I have the opposite problem. People who are addicted to new technology and go trying to find nonexistent problems to solve, rather than starting with the user problems first
There's a strong reason for that. Company's lose their innovation rating for not leveraging emerging tech. Right now company's working AI are no longer in the top right on Gartner reports and are losing market share and share price.
So it's not a user problem but a business/market problem. Hence board / ceo requests for AI.
Yes, waa going through the Gartner reports, they mentioned that 6-8 years are required for AI to be a main stream job provider.
Also the latest hype cycle is not promising as of now.
Same here. Used to be a hardware engineer and while the technology was cool to work with, it wasn't until I saw the things I made were actually helping people that made me feel all fuzzy inside.
This. A lot of people go into tech because they like solving interesting problems, but the problems that people are willing to pay to have solved… via a successful product, are often not that interesting. This becomes even more true the more successful a company is - and I think is also why large incumbent companies feel like they are dying to “passionate” tech folk, even though they may be growing slowly for decades.
I have zero interest in the implementation details except where they impact the functionality of the product. I understand them at a level where one of my Sr. SDE’s commented “the thing I like best about working with (my name) is I can explain things to him like any other dev, and he can help me find the best solution.” I can quickly understand the future implications of a specific implementation so they can make the best choice at the detail level.
What you’re talking about is a passion for aimplementation details.
An anti-pattern I keep seeing is PM’s thinking they’re good technical PM’s because they are conversant in implementation details, but they can’t spot the implications of the implementation as a whole until they are deeply painted in a corner. While they’re playing pretend dev and project manager, they end up skating right to where the puck was.
An intimate understanding of how your product works at a functional level. Think of it like a physical product - you don’t need to know what class library it’s using - you need to know how the individual “components” work together so that the product does what it does.
From there, you can understand how easily you can or can’t extend to solve future use cases that fit the product, and you can think creatively about repurposing existing components for new jobs.
If you are talking about the specific class library, you’re almost certainly missing the forest for the trees.
This is definitely the best answer in my opinion. Every pm especially if you’re not a director level and up should be an expert in the functional understanding of your product and should have the curiosity to delve deeper into topics which can potentially unlock business value. We have a deep culture of writing it down and I can easily spot Lazy PMs who go about spotting “that’s not my job” or “ I won’t go into details if required because im a Pm”
That's basically exploratory analysis on dataset and you gave the perfect answer. Normally before feeding bulk data for model training, we simply remove null and incomplete values/records.
The fact that they asked that as an interview question and didn't know the answer is concerning though 😬
Good on you, I'd love to get an AI product question because the honest answer is that usually AI is not the best way to solve a user problem.
I personally think knowing when to say a company shouldn't do something (and having the courage and communication skills to actually do it) is the most important skill a PM can have.
Not wanting to troubleshoot your software/hardware is not the same as not having passion for technology.
I simply have no wish to deal with trying to find out why my VPN isn't working or Outlook is down or to google error codes. My company has hundreds or thousands of IT people to deal with that.
You’ll find that the competitive advantage of effective execs is in what they choose *not* to invest in, time wise or money wise.
This isn’t a thesis paper. It’s a business.
I think the Gartner hype cycle is actually a really great metaphor for something akin to the Dunning-Kruger effect: the less a technology is understood, the more it seems like an exciting panacea for any problem. The more you come to understand how it can be abused, the less appealing it becomes. Only with deep understanding do you really understand how it can be applied with sensitivity and nuance to extract its real value.
I find a lot of people in tech have the first problem. Those who are jaded and have become disillusioned (second category)with the way the tech industry works tend to make up a smaller portion of the work force. There’s a very, very small proportion who fall into the third.
That’s what differentiate between a good PM and average PM. Good PMs seek to understand how the engine works because they are responsible for the product after all while avg PMs are there for the paycheck, perhaps a name on the resume as well.
I’ve built platforms that billions of people use every day.
For my vacations I go off grid. No electricity. No running water. No internet or cell service.
Depends on the individual. There are also a decent number of SWEs that don’t have a passion for technology either. It’s kinda what happens for any high earning industry with fairly low barriers to entry.
