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Comment by lulmerchant | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always understood that one of the most important pieces of the PM role is to act as a sort of negotiator between design/development and all other stakeholders. Customers and everybody else in the business all want their own things, and all have their own priorities. The good PMs that I’ve known have kept those people happy, managed their expectations well, and mostly shielded design/development from their demands and politics.

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35 is a good age as it increases the likelihood that the PM will have parenting experience which provides the benefit of improving expectation mgmt, negotiation, and communication skills to a non-technical audience.

Or the likelihood of developing these skills as a member of successful teams.

Now that I think about it, a lot of the people I most enjoy working with in the office are parents, and the kind of parents who are obviously really good parents.

I've read how being responsible for family make employees plan their work better because they want to get home for the dinner, how it makes them more responsible or loyal – but that's the first time I hear about parenting experience directly affecting management skills. Some similarities are obvious now that I think about it – you want to help them grow and flourish. You set expectations and put boundaries while avoiding micromanagement and try not to spoil internal gratification with bribes. Well, except firing – you don't fire kids early due to lack of culture fit.

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