[brayhite]

It’s truly mind blowing how intelligent comments can be here, but the circle jerk of engineers vs non engineers rings so loud.

Good PMs know how to gatekeeper from other departments and leadership, identify engineers strengths and defer to their expertise, and remember answers to the same technical questions so they can at least build upon their knowledge of the craft. I have no clue how rare they are, but those are what I try to do on a regular basis on top of disseminating information as it changes from product stakeholders to engineering.

I can list a whole host of reasons why engineers can flounder without a mediator between product and marketing leadership to make sense of requests. I’m also acutely aware that great engineers can make things work in lieu of someone who owns that process.

I’m not going to bash engineers as a whole though. I’m not ignorant.

[lidHanteyk]

They are extremely rare; I've worked with exactly one competent PM ever, and they were technically trained and knew how to write code. The conclusion I'm forced to draw is that non-technical PMs are dead weight.

[Phenix88be]

> Good PMs know how to gatekeeper from other departments and leadership, identify engineers strengths and defer to their expertise, and remember answers to the same technical questions so they can at least build upon their knowledge of the craft. I have no clue how rare they are, but those are what I try to do on a regular basis on top of disseminating information as it changes from product stakeholders to engineering.

Good PM, yes, they can. But how does that required any kind of skill than have more value than an engineer skill ? I haven't met any good PM in 7 years and 3 jobs... It's kind of sad really.

[brayhite]

The value of the skill is relative. Some places may have incredible technical talent in their engineering team, but the team doesn’t know an SEO optimization from a consistent UI architecture.

In my opinion, a PM is a jack of all trades, and a master at communication and organization. Engineers on Team A who can identify why Feature A has dependencies on Feature B that Team B is building is awesome; but that’s the accepted exception. I’d also argue there’s a case that an engineer’s time should be spent building and writing code, not managing the release schedule to best meet business goals. Leave that to the PMs.

[Phenix88be]

> I’d also argue there’s a case that an engineer’s time should be spent building and writing code, not managing the release schedule to best meet business goals. Leave that to the PMs.

They will manage the schedule based on what the engineers estimations (and try to push for a better release date).

Any way, good PM must exist and add value to a team. But most of them don't know what they are doing... It's really painful.

[calyth2018]

I've had experience of working with at least 4 PjMs so far.

Once accused me of lying, in which I showed screenshots of the bugtracker proving otherwise. She has a habit of being disrespectful, particularly to staff from one side of an acquisition (it was really acquisition in name only). Her reputation goes far and wide.

One was frigging awesome. She helped shield our department from problems created by other department. She knows which decisions should be decided by whom. I'd kill to have her on the team again.

Third one claimed that the test teams were wasting their time discussing a certain topic; one in which at least three tests leads with way more experience in testing are reluctant to make a hard call on. She came from the same place as the first one.

Fourth is alright, not as great as the second PjM I've worked with.

I've probably encountered more and forgotten the experience.

I've seen my share of bad ones, and the bad ones can sour your culture pretty quick.