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by mlthoughts2018
2533 days ago
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> “I have little time or patience for "engineers > PMs" arguments or vice versa.” But some skill sets are more effective at some tasks. You wouldn’t hire a stand-up comic to play quarterback on your football team. There are opportunity costs to doing so that make it a strategic blunder. It’s really the same, only lesser in degree, when thinking about what sort of background & skill set someone should have when you hire them to manage your product development. If you narrowly dismiss that consideration by acting like every skill set is equal & every type of person hired into the position of product management can do the job, it’s no less of a strategic blunder. |
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Part of what I see emerging out of this whole 10x debacle is a critique of what makes a great engineer, and a realization that it means very different things to different people. Moreover, that one person's definition of a great engineer might come with some serious limitations baked in. For example, which keys on their keyboard are likely to wear out prematurely. :-P
The same is no doubt true with product managers. For example, a previous company I worked for divided up PMs into two roles – those who were experts at the business side and decided the larger direction of a product line, and those who were able to turn those directions into unambiguous specs for designers and engineers to produce. Different skillsets, both overlapping with each other and with other positions at the company. Considering those roles separately, you could be a great PM in at least two different ways at that company, but when you start taking leadership, teamwork, and mentorship qualities into account, it's clear that there were even more pathways up the mountain than that.