[ryandrake]

It's a little more nuanced. Apple doesn't just throw away the PMs and tell eng leaders "You just have to do that work". Their culture has baked in the whole "DRI" concept where a single individual is directly responsible for all aspects of the product, and has corresponding decision-making responsibility and accountability for its success or failure. In typical companies, when eng and PM disagree, the decision is often escalated up the management chain, to someone even less involved and clued in. With the "DRI" model, any conflict between eng and product needs is purely in the mind of one person, and gets resolved right there.

The tough part about doing this is when you hire engineers, you need to also interview for good product sense and have more emphasis on soft skills. Not easy to find.