[MajimasEyepatch]

Also a lot of PMs are former engineers. One could argue a person capable of doing both at a high level is "smarter" than a person who cannot. Certainly they would have a unique perspective compared to people who have only been on one side or the other.

But like you said, intelligence is multifaceted, and comparing people's intelligence is pointless and divisive.

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

PM is not product, when they get separated from technical in companies, they're literally product, as a team.

But more importantly, most of the time what happens is these people have 2, maybe 3 years of experience. They've done enough to be able to roughly understand technology, and that experience helps them communicate with the technical side, but in no way shape or form does that mean they would come anywhere close to that 20 year old vet on the development team.

But the flip side isn't true. In companies without that strong delineation between them, it's the 20 year old vet who would be doing what product is doing.

Companies who do this are too compartmentalized and they become extremely slow as a result. It's all in an effort to keep technical from having an outsized influence.

[sarchertech]

I have never understood why companies consistently hire people right out of college (often with random degrees unrelated to anything relevant) to tell a team of engineers with 10-20 years of experience what (and often how) to build.

Back when I was new, engineers worked directly with subject matter experts and the occasional business analyst. Now we’ve mostly replaced SMEs with product, and I don’t think it’s working out.

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

> Back when I was new, engineers worked directly with subject matter experts and the occasional business analyst. Now we’ve mostly replaced SMEs with product, and I don’t think it’s working out.

Exactly this.

Not only that, but when it works the way you're describing, it's often a 2-way conversation. The developer strives to understand the goals, then starts making suggestions to determine if the business is ok with shortcomings that would make it a lot cheaper and faster, but would fulfill those goals. They'll also dig into what the business wants in the future so when the implementation starts they can take that into account.

Instead we get product who wants to own all of that and then throw things up into a jira ticket and have it magically be great. There's no value add there.