Software Engineers as seen by a Product Manager...
- They are the most overpaid people in India.
- They have no work life balance and they don't even know what it means.
- They think they are the best at everything, but they can't do anything right.
- They are always complaining about their job and how much they hate it.
- They are never satisfied with their salary or benefits package.
- 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?
PM as seen by Engineers:
- Doesn't do anything other than throwing random jargons
- Can't explain what they do other than say how they are not Program manager or something else
They are lazy, want WFH to laze around. Will ask 3 weeks for a 3 day project and nobody can question them.
In those 3 weeks of “Work from home” they will mostly chill, deliver a shabby project in 3 last days. And then crib about work-life balance.
Selfish max without any company or team loyalty
If you offer shit pay, you get shit talent.
What, did you expect a fully functional, resilient, reliable product from the 3 freshers you hired for 10 LPA each? Rather than the one senior at 65?
Sounds like a management problem to me.
Project quality is a different issue.
Expensive or inexpensive engineers still feel WFH is a birth right and asking for accountability is a management torture
Product Manager as seen by Software engineer:
- Just a new name for erstwhile Project Manager.
- Thinks 9 females can deliver a baby in 1 month.
- Doesn't understand what is feasibility study.
- Want everything done as of yesterday.
Many more but can't waste more time on product managers..
Exception are those who have transitioned from Software engineer to Project/Product manager after working extensively as software engineer. They understand what software engineer does.
Product Managers will be the first to be made redundant by AI.
@MythicalStranger Most likely it will be a PM who will use AI to MVP+validate his idea/thesis making tons of Junior SDEs redundant lmao.
If PM's were that good then they wouldn't be such a pain in a** for software engineers.
Using AI to create a working MVP would still need (at minimum) :
- understanding of which tech stack to use
- how to set up environment to run MVP. (theory and real life scenarios are different).
- debugging to fit & fine tune the AI generated code for MVP.
Unless you think static screen's as MVP.
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Most are not team players and only care about themselves.
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Most can never be creative problem solvers and rely too heavily on algorithms instead of thinking outside the box.
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Years of StackOverflow+LC has rotten their brain to rote-memorize algorithms for interviews. No innovation in any algorithm by any Indian dev I have met.
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They are not good communicators and often come across as arrogant or condescending.
Can't wait for AI to automate some of these jobs.
Unpopular opinion: Most of the arrogance comes because of the pay. A normalisation/correction would clearly humble the SDEs. It's time they realised the world doesn't revolve around them.
I'm curious. What do you think is the median CTC of a graduate from an IIM?
Could you please post it with the median CTC of an IIT graduate?
Thanks!
Tech is a great leveller in terms of salary. A tier-2 and tier-3 engineering graduate can still earn more than a product manager or any other business role coming from the IIM! Whereas organisations have their own set of slabs when it comes to tier-2 and tier-3 MBAs and wouldn't budge much despite them having skills better than IIM grads, but are willing to have a huge buffer for tech roles irrespective of the college. Comparing median salary of IITs and IIMs wouldn't do justice since it's just placement stats. SWEs jump around and increase their pay disproportionately whereas business professionals don't usually (you don't hear them getting 100% hikes like techies too).
And, business professionals are pretty much aware of how things work and do not have a condescending tone over others. Tech on the other hand, forget IITs, has given tier-2 and tier-3 engineering graduates the confidence (or delusion) that once they start putting their fingers on the keyboard people are queuing outside to buy their product whatever they are building (good or bad). GV as a platform is proof that tech folks believe no other team or department is required for a business and code alone can do wonders. There are multiple posts and threads that show this attitude.
startups be doing +100M arr without any PM. can't wait for AI to automate lots of these redundancies.
@tbk The redundancy is a Junior SDE which will be soon automated with a PM who knows how to use AI+No Code.
Sirji, I can understand where you're coming from about the junior sde part, won't same hold true for associate pm or whatever?
It's like saying tech advancements would remove first officers, only captains will remain to fly commercial airplanes, there's always nuances to it.
The label may or not exist but the technical human would remain, a pm who understands code spitted from magical black box is also a sde, (infact that could be real quality check for unqualified PMs, some of these can't even use Google sheets properly, let alone AI).
After all, existing N number of drag and drop website builders haven't taken away business from "freelance web developers".
Software Engineers can do a role of what Product Manager does. Example: Zerodha is a product where there is no product manager present and it is handled by Devs and Management. So much simple life for them. Can a product manager do the job of a Software Engineer?
If that was the case, our jobs won't exist. While I agree product management is grossly misunderstood in India, I'm certain that most product firms can't scale without good PMs. Ofcourse there are outliers and Zerodha is an exception where founders are hands-on with product and dont have to focus on funding, revenue etc
In Zerodha, the founders act as product managers. Infact in all early stage startups, one of the founder always acts as a PM until they prove the PMF.
- Not good at working in teams, so they end up creating chaos everywhere. It is very hard to do roadmap management if Engineers > 30% of a project.
Product managers are jealous of software engineer salary. Most of the new PM that are from IIM , thinks they are elite and knows everything. But reality is very different.
Salary in a Software engineer job is related to skill. It doesn't matter what your rank was in JEE mains or which college you are from.
My rank in JEE mains was 3.25 lakh. But it doesn't matter.
That the first point the PM fails to understand as they have spent most of the energy cracking tough exams and going to mba college. That is their biggest achievement not the actual skills learned.
Being a software engineer is difficult. Honestly I have huge respect for PM's who understands software engineer pain points and works with them. Not the ones who think they are above every one.
@CrazyAbbey Exactly.