[bagacrap]

(Product) managers decide what to build. Engineers decide how to build it. You make it sound as if software engineering has no value. Clearly this isn't true as small local banks will have awful sites and apps despite the problem statement being pretty clear cut. The most successful tech companies also happen to be the ones that have attracted the top engineering talent. Generally, ime, an engineer you pay $150k is worth more than two engineers at $75k.

[dgellow]

> Product) managers decide what to build. Engineers decide how to build it.

That’s not how software is done though.

Product managers are in a constant negotiation with engineers to decide what to do. There is a lot of back and forth and exchanges to arrive to a set of stuff that can then be built.

That’s what the agile routine is about.

[constantine42]

The company I work for has an interesting setup. Marketing drives what products we need via marketing research, Product Owners(PO) represent those products and further research the problem space, Product Managers(PM) are coupled with an engineering team and the PM negotiates with the team around estimations, priorities, and planning. But ultimately the team decides what it does, but they are held accountable for delivering business value.

As a team, we can't just go all vigilante, but we can push back and have at times gone over other people's heads to make sure the proper people understood the problem. Most of the time we got what we thought was best for the customer by going over people's heads, but there's been plenty of times that a middle ground was reached.

The main thing is to not just say "we can't". Our job is to deliver solutions, not products. If there is a problem with priorities, we find an acceptable way to make things "work". Maybe that's adjusting timelines, or features, or just asking the customer how important that timeline is to them. I can't tell you how many times I've been told about "deadlines" that the customer never actually said was a deadline.

Us: Yo cust, can we slide that project 2-4 weeks?

Them: Sure. Heck, move it back 2 months if you want, but we absolutely need to start testing on our end in 3 months.