Give me instances, where you felt 'oh this pm is kickass'

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Give me instances, where you felt 'oh this pm is kick-ass'

Who is one product manager, you really respect as a developer and why ?

Product Owner

Who is one product manager, you really respect as a developer and why ?- Grapevine

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Engineers saying pms shouldn't exist should for once get what they want. Most engineers I know get anxious enough to take leaves once a customer shouts at them lol

Pms shouldn't exist folks should get what they want

Computer Operator

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Let's face it. In some company (read mine) they are the gatekeepers of all things roadmap, obviousness, communication between engineers and business. While in some companies they are nothing but a left over thought acting no more than a typical Program Manager (Google and how Engineers have more say and power in roadmaps).

What are your thoughts on your PM?

Ask Engineers: Thoughts on Product Managers?

Tech Lead

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

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

Product Manager

Background: I work in a D2C consumer product startup, we have an in-house website and a growing tech team of 7 people. The whole business team is 100+. I'm a '23 grad from a tier 1 engineering college.

I joined the company back in September when the job market was at the bottom and I had to take a 40% pay cut (21LPA to 12LPA) (while switching (the last company ran out of funding). I was at a higher than avg base in my previous role but the current role is 20% below the average. (15LPA) The company is in a growth stage and lots of processes are yet to be defined which leads to a lot of chaos but I get a lot of freedom as well.

My manager is aware of the whole situation and we had also negotiated a 6-month review for ESOP allotment. My monthly reviews have been going well and we have shipped some good improvements and features over the last few months.

Only PM in the startup, how much appraisal should I ask for at 6 months?

Consultant, Investment Banking went from sought after careers to fads post 2008 crisis when the world realized that these folks are crooks due to their role in propogating the Great Financial Crisis.

Given the backlash tech companies has been getting and global layoffs, will Product Manager also become a passing fad?

Seeing lot of anti Product Manager sentiment on this app off late. Was Product Management also a fad?

Someone here said engineers can become PM but PM can't become engineers. It can't be more correct than this. But reality is, it sounds goods only in theory.  
  
  I asked this same question to my director, why have you hired us when engineers clearly know more about products than us and are capable?  His answered that before the organisation formally created a team of product managers, it was only engineers that were handling product for decades. But that resulted into substandard products being developed, chaotic product release and consistent drop in revenue. The reason being engineers became backlog managers and engineers beging engineers, never focused on business value. Instead, they focused on technical aspect heavily. Engineers never bothered to check if what they were developing will actually sell in the market or not.  
  
 And mind you, this was a product that all of us use in daily lives. The numbers of users in India alone would be millions. So to summarise, yes, engineers can become PMs but generally they stay loyal to their pedigree of BE/B.Tech and become very shitty PMs. They like to have more technical conversations than strategic discussions and hate things that are not quantifiable, subjective. And business facing people here in forum would know, things are always not quantifiable in business planning, market outlook. It is based on assumptions.  
  
 An excellent PM would be someone who is an engineer but knows how to focus on business value of the product, make it customer oriented etc. I had the pleasure of working of one such PM in my last stint and he was truly outstanding. CEO knew him personally and this is in an organization with thousands of employees

Program Manager

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

As a PM I would say it is to delivery high quality product in less time. 🕰️

What is the biggest problem you face in your daily job? Please mention your role as well.

Software Engineer

Question to all the software engineers. 

What are some traits of the best PMs you have worked with - could be a behavioural aspect / work ethic / knowledge of the domain etc.

Engineers' views on Product Managers

Saw Anuj Rathi in Lenny s Podcast!

 Man was brilliant,  very methodical, modest,sharp! How is he on real life to work with? 

Is he unique Product leader or yet another muggu of multiple Product frameworks? Who are some other good Product leaders in India you have enjoyed working for?

Anuj Rathi in Lenny s Podcast

Would you rather be an Engineer learning how to Product or a Product Manager learning how to Engineer?

Answer is obvious mate. And it's already in motion. 
 Everyone knows current product management breed is a messed up fraudulent bunch. They will run into poverty if they don't change ways🙂

Founding Engineer

Have heard a lot of stories other way round. Want to see if this perspective exists at all or not.

