[rkuester]

Why are PMs at technology companies often the corporate drone types that only pretend to add value by retweeting status from the people who really know what's going on? Without understanding, they play a destructive game of telephone and buzzword bingo.

Shouldn't engineers with leadership gifts lead more projects where engineering plays a major role? Am I being too engineering-centric to think that suitably gifted engineers could grok the non-engineering aspects of a project better than a spreadsheet pusher can understand the engineering component?

Maybe I've just never worked with a good PM.

[kenjackson]

You have never worked with a good PM. I've worked with incredible PMs. I've seen these PMs walk into meeting with senior developers and architects, and pretty much be the only person asking the right question regarding how to get the product shipped.

And that for me has been one of the defining characteristics of a strong PM. Good questioning ability. Ability to skip to the chase. And they have a suprisingly strong grasp of dependencies. When architect A says, "this is coming in a bit late" they almost instantly are getting the PMs and architects from team X, Y, and Z in the room because they know theres an indirect relationship to these teams also.

I've only worked with one bad PM in my life. We fired him after two months. The difference in productivity, confidence, and general life enjoyment between an bad and good PM is pretty enormous.

[slantyyz]

My experience in the services realm is that there are way more bad PMs than good PMs.

I've seen way too many PMs too afraid to push back on the customer with respect to scope changes who also have no idea how the technical staff think and therefore have no idea how to communicate with them.

I've also found that PMs with more certifications tended to have less of a clue in terms of how to run a project, but that's just my experience.

[adn37]

> pretend to add value by retweeting status from the people who really know what's going on?

They are communicating, while you are coding. This is of course unbalanced. But personally, the last thing I want to have to do is to update any random person on how things are going, while in the middle of a crunch towards the deadline. The dark side it that I have to deal with a PM who doesn't understand the deep technical aspects and is the 'key' player of the decision process.

> Shouldn't engineers with leadership gifts lead more projects where engineering plays a major role?

Some very talented soft engineers that I know are trying their best to stay away from project management. It's how things are.