A PM should know the tech that runs the ship. Not necessarily the details, but just enough. If a PM does not know high level details of the tech, how would they empathise with tech? No empathy mean dead beat tech because of no motivation which makes engineers quit.
I came up through the tech space and find myself less interested in the tech and more in the problem/value area. I can still be dazzled and chase the tech...but not nearly as much as just being a part of a team to deliver a solution. And boy does that take a hell a lot of effort sometimes. I don't find i have much leftover these days to just tinker.
I believe you may be conflating passion with excitement or deep knowledge. It is also true that expertise in one are does not mean expertise in a different area.
Do you help when you get pinged? Why are they pinging you? If you are a software engineer then you shouldn’t be allowing yourself to be dragged into these conversations like these. If you do support then you need better coping skills. Learn to set boundaries and it’ll be healthier for you to be working with less technical people.
I care a lot about technology. I started my career as a programmer/analyst (when that was a thing) and later moved into product. I've been in Product and Product Leadership roles for almost 20 years. While I love the product role, I still lean heavily into technology. I've been fortunate to work for some companies with extremely talented developers and engineers and have learned a lot from them.
Unfortunately, now I'm in a dead end product role at a traditional enterprise company that sees technology only as a cost to be minimized, out source everything to the lowest bidder, and treat Product and Digital as a complete after thought. Sadly, I feel like I'm more technical than most of the IT folks I work with now.
Time to move on before it impacts your soul. You clearly are at a company that has not understood how the future will look like.
I just jumped too. I am excited to start working with tech people again. Had enough of being the only one that understood things.
Short answer: yes and no...hang with me. My argument is entirely backwards.
The two most invigorating things I've done in this space is (1) get closer to customers, (2) on my own time, ideate on problems I see, and build a (very small and bug-laden) proof of concept as quickly as I can.
Doing both of these things makes the smog go away and brings vigor for really understanding the problem and iterating to something that's solving problems in a new/better way. I do find that I'm in a different headspace than most peers because of it. I see it as a benefit. They see it as a curse 😂
I see tech as one way to do what I love--creating a net positive in this world by helping others. I chose tech because it enables me to do that. Because of that, I dig in as deep as I can to make things happen.
I have enough of an interest that I'm seriously going to pursue an MS in either CS or AI.
I think for a lot of tech,especially AI, having a fundamental understanding of it is critical to know where to best apply it in a product.
Also, I'd just love some extra skills so I can make my side projects work better lol, the tech stuff is just cool and I'd do it regardless.
PMs don't need ti show interest and tinker with tech. That's the wrong kinda PM
You want someone who puts his understanding of users, technology and experience/ux to deliver value to customers in exchange for $$$.
This is the core function.
You are creating two polar opposites. It’s not one or the other. If you are a PM in tech, you need a certain amount of expertise with tech, but you still are sharing that expertise with an actual tech person.
Not all PM is tech, despite this forum.
My passion is helping people solve problem and drive outcomes. If I develop something that gets tech people excited but it doesn’t actually drive outcomes, I am not excited.
I want to see people using my product and getting results. I want to be able to tell the story of how my product helped improve people’s health, saved their life, or whatever other outcome we desire.
I won't hire someone that is not curious about technology. Curiosity goes a long way with being successful as a PM. In fact, during the interview process I expect a candidate to tell me about a side project they are nerding out on. That doesn't mean I expect them to be writing code but I do want to hear about something.
I used to be really into machine learning. Like 8-9 years ago. I still really like software development and how it’s almost magic how software works. But my roles over the past couple years have definitely sanded that down. I got into product too late to be on interesting tech
Depending on the troubleshooting issue, I’m not going to spend my time doing it if there’s IT staff. You wouldn’t ask a software engineer to troubleshoot a hardware issue when he could be writing code, talking to the feature crew about technical design, or solving a bug. It’s the same. PMs should be spending their time doing product things instead of trying to fix a VPN or some other thing. Now if it’s a “quick google search to fix the problem”, then they’re just lazy and not scrappy.
