should understand they're a "product" manager, not a people manager

Software Engineer

Do you feel the impatience is shown for all or only with people with problem first mindset and are not solution first?

Data engineer

Software Developer

What is with the impatience and not wanting to listen to people under you and assert unnecessary dominance?

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Non Tech PMs should have patience and understanding or not be in the role

Non Tech PMs should have patience and understanding or not be in the role- Grapevine

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

I've recently had more conflicts with the Engineering Manager in my team. This EM tends to want to influence the specifications of the product, even its design style. While I think having opinions is good, it's often hard to convince him.

An important principle I believe in is "do not step outside one's role." I do not interfere with the details of their implementation, such as the database schema, API design, or even choices of system databases and infrastructure design.

I use my technical skills to help drive the product forward.

This kind of EM, or rather, this kind of engineer is quite common. They feel that having learned computer science, they assume designing or product management is relatively simple and want to get involved. This is a very unqualified situation.

It also creates a challenge for PMs who don't have technical skills to counter such behavior.

"Do not step outside one's role." Do not be a PM who interferes with technical decisions, nor an EM who interferes with product design.

What EM/PM Should do and should not do

Here is an incident that happened to me at my old startup. This literally gave me a wake-up call that shattered my "PM is mini-CEO" idea that all my mentors had told me about. 

During a heated product roadmap + prio meeting, the actual CEO, berated me a lot and made fun of my "vision" doc. He called my user research "overrated guesswork" and dismissed the Jira workflow as "a waste of time". He then laughed at my definition of product-market fit and all the metrics I had decided. Mind you, I was the first PM hire at this startup at that time and I used to report directly to the CEO.

When I tried to defend myself with data, he accused me of cherry-picking stats and that I manipulated the data. He then demanded that I learn to code and make use of my degree. I studied Computer Science in college btw. When I asked Why? he said that I needed to create a working prototype by next week. This was abviously a joke but he had made a point, he thought that I was not doing real work.

As I left the meeting room,  I realised two things: I'm not nearly as important as I thought, and this job isn't about changing the world, it's about surviving the brutal reality of business. It was a harsh reminder that in the end, the CEO and not me, calls the shots.

The CEO called me a terrible PM 🤡

Note - I am a product manager too

4 out of 5 product managers will act all high and mighty of themselves, bragging their way as if they run everything going on in the company, flaunting their business degrees and being utterly disrespectful towards their team( dev design qa name it), 

Recently started going to office so the attitude I am seeing is very transparent and more visible (more with the higher experience folks)

It makes me wanna leave this hyper inflated role, thinking of I will end up like them scares me, and you have to do is speak out jargons in meetings day in day out and have a English accent of Shashi Tharoor.

Recently my manager told that this is a role where you have to very representable or very visible and act in floor as if you are the busiest person on earth and I seriously some PMs in company doing that, they walk so fast in floor as if they will fall off or would be better to have 4 legs.

I am done with this product management shit

Genuinely curious what is it that you think we do. In real life, I have had a great time with most engineers I have worked with. 

I know there's going to be a lot of trolling but looking for some meaningful answers to improve my rapport with tech folks.

Why do SWEs on GV hate PMs so much?

What is the most underrated skill to be a great product manager? 

Mine has always been the ability to make friends with people at the office. SWEs, other PMs etc

Underrated skills to have for Product Management

Product Marketing Manager

1. High pressure on timelines- business and top management shits on you if you don’t deliver on time
2. No power to control the outcome- engineers don’t listen to you neither does the design or analytics team, you end up begging for resources
3. Too much politics- business or a senior PM can steal your bandwidth anytime
4. Lack of recognition- if it succeeds business did it, if it fails it is product teams fault (engg never gets blamed for shit)

I believe Product Management is a really toxic role

Would you report to a pm in a software company if the pm has half the amount or lesser work experience than you, none in your field but is a pm and pm's must be mini ceo's!

Does being a Product Manager mean you by default must have reportees of all functions?

Product Owner

Whenever you a call PM fraud here, they come & put justifications like you don't know business, products built by Engineers are shyt, only PMs can build good products, engineers don't prioritize business needs bla bla.

A data scientist/analytics perspective:
1. When we call a PM fraud, we refer to mainly those who come without a background in either of tech or business. Cool wannabes straight out of college & learnt nothing but attitude over years.
If a PM was an engineer, or analytics, or business or ops, then others first see him/her as engineer/etc & then a manager. That's the right way it should be. 

2. 'Business won't be prioritized' is such a complacency:
Business is bread & butter of Analytics and AI. It is the primary thing we check in interviews, a large portion of the interview focus' on the problem statement and prioritisations.