Any developers here who realized the importance/value/contribution of PMs? If yes, how so?

So I've met many PMs in my career. Most have been sub par, poor performers, can't even do IC work. The ones who can do IC work, can't think. The IC work is generally project management not product. They need someone to tell them directions

So here's a few things. The best PMs I've met, are good engineers. Yes. These are the same folks who come for product management conferences and are respected. 
Of course not all engineers are good at product.
The role of product came up with manufacturing first when you had product designers who worked with engineers and had a good understanding of both engineering limitations and user understanding. 

Some of the PMs I have met don't even talk to users. The reason i am seeing an issue in PMs in India is the increase in demand in the role, and a lack of supply.

There is a product engineer role, I met a few folks who are doing that, they were amazing. Knew technology, users, product and super passionate.

I'm not saying this is a hard and fast rule, I'm sure there are folks who have a natural inclination, so if you're an exception, understand that. Don't get offended by the statement

What PMs lack in India

Founder’s Office

Assume you're currently enjoying your role as a jack of all trades. If your manager come and tell you that you need to choose whether you need to be a 
- Software Engineer
- Product Manager
- Program Manager
- Analyst
- Product Operations Manager

Which one would you choose? And why? 


Note: You're currently contributing to all of this in someway or the other, and the manager wants to ensure that you are also having a good career growth within the company, or you should be ready if you're looking for an external job.

The manager and the team is 100% in on supporting you on any of the above choice. 

[These are not random options, but came up because of the exposure to these domains and the related results delivered]

Selecting a Career

This is not a question for the cocky new grad in the overvalued startup, but for the few seasoned PMs that still reply out here.

Where do PMs go after they peak?

By peaking I mean arriving at a GPM or Staff PM position at the top 10-15 companies (you can do your own ranking here).

Nobody has the true statistics but I will use the assumption that 75% (debatable) of those who peak, will get laid off within 2 years from their ‘peak role’. The remaining will be able to progress into DoP and VP in the same top company or another in the top 15.

Where do they go then?

I am pretty positive, from experience, that they don’t go any up.

Do they go down the ladder of new startups for titles and ending up in the worst ones after being laid off 4-5 times? Do they quit all together?

Do they open a farm?

Do they start their own startup?

Comments and thoughts folks!

Where Do PMs Go After They Peak?

Software Developer

1. They are the most overpaid people in India.
2. They have no work life balance and they don't even know what it means.
3. They think they are the best at everything, but they can't do anything right.
4. They are always complaining about their job and how much they hate it.
5. They are never satisfied with their salary or benefits package.
6. They are always looking for new jobs because they think they deserve better than what they currently have.

Would you like to add anything else here?

Software Engineers as seen by a Product Manager...

PM as seen by Engineers: 
 1. Doesn't do anything other than throwing random jargons 
 2. Can't explain what they do other than say how they are not Program manager or something else

I really wanted to build great products and have a say in how they would be built. To thrive in ambiguity and find relationships between causality and features is an addictive feeling. What about you?

What inspired you to become a Product Manager?

Hey everyone, excited to be doing this AMA!

A brief about me, I work currently as a Director of Product at an Indian unicorn startup 

About my career: 
- Did my undergrad from IIT and then masters from an Ivy league school
- Have been in product for almost 10 years now - across 2 Indian unicorn startups and a publicly listed company

Would love to take questions on what it means to be a PM, growing within the role, building your career, and other things :) 

Will be back here at 4 pm and start replying
Shoot away!

AMA 🎙️: Hey all, I am pmsprint, Director of Product Management at a Unicorn in India!

To folks who have loved working with a Product Manager at any point, what are some of the most important traits you admired about them?

Was it the personality/smartness, or their passion for work or something else entirely?

In my quest to understand what it takes to be the BEST Product Manager.

It takes time to understand and master any domain. You have to do something substantial. Where has the humility gone? Does calling yourself Leader increases chances of getting jobs? It’s mind boggling
And shallow.

Why are 2-3 YOE people calling themselves leader(product leader , engineering leader)?

its advertised as minj CEO role but what is the reality?

Who is one product manager, you really respect as a developer and why ?

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