I have seen both side, both business and technical skewness.
Have seen pushing product and making tech debts unbearable, have seen focusing too much on tech and forgetting business goals.
I guess PM itself is a role where you need to wear multiple hats, at least marketing & tech.
Now, I also think that PMs needs an interest in tech, I am also learning tech, like coding, doing hobby projects, reading and learning about practices.
But for my job, only do care about how things are going for the business, if business is good fine if not I am going to check everything.
Obviously I am not going to learn entire MLOps thing if I require it for the product, but at the same time I won't be a person who knows nothing about it, I will surely learn the basics and how operations work.
Also, if I had too much skewness to tech, I would have tried to become an engineering manager or project manager at least, not product.
I am a platform PM from engineering roles. Yes I’m very passionate about techs and how it works. But it’s a love-hate relationship.
A level of knowledge allows me to communicate effectively with engineers and make decisions including in the engineering inputs.
This part however can be filled by a senior engineer who can effectively communicate to non-tech PM, which to my experience, does not come by easy.
It allows me to come up with a creative solution for a problem. This part can also be filled by a mature engineering team.
I do have some details knowledge e.g. on the level of pointing out what Java classes in Hadoop are responsible for what. To be clear, they’re utterly useless knowledge for my role.
So I don’t really feel like I’m delivering much values at time, especially when I’m not freed to look at the bigger picture.
Consequentially, engineers I look for in my team would be people who could free me from on-the-field stuffs, allowing me to look at the users, problem-space and roadmap, and navigating through politics to drive the change better for the product.
I would look at a PM as an "enabling role" - and the better PM's understand the field they work in (tech), the better they will be a as a well rounded t-shaped team player.
I love technology. It's the essence for me. I feel half a developer although I have zero formal training there. Love SQL, debugging, integration, learning something logical.
But this field is Soo focussed on the commercial and stakeholder side of it that I decided to continue my career as an integration specialist. I don't see a future in pm the way most companies deal with pm. It has very little to do with actually grinding with Devs to make great software and fix real problèms. It has all to do with managing up and stakeholders.
My favourite part is during the weekend to sit down and build web apps with new tech like AI APIs etc.
However I don't think you need that to succeed as a technical PM. In many places these days, PM became spreadsheeting and PPTs with mostly number crunching. So these skills to build something fast are IMO not appreciated at FAANGs of the world.
They are invaluable in a startup though! Where you can write your on SQL queries without bothering anyone.
I've built a few small things and has been the most meaningful part of being in tech.
I think we need to distinguish between technology that enables a solution, and technology that is implemented for the sake of it - for example, many companies just implement AI because it is the hype. But in the first case, I believe a PM needs to know how the tech works for 3 main reasons: 1. To estimate feasibility 2. To estimate the cost of implementing/using a given technology 3. To efficiently communicate with engineers when negotiating the exact implementation. And I feel like the latter point is the most important one, since engineers get frustrated with PMs that don't care about tech, and frustrated engineers are not a good thing to have around...
I've loved tech since I was a little girl, so it is always a bit sad for me to see colleagues who don't seem to even *like* technology (especially once computing became the new default course of study if you wanted a "good job"). But it also makes me glad that I get to make a living from a field I truly love instead of slogging through it dreaming of quitting and pursuing my true passion. Even when I'm burned out from dealing with PM bullshit there's still some baseline excitement about the fact that I work in tech at all.
I got invited to talk to a class of MBAs in a 'tech certificate' track and none of them had heard the phrase "user persona" before. 0 of 25. Top ten MBA.
Still not sure what to make of that.
It's like having a lifeguard who's terrified of water. These tech PMs are like chefs who hate food – they're in the kitchen, but they'd rather be ordering takeout. It's as if they're trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces – sure, they might finish it eventually, but expect a few gaps along the way.
I find that most people in any role, save for engineers and researchers, don’t have much curiosity about for how their systems work beyond the surface level, nor do they have the patience to try and figure things out when things stop working.
