Why is the business not conveying this to the founders? 
If the roadmap is changing, it is not entirely his decision as generally, it is approved by the founders as well. I won't question changing the roadmap. Rather I'll ask if it is not aligned with the company vision. I'm not saying that you are speaking anything wrong here, but I think the reasons mentioned here are not solid enough to say that he sucks :)
I'll say to have direct 1:1s with him and give feedback.

Product Manager

I feel my product head is okayish (never handled team of 20 plus pms). He doesn’t listen. Changes prod roadmap planning every quarter. Business doesn’t trust him anymore. So the pressure of dealing...

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

I feel my product head is okayish (never handled team of 20 plus pms). He doesn’t listen. Changes prod roadmap planning every quarter. Business doesn’t trust him anymore. So the pressure of dealing with business directly comes on junior level pms. 

What can I do here? Who should I approach to get this resolved?

Product head sucks

Product Marketing Manager

Product head sucks- Grapevine

I have recently joined a startup as an APM (My first PM role) and my manager is teaching me the bits and pieces of Product Management. The issue is, while he's helpful and experienced in this field, he sometimes talks to me in a very condescending way which kinda hurts me. I agree that I have a lot to learn and getting a job as an APM is a big thing, especially when you've been in a specialist role for all your life but I still don't get the point of patronizing your juniors. I'm trying to get better at writing documentation and specs but I get very disheartened after every spec review meeting I schedule with him.

Any tips for handling this? And what are some ways to get better at writing documentation and specs?

How to deal with a condescending manager?

Associate Product Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

I have recently joined a startup as an APM (My first PM role) and my manager is teaching me the bits and pieces of Product Management. The issue is, while he's helpful and experienced in this field, he sometimes talks to me in a very condescending way which kinda hurts me. I agree that I have a lot to learn and getting a job as an APM is a big thing, especially when you've been in a specialist role for all your life but I still don't get the point of patronizing your juniors. I'm trying to get better at writing documentation and specs but I get very disheartened after every spec review meeting I schedule with my manager. 

Any tips for handling this?

I started working as a junior product manager last year. Unfortunately within a few months the company ran out of funds and I quit before they shut operations / laid people off as I could sense it was going to happen. I joined another startup and it's been about 6-7 months but in the hunt for revenue and profitability my product isn't important for the company. Not enough developers/ senior PMs/ designers/ is assigned to the product and it is consumed elsewhere even though the overall performance of the product, metrics, have improved. It's hard to work as a junior PM without guidance.

I am in 2 minds now if I quit how will other employers perceive it? Will it seem like a frequent switch? And any suggestions for switching or applying anywhere where product guidance is good, not looking for a hike/ but a good company, good product, same pay scale and good guidance.

Junior PM Situation

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?

Software Engineer

I am currently managing a product, which has not really scaled up as expected over the last 1.5 years.

Hand to heart, I can say I have given my best in terms of efforts but still the outcomes are not as expected due to many factors beyond my control.

Now this has created a perception amongst senior management that my team is working very slowly and not able to build what customers want.

It is very difficult to change this perception in short term

I have asked for change of product portfolio multiple times but that is not getting entertained.

Any suggestions if I want to stay in this company (other than the very obvious - looking for opportunities outside the organisation.)

Career dilemma- Product Management

Hey folks, 

So I work as a product intern and have an offer to join full time as an Associate Product Manager at a Fintech B2B startup upon graduating. 

So cutting to the chase, 

Recently I have been under tremendous pressure to deliver a product. Our organisation does not have any senior product manager to help guide and I report directly to the CEO. I have been given far too much responsibility and an extremely sophisticated product has been put in my care. 

This product requires a lot of technical expertise and we do not have that kind of resources. I have put this point across to my boss multiple times over the past few months and he always says we will do it. 

He goes and promises clients that this product exists they even did a soft launch of this product when we literally have not built more than a few screens. 

Our company has a high employee turnover and people keep quitting left right and centre due to the Co-founders toxic attitude. 

Recently I have been feeling very anxious starting work in the mornings. Most days go late into the nights because the Co founders work in a different time zone. 


So the dilemma here is this, I feel the urge to quit this job but at the same time I am afraid that another opportunity will not present itself soon. They also pay me pretty well compared to other product intern roles out there. 

I know a lot of people are out there fighting for a product intern or an APM role and here I have it and am considering quitting. 

Please feel free to ask me any follow up questions and forgive me if it sounded more like a rant. 

I am open to hearing your advise. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Need advise

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

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?

Need help with the office situation.

