When I was a PM, I was brutally honest about my heuristics, thinking, and product vision and made sure to give as much visibility as I could to ICs without overstepping executive leadership mandates.
And if an engineer thought I was talking shit, I'd give them the option to lead low risk customer calls with me shadowing and their manager's permission so they can see the tradeoffs a business deals with on a daily basis. Either they could prove their mettle (and I'd mentor them to climb up the engineering or PM ladder) or they'd shut up once faced with the kinds of day to day tradeoffs and responsibilities comes from being a PM for an 8-9 figure product line.
Of course, I always demanded full visibility into our hiring pipeline across functions because a bad hire is an expensive mistake that can kill an entire product line.
Also, this was how I became a Sales Engineer and later Product Manager as a SWE. I told a VP Sales and Director of Product that they were talking out of their ass but I had a great engineering reputation internally, so they brought me in on a similar gambit. My leadership were old school Silicon Valley (they lived first hand during the Halt and Catch Fire era), but this kind of culture is still common here in the Bay.
Edit: oh damn, we got Silicon Valley history makers here :0
Yeah, that sounds great — the ideal is product and engineering engaged on a common and realistic view of what the business is trying to do. You want a staff meeting where everyone’s contributing their skills to the problem, not defending or imposing their siloed concerns.
If you have any function (product, engineering, legal, finance, whatever) able to, or even trying to, unilaterally impose their priorities without regard to the bigger picture, that’s not a good dynamic. Especially if it’s covered up with “teamwork” rhetoric that doesn’t match the reality.
Yep! Totally agree with ya! We're all a team and no one is above or below each other, and I always made sure to manage out people who had a superiority complex - even if they were gifted (and they usually weren't) they would just make life hell for everyone else.
I also always fought for higher compensation - I'd rather have a couple really talented and well paid individuals rather than a mass of low paid and checked out ones.
Comments
When I was a PM, I was brutally honest about my heuristics, thinking, and product vision and made sure to give as much visibility as I could to ICs without overstepping executive leadership mandates.
And if an engineer thought I was talking shit, I'd give them the option to lead low risk customer calls with me shadowing and their manager's permission so they can see the tradeoffs a business deals with on a daily basis. Either they could prove their mettle (and I'd mentor them to climb up the engineering or PM ladder) or they'd shut up once faced with the kinds of day to day tradeoffs and responsibilities comes from being a PM for an 8-9 figure product line.
Of course, I always demanded full visibility into our hiring pipeline across functions because a bad hire is an expensive mistake that can kill an entire product line.
Also, this was how I became a Sales Engineer and later Product Manager as a SWE. I told a VP Sales and Director of Product that they were talking out of their ass but I had a great engineering reputation internally, so they brought me in on a similar gambit. My leadership were old school Silicon Valley (they lived first hand during the Halt and Catch Fire era), but this kind of culture is still common here in the Bay.
Edit: oh damn, we got Silicon Valley history makers here :0
Yeah, that sounds great — the ideal is product and engineering engaged on a common and realistic view of what the business is trying to do. You want a staff meeting where everyone’s contributing their skills to the problem, not defending or imposing their siloed concerns.
If you have any function (product, engineering, legal, finance, whatever) able to, or even trying to, unilaterally impose their priorities without regard to the bigger picture, that’s not a good dynamic. Especially if it’s covered up with “teamwork” rhetoric that doesn’t match the reality.
Yep! Totally agree with ya! We're all a team and no one is above or below each other, and I always made sure to manage out people who had a superiority complex - even if they were gifted (and they usually weren't) they would just make life hell for everyone else.
I also always fought for higher compensation - I'd rather have a couple really talented and well paid individuals rather than a mass of low paid and checked out ones.
I've mentored my PortCos this way as well.