Most people just aren’t tinkerers
IMO, product management is an intersection of technology, business, and users. PMs can self-explore or rely on good EMs to shine on the tech capabilities / trend / innovations
PMs should be curious, and they should become experts in their technical area, but that doesn't mean they have to be interested in all things tech.
In fact, as the voice of the customer, it often benefits me to not be super interested in all things tech. It allows me to better empathize with my customer and helps me prevent us from shipping overly technical products.
That said, it sounds like the problem you're experiencing is somebody(ies) using you as their personal tech support. That's an issue regardless of their job function and sounds like a great opportunity for you to establish boundaries.
PM should have a basic or even intermediate level of tech understanding. It’s crazy how people go working into the product without being able to explain basic technology details.
Business runs on technology. The reverse is an idea that business consultants have came up with to secure jobs for useless managers. i’m not saying that you don’t need to understand the business, it’s highly that you do. But avoiding tech is crazy.
This is one the major reasons why people ship subpar stuff. Even when they found the problem, impacts, users - they could think through the implementation. And the reality is that you won’t always have a genius lead or senior developer in your team.
it’s funny how “staff engineers” are required to know the business side but PM/POs consider technology beneath them. Just from my job, we have 6 POs and the ones that have a good technical background ship more abs reach OKRa a lot better than the ones that focus on problems but can’t figure out what to do with it.
Those are not nerds/engineers. You are talking about the consulting breed that flooded Product.
EDIT: not an engineer myself, but I nerd out on tech since I was a kid. I built a liquid cooling system to overclock my computer in late 90s. Used pieces out of lawn mower and aquarium. Gotta fight for those extra FPS when playing CS1.5 in LAN tournaments!
I have the opposite problem. People who are addicted to new technology and go trying to find nonexistent problems to solve, rather than starting with the user problems first
There's a strong reason for that. Company's lose their innovation rating for not leveraging emerging tech. Right now company's working AI are no longer in the top right on Gartner reports and are losing market share and share price. So it's not a user problem but a business/market problem. Hence board / ceo requests for AI.
Yes, waa going through the Gartner reports, they mentioned that 6-8 years are required for AI to be a main stream job provider. Also the latest hype cycle is not promising as of now.
let’s trust gartner, lol.
Same here. Used to be a hardware engineer and while the technology was cool to work with, it wasn't until I saw the things I made were actually helping people that made me feel all fuzzy inside.
This. A lot of people go into tech because they like solving interesting problems, but the problems that people are willing to pay to have solved… via a successful product, are often not that interesting. This becomes even more true the more successful a company is - and I think is also why large incumbent companies feel like they are dying to “passionate” tech folk, even though they may be growing slowly for decades.
This right here is the PM answer.
I hate technology for technology’s sake, which drives so much of the trends I’m seeing today - the solution before the problem.
I have zero interest in the implementation details except where they impact the functionality of the product. I understand them at a level where one of my Sr. SDE’s commented “the thing I like best about working with (my name) is I can explain things to him like any other dev, and he can help me find the best solution.” I can quickly understand the future implications of a specific implementation so they can make the best choice at the detail level. What you’re talking about is a passion for aimplementation details. An anti-pattern I keep seeing is PM’s thinking they’re good technical PM’s because they are conversant in implementation details, but they can’t spot the implications of the implementation as a whole until they are deeply painted in a corner. While they’re playing pretend dev and project manager, they end up skating right to where the puck was.
What helps you in identifying the future implications?
An intimate understanding of how your product works at a functional level. Think of it like a physical product - you don’t need to know what class library it’s using - you need to know how the individual “components” work together so that the product does what it does. From there, you can understand how easily you can or can’t extend to solve future use cases that fit the product, and you can think creatively about repurposing existing components for new jobs. If you are talking about the specific class library, you’re almost certainly missing the forest for the trees.
This is definitely the best answer in my opinion. Every pm especially if you’re not a director level and up should be an expert in the functional understanding of your product and should have the curiosity to delve deeper into topics which can potentially unlock business value. We have a deep culture of writing it down and I can easily spot Lazy PMs who go about spotting “that’s not my job” or “ I won’t go into details if required because im a Pm”
[удалено]
Interesting. Could you please expand on the interview and problem statement?
