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🙂
The comparison doesn't even make sense, information architects were like librarians. PMs build roadmaps and get things moving.
Quite the leap to assume engineers who are notorious for their social skills can easily, successfully learn the soft skills to be a good PM.
It takes 25 days of conscious effort to develop soft skills.
And over application of soft skills alone causes lack of trust as well. Value of words is as strong as the real character or substance. Engineering has that substance, but does product have it?
@salt you should really try to have an honest conversation with your PM or maybe someone who understands the role. If every second post of yours is ‘PM bad’ maybe there is a deep seated issue or misunderstanding that you are projecting every alternate day?
@CraftyDune40 but, I am in Product. 😌
- Why is questioning things bad?
- This is not a “PM Bad” post, it is literally “Would you rather be an Engineer learning how to Product or a PM learning how to Engineer.
I think your comment is aimed at people in the comments, I have merely asked a thought provoking neutral question.
Your apology is welcomed.
I am not speaking about this post in isolation but lot of other posts by you. Maybe you are neutral here, but iirc you are pretty critical otherwise in other posts.
Asking questions isn’t bad but it makes one think if all the critical thinking comes primarily with a negative framing as this one did or (I believe) others did. The tweet definitely has a negative tenor to it.
Maybe you are doing that thing where critically analysing everything exposes chinks in armor, then more power to you but narratives are important and these posts usually devolve into folks easily shyting in PMs. Lot of PMs are already having a hard time getting things done in startups or companies that arent very mature yet.
As a PM, I am a person who knows how to make things that people want and will pay money for. That is the main skill. Whatever additional skills are needed, will learn or hire as needed.
PS: MOST of the engineering that’s done in Indian companies isn’t all that difficult. Read it again, I said most. I used to code way back. If you ignore all the frameworks and boilerplate code, things have become much simpler to implement now.
@AmusedPM That is indeed true. However, for folks who are working in specialised applications, they are working on the cutting edge. Although, they are supremely in the minority of Indian devs.
@AmusedPM Most of the products being built here are either being copied from outside or copied from other Indian competitors. Companies working on innovative or cutting-edge stuff is sadly pretty rare here. I hope this situation slowly improves in the future.
This post has some good comments about the PM role. https://share.gvine.app/gwbqMRuFWHJjBJve7
Personal fav: https://share.gvine.app/Pjmdp8ZvTbD59U6E6
Inexperienced kids creating a hostile environment with their aggressive and stupid comments and posts is mostly why quality members refrain from engaging. RIP.
I've read your personal fav post. They make many good points. I strongly agree that PMs understand business more and engineers understand tech more. But I still stand by what I said in my comment
The one where you assumed that the skills to become PM are more learnable than to become an engineer and conflated the idea with MLs and mathematicians which is completely different where maths is a foundation to ML?
Of course, based on your experience as a student makes sense 🫡
During my time at Zomato, I once had a conversation with deepi(ceo) at one of our office party. He asked me if companies like ours really need these PMs. He told us that they’re just a waste of time and money. If only developers could articulate their thoughts well, we won’t be having any need of these PMs.
It's as the sense goes. A good engineer can become a good business person but a good business person can rarely become a good engineer. Similar to how good mathematicians can become good ML engineers but good coders don't necessarily become good ML engineers
The problem is PMs don't question/shit on other roles, most PMs love to coexist and collaborate with all business functions. However, I've mostly seen developers shit on one job or another on this platform, especially PMs.
We get that you think our role is unnecessary, but if engineers had skills like teamwork, time management, and a few more necessary skills, maybe PMs wouldn't need to exist. If developers are so high and mighty, why do you need constant follow-ups and handholding? Why do developers need QA engineers to ensure the cleanliness of code when that's something that should be an essential requirement? Why do developers need to be explained edge cases of features when they're so smart, and why don't they already factor for edge cases when coding?
PMs are mid-level earners at most organizations but are involved in working with pretty much every department. I for one don't think we can or will ever outearn engineers and that's fine with me. I do my job as a PM because I love ideating features/products that developers can't do/think they're too busy/good to do. After ideation, it is also my job to ensure it is delivered most efficientlyThe problem is PMs don't question/shit on other roles, most PMs love to coexist and collaborate with all business functions. However, I've mostly seen developers shit on one job or another on this platform, especially PMs.
I have never seen a PM on this app question the role of any other employee in different business functions but I've always seen the PM role get questioned. If it was this unnecessary, people wouldn't still be hiring for PMs.
Founder - just working to escape this bloody matrix.
What are you building?
Spending on average 3-4 hour daily on understanding markets for last 2 year. It will take more time, will integrate my data science skills on this further
Also if product is such a useless thing , why are engineers trying so hard to be a product engineer . Why not stick to coding the most efficient way to query a search result for 100 users !!