Our team recently(10 months back) onboarded a new Engineering Manager. Initially he showed some red flags but the team decided to give him some time to settle in the role. Now he is making life hard for junior employees. He doesn’t have enough insights around the product and keeps on fighting with the employees and keeps updating the leaders around the resistance being faced from the team. 
I am pretty sure he is working on this philosophy that just make old employees helpless enough so that they leave and he gets to be the new king of the team. Currently he struggles to get respect from the current team.
Any help around how this situation can be remedied?

He has built good repo with the VP and director. The leadership doesn’t seem to care for what’s happening at the ground level.

Tried providing feedback via anonymous channels, now the VP is setting up one on ones with each member and just bullying around what’s the problem. If you mention anything then it will be established as your problem otherwise if you don’t share anything, it would be asked why such negative feedback

New EM making old employees life hard

Software Developer

Im a Product Manager 1yoe in a SaaS startup.
I had a good experience in the first year. I got to build a product 0-1, competitor analysis, work on creating prioritization frameworks, UAT, content marketing, wireframing.

However, since January the compamy started their stabilization phase, and PM's are now taking care of Sales and lead generation(Content, Ads etc.). The nail in the coffin is we are getting dragged to follow up renewals( Customer Success) 🤢

Im currently motivated to building something new, and it feels like we are being dragged into everything as the company does not want to hire. With no pay hike or any adfitional benefit.

Please advice. Should I look for a new job?

Need advice

I have been working for my current employer for over 2 years as PM. Most of the employees haven't received any formal appraisal over the years. The company is going through some of the financial stress till last Dec. But it seems things are getting back in order as no more salary delays at my level.

I have heard and confirmed that few have received salary hikes either due to retention or other ways.

Searching for a job over the past 1 year but unable to land any yet. Its getting difficult to manage financially living on rent in mumbai, committing everyday to office and all.

HOW COULD I CONVINCE CEO OR WHAT SHOULD I WRITE THEM TO PURSUE THIS. PLS HELPPPP....🥺

Appraisal Help🙏🏻

Associate Technical

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'm working as an APM at a startup for about a year now. I work with another guy who happens to be my senior, PM and both of us report to the director.

Of late, my senior, i.e., the PM has been undermining my work when the two of us are working together, subtly taunting me that what I've done is pretty easy and non impactful business wise. He also disregards the decisions made by me, modifies the PRDs discovered and written by me and mails them as his own.

Eventually, he ends up adding me to the walkthrough calls because I had discovered the features but then concludes everything such that he had owned everything end to end.

Recently, both of us were given a documentation to be done by our manager, i.e., the director. I had completed almost 70% of that document, but in our call with the director he presented it saying that he had written that document and I had made a few changes to it.

This undermines my work and visibility of my capabilities. I don't know how to tackle this situation, my manager is usually busy and leaves it upto this PM to allocate work, which he unfairly uses.

How do I talk to my manager about this. I'm fairly new to corporate, just graduated last year and don't know how to handle all this.

But this thing has been bothering me lately, really looking forward to any advise my fellow grapeviners may have.

Senior taking credit for my work

You definitely need to talk to the director and share your concerns . Possibly separate out projects and independently handle them.

Had been rescheduling an important demo for a while, because my backend team specifically kept taking longer and longer. 

In the end, 10 minutes before the demo my team told me they’re not going to be able to load new data and if I could do the demo with old data (which was wrong and hence the need for new data)

I’ve already asked my backend lead to escalate non performers, but he doesn’t want to follow the company procedures.

How do you deal when your team under-delivers?

Product Head

In last 3 years, I have switched 3 companies. I hate my current company especially considering my precious companies. Also, I cannot go back to my organisation because of location constraint. 
Can anyone has any advice? Highly frustrated 😭

Frustrated PM

What are the best places to signal in the market that you are a great product manager
Unfortunately, I am stuck in a job that is driven by the whims and fancies of the CEO
My product leader is not that great 
I am B. tech +MBA 
Stuck in these kind of offices since 3 years 
Nothing is working for me 
Please help

Product Management Advice

I feel like startups have unreasonable and unnecessary self induced pressure at times. I am working as an APM at a gate management startup and all I feel is pressurized even though the release gets delayed whether due to faulty implementation or dev or qa or requirement change from business side which the PM has no control over. While all this is happening you are left to wonder where did you lack? Was it at Product Management or at Project Management because clearly both are not happening properly.

It's weird how so little at times is in your control and yet how all the blame you have to take because primarily it was your job to think it all through.

Product head sucks

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