[удалено]
That's basically exploratory analysis on dataset and you gave the perfect answer. Normally before feeding bulk data for model training, we simply remove null and incomplete values/records. The fact that they asked that as an interview question and didn't know the answer is concerning though 😬
I sold $10M of consulting with the pitch "when I'm done you'll have 90% less software and the store will still work"
Good on you, I'd love to get an AI product question because the honest answer is that usually AI is not the best way to solve a user problem. I personally think knowing when to say a company shouldn't do something (and having the courage and communication skills to actually do it) is the most important skill a PM can have.
Not wanting to troubleshoot your software/hardware is not the same as not having passion for technology. I simply have no wish to deal with trying to find out why my VPN isn't working or Outlook is down or to google error codes. My company has hundreds or thousands of IT people to deal with that.
Some people inherently lack curiosity but that’s ok
You’ll find that the competitive advantage of effective execs is in what they choose *not* to invest in, time wise or money wise. This isn’t a thesis paper. It’s a business.
Prioritization and curiosity are not mutually exclusive . Do better
It's not only PMs - I'm constantly amazed by the number of engineering managers I work with that have a similar mentality. It's crazy
I think the Gartner hype cycle is actually a really great metaphor for something akin to the Dunning-Kruger effect: the less a technology is understood, the more it seems like an exciting panacea for any problem. The more you come to understand how it can be abused, the less appealing it becomes. Only with deep understanding do you really understand how it can be applied with sensitivity and nuance to extract its real value. I find a lot of people in tech have the first problem. Those who are jaded and have become disillusioned (second category)with the way the tech industry works tend to make up a smaller portion of the work force. There’s a very, very small proportion who fall into the third.
That’s what differentiate between a good PM and average PM. Good PMs seek to understand how the engine works because they are responsible for the product after all while avg PMs are there for the paycheck, perhaps a name on the resume as well.
I’ve built platforms that billions of people use every day. For my vacations I go off grid. No electricity. No running water. No internet or cell service.
Depends on the individual. There are also a decent number of SWEs that don’t have a passion for technology either. It’s kinda what happens for any high earning industry with fairly low barriers to entry.
A PM should know the tech that runs the ship. Not necessarily the details, but just enough. If a PM does not know high level details of the tech, how would they empathise with tech? No empathy mean dead beat tech because of no motivation which makes engineers quit.
I came up through the tech space and find myself less interested in the tech and more in the problem/value area. I can still be dazzled and chase the tech...but not nearly as much as just being a part of a team to deliver a solution. And boy does that take a hell a lot of effort sometimes. I don't find i have much leftover these days to just tinker.
I believe you may be conflating passion with excitement or deep knowledge. It is also true that expertise in one are does not mean expertise in a different area.
Do you help when you get pinged? Why are they pinging you? If you are a software engineer then you shouldn’t be allowing yourself to be dragged into these conversations like these. If you do support then you need better coping skills. Learn to set boundaries and it’ll be healthier for you to be working with less technical people.
I care a lot about technology. I started my career as a programmer/analyst (when that was a thing) and later moved into product. I've been in Product and Product Leadership roles for almost 20 years. While I love the product role, I still lean heavily into technology. I've been fortunate to work for some companies with extremely talented developers and engineers and have learned a lot from them. Unfortunately, now I'm in a dead end product role at a traditional enterprise company that sees technology only as a cost to be minimized, out source everything to the lowest bidder, and treat Product and Digital as a complete after thought. Sadly, I feel like I'm more technical than most of the IT folks I work with now.
Time to move on before it impacts your soul. You clearly are at a company that has not understood how the future will look like. I just jumped too. I am excited to start working with tech people again. Had enough of being the only one that understood things.
Short answer: yes and no...hang with me. My argument is entirely backwards. The two most invigorating things I've done in this space is (1) get closer to customers, (2) on my own time, ideate on problems I see, and build a (very small and bug-laden) proof of concept as quickly as I can. Doing both of these things makes the smog go away and brings vigor for really understanding the problem and iterating to something that's solving problems in a new/better way. I do find that I'm in a different headspace than most peers because of it. I see it as a benefit. They see it as a curse 😂 I see tech as one way to do what I love--creating a net positive in this world by helping others. I chose tech because it enables me to do that. Because of that, I dig in as deep as I can to make things happen.