End note: PMs are hot, but only when they have a solid foundation in stuff they are building. They need to know depths. Anyone apart from this breed are worthless & Indian startups are filled with this shyt
A best PM would be a senior engineer/analyst with penchant for business practicality & customer perspective.

Why of 1st Point? Because how can you manage a team when you don't even know what that team does? For eg: I can tell my PM any random blabbing about why model is working/not & she has no idea to judge my words. Leave AI, with tech pipelines too I can give any deadlines & justify it how would she know? Besides if they don't have tech background they bring in random expectations which is far away from feasibility. Why should any tech guy respect them? They can understand business req, connect with business teams and build better. That's the exact role of a project manager.

Product Manager Worth & their insecure justifications

Founding Engineer

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

I am honestly just furious at the pay difference between the salary of an sde and a pm. Both work just as hard.

Why are project managers paid less?

Solution Architect

Everyone and their mother became a product manager in the last few years. How safe are these jobs in a recession. I often hear (from engineers who don’t hide their disdain for PMs so maybe a biased opinion) that they are the first one to let go. Is that true?

Job security in product management

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Do you think pure product managers with no technical background add value to your company? Aren't experienced project managers with penchant for business more suitable for this role?

Do you think product managers with barely 2 years of experience required in your company?

Analyst

I’ve been insufferable at work since 2-3 months now. Total time at my company- 6mo 21 days. Profile - Product Management 
My engineering team seems to be taking no ownership and always have their brahmastra ready that it didn’t come from product’s side. QA again is so great that I have to sit and thoroughly test each release end to end. 
My manager- he’s quite interested in taking my career fwd as a project manager. (I am not) He’s a total asshole and is quite concerned with start dates and end dates of tasks ( mind you, I am not the one actually writing the code but somehow the dates are my responsibility). He totally micromanages and somehow keeps blaming me for each small thing.
Examples:
- My engg team isn’t taking ownership: “you aren’t keeping them motivated enough”
- This isn’t a last minute change : “Do you attend standups? You aren’t communicating well”
- The QA tested and approved it, hence we released it. : “But did you test it? “
- Here are the release notes. : “This looks too jazzy, did you copy from GPT”
- Here are the release notes. : “This looks too basic, did you not copy from GPT”

I could go on forever. 

Gust: I am quite unhappy and is causing me unnecessary stress everyday. Also I don’t feel there’s a solution possible

Should I rage quit?

Met a PM from IIT / IIM with 4 years of experience. He is working at a  well know soonicorn at a salary of 17  lakhs per year . He used to draw 30 lakhs per year in his last role before we was laid off . Interesting Times ahead

PM Salaries Have Crashed.

A minute of silence to all the grapevine polls where salary expectations are so high 😁

Growth Manager

PM of 5 years. Same place the whole time. We have a new Engineering Manager. 

They started 2 months ago and at first they seemed like they were very happy to learn our process and products. Then they soon started to manipulate the Engineering team which was very cooperative earlier.

It’s incredibly demotivating. We are a small startup, and the culture isn’t great but seriously no need to be so dismissive of other people’s efforts and feelings. They are just fucking rude. No other word for it really. The problem is that they do NOT get the product side of things so you can’t explain anything to them. They start to physically roll their eyes when you go anymore product than the word “PRD”.

I have never had to deal with someone like this and it’s really stressing me out as they are involved in effectively every project I work on. Advice that isn’t “quit” will be appreciated.

I should also clarify that when I say “product limitations” I really mean how much effort goes into getting things right, the delays are shearing the roadmap apart.

why do Software Engineers act so rude? How to solve this in my team?

As a Product Manager, why do Software Engineers act so rude?

There has been a huge influx of posts dissing roles like Product, Marketing, HR etc. by Techies.

Every other post, or comment is made by them undermining the value of other depts and these cuties think business runs just by their sub-par code.

I understand that their delusion stems from the fact they get paid huge salaries by loss making companies. Which is bound to crash sooner or later. 

Rant over.

Why are Techies so delusional?

Interesting POV. 
  
 Nassim Nicholas Taleb mentions an interesting advice. If you don’t know what to do, follow what the smartest people in your generation are doing. 
  
 These are almost exclusively fulfilling and financially attractive opportunities 
  
 According to him, in the 1990s Lebanon, the smartest kids in undergrad went and became Economists. In the 2010s, the smartest kids became Software Engineers. 
  
 Perhaps, their ego does not stem from the money but from competence.  
  
 However, true charisma is merging that competence with warmth. And for that, you must eliminate the ego.

Non Tech PMs should have patience and understanding or not be in the role

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