[pinewurst]

Speaking as a recently retired PM who knew my business cold, my biggest challenge was designers and developers who prioritized resume enhancement over even the semblance of business/customer success. Not wanting to implement critical functionality because it was “too hard” vs hard selling me on how Rust would change my life (like Scientology) if I’d support a total rewrite.

[EricHolden12]

You are a great example.

It’s this mentality which is the problem — that only PMs are thinking about customer/biz success and so they must prioritize and figure out what everyone should work on and when it should be done.

Let’s do a rewrite in Rust. What does this engineer know that we don’t? Why would they say something so incredulous. What if they are thinking about the customer and biz but from a different angle.

Builders - people writing code and designing the actual functionality and experiences somehow became strictly “resources”. The thing that made tech great and allowed for so many companies to flourish was the tech/geek/nerd/hacker spirit that let those who write code decide what to do and how to do it.

Now, we’ve McKinsey’d the whole thing into boring processes that make work for people who don’t design or code. Jira, Google Docs, Slack, etc etc etc

[pinewurst]

I try. :)

More seriously I agree with you about the corrosive and draining effects of useless, stupid process and the worthlessness of management consultant parasites.

At least in my previous business, strategic infrastructure, many developers writing software (and often those designing/choosing hardware platforms) really didn’t know how customer users were actually using products or even seemed to care much. Certainly much earlier in the company’s history there was close connectivity between engineering and users, but they diverged long ago.

I’m certainly not trying to lay down a “class” vibe that PM’s are (hah!) superior beings, as I know enough fool PM’s (usually those risen to VP level :). My point here is that we’re _all_ bozos on this bus and should work better with each other for a better end result for all.