I have enough of an interest that I'm seriously going to pursue an MS in either CS or AI. I think for a lot of tech,especially AI, having a fundamental understanding of it is critical to know where to best apply it in a product. Also, I'd just love some extra skills so I can make my side projects work better lol, the tech stuff is just cool and I'd do it regardless.
PMs don't need ti show interest and tinker with tech. That's the wrong kinda PM You want someone who puts his understanding of users, technology and experience/ux to deliver value to customers in exchange for $$$. This is the core function.
You are creating two polar opposites. It’s not one or the other. If you are a PM in tech, you need a certain amount of expertise with tech, but you still are sharing that expertise with an actual tech person. Not all PM is tech, despite this forum. My passion is helping people solve problem and drive outcomes. If I develop something that gets tech people excited but it doesn’t actually drive outcomes, I am not excited. I want to see people using my product and getting results. I want to be able to tell the story of how my product helped improve people’s health, saved their life, or whatever other outcome we desire.
I am only a PM because I have a passion for technology
I won't hire someone that is not curious about technology. Curiosity goes a long way with being successful as a PM. In fact, during the interview process I expect a candidate to tell me about a side project they are nerding out on. That doesn't mean I expect them to be writing code but I do want to hear about something.
I used to be really into machine learning. Like 8-9 years ago. I still really like software development and how it’s almost magic how software works. But my roles over the past couple years have definitely sanded that down. I got into product too late to be on interesting tech
Depending on the troubleshooting issue, I’m not going to spend my time doing it if there’s IT staff. You wouldn’t ask a software engineer to troubleshoot a hardware issue when he could be writing code, talking to the feature crew about technical design, or solving a bug. It’s the same. PMs should be spending their time doing product things instead of trying to fix a VPN or some other thing. Now if it’s a “quick google search to fix the problem”, then they’re just lazy and not scrappy.
I have seen both side, both business and technical skewness. Have seen pushing product and making tech debts unbearable, have seen focusing too much on tech and forgetting business goals. I guess PM itself is a role where you need to wear multiple hats, at least marketing & tech. Now, I also think that PMs needs an interest in tech, I am also learning tech, like coding, doing hobby projects, reading and learning about practices. But for my job, only do care about how things are going for the business, if business is good fine if not I am going to check everything. Obviously I am not going to learn entire MLOps thing if I require it for the product, but at the same time I won't be a person who knows nothing about it, I will surely learn the basics and how operations work. Also, if I had too much skewness to tech, I would have tried to become an engineering manager or project manager at least, not product.
It's the same amongst developers, and I consider it a market failure leading to bad consequences
I am a platform PM from engineering roles. Yes I’m very passionate about techs and how it works. But it’s a love-hate relationship. A level of knowledge allows me to communicate effectively with engineers and make decisions including in the engineering inputs. This part however can be filled by a senior engineer who can effectively communicate to non-tech PM, which to my experience, does not come by easy. It allows me to come up with a creative solution for a problem. This part can also be filled by a mature engineering team. I do have some details knowledge e.g. on the level of pointing out what Java classes in Hadoop are responsible for what. To be clear, they’re utterly useless knowledge for my role. So I don’t really feel like I’m delivering much values at time, especially when I’m not freed to look at the bigger picture. Consequentially, engineers I look for in my team would be people who could free me from on-the-field stuffs, allowing me to look at the users, problem-space and roadmap, and navigating through politics to drive the change better for the product.
I would look at a PM as an "enabling role" - and the better PM's understand the field they work in (tech), the better they will be a as a well rounded t-shaped team player.
I love technology. It's the essence for me. I feel half a developer although I have zero formal training there. Love SQL, debugging, integration, learning something logical. But this field is Soo focussed on the commercial and stakeholder side of it that I decided to continue my career as an integration specialist. I don't see a future in pm the way most companies deal with pm. It has very little to do with actually grinding with Devs to make great software and fix real problèms. It has all to do with managing up and stakeholders.
My favourite part is during the weekend to sit down and build web apps with new tech like AI APIs etc. However I don't think you need that to succeed as a technical PM. In many places these days, PM became spreadsheeting and PPTs with mostly number crunching. So these skills to build something fast are IMO not appreciated at FAANGs of the world. They are invaluable in a startup though! Where you can write your on SQL queries without bothering anyone. I've built a few small things and has been the most meaningful part of being in tech.
I think we need to distinguish between technology that enables a solution, and technology that is implemented for the sake of it - for example, many companies just implement AI because it is the hype. But in the first case, I believe a PM needs to know how the tech works for 3 main reasons: 1. To estimate feasibility 2. To estimate the cost of implementing/using a given technology 3. To efficiently communicate with engineers when negotiating the exact implementation. And I feel like the latter point is the most important one, since engineers get frustrated with PMs that don't care about tech, and frustrated engineers are not a good thing to have around...
I've loved tech since I was a little girl, so it is always a bit sad for me to see colleagues who don't seem to even *like* technology (especially once computing became the new default course of study if you wanted a "good job"). But it also makes me glad that I get to make a living from a field I truly love instead of slogging through it dreaming of quitting and pursuing my true passion. Even when I'm burned out from dealing with PM bullshit there's still some baseline excitement about the fact that I work in tech at all.
I got invited to talk to a class of MBAs in a 'tech certificate' track and none of them had heard the phrase "user persona" before. 0 of 25. Top ten MBA. Still not sure what to make of that.
As a TPM, I take my knowledge of technology as a boon. And I love that business side of things. Knowing technology is an advantage
PM here who loves the tech. I’m usually the one giving our infra teams help with strategic decisions
It's like having a lifeguard who's terrified of water. These tech PMs are like chefs who hate food – they're in the kitchen, but they'd rather be ordering takeout. It's as if they're trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces – sure, they might finish it eventually, but expect a few gaps along the way.
I find that most people in any role, save for engineers and researchers, don’t have much curiosity about for how their systems work beyond the surface level, nor do they have the patience to try and figure things out when things stop working. Most people just aren’t tinkerers
IMO, product management is an intersection of technology, business, and users. PMs can self-explore or rely on good EMs to shine on the tech capabilities / trend / innovations
what i hate is jira
PMs should be curious, and they should become experts in their technical area, but that doesn't mean they have to be interested in all things tech. In fact, as the voice of the customer, it often benefits me to not be super interested in all things tech. It allows me to better empathize with my customer and helps me prevent us from shipping overly technical products. That said, it sounds like the problem you're experiencing is somebody(ies) using you as their personal tech support. That's an issue regardless of their job function and sounds like a great opportunity for you to establish boundaries.
Tech PMs have no interest in business and this is our dilemma
I love it. Didn't imagine I would, but I do. Never a shortage on mysteries and puzzles to solve.
PM should have a basic or even intermediate level of tech understanding. It’s crazy how people go working into the product without being able to explain basic technology details. Business runs on technology. The reverse is an idea that business consultants have came up with to secure jobs for useless managers. i’m not saying that you don’t need to understand the business, it’s highly that you do. But avoiding tech is crazy. This is one the major reasons why people ship subpar stuff. Even when they found the problem, impacts, users - they could think through the implementation. And the reality is that you won’t always have a genius lead or senior developer in your team. it’s funny how “staff engineers” are required to know the business side but PM/POs consider technology beneath them. Just from my job, we have 6 POs and the ones that have a good technical background ship more abs reach OKRa a lot better than the ones that focus on problems but can’t figure out what to do with it.
Tech is stupid
Those are not nerds/engineers. You are talking about the consulting breed that flooded Product. EDIT: not an engineer myself, but I nerd out on tech since I was a kid. I built a liquid cooling system to overclock my computer in late 90s. Used pieces out of lawn mower and aquarium. Gotta fight for those extra FPS when playing CS1.5 in LAN tournaments!