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Comment by jacobr | Hacker News Reader

Are responsibilities really this neatly separated? I’ve worked in both huge, small and medium sized Scandinavian companies and apart from EM and PM, the following people would also have a say in answering these questions:

  * designers
  * QA
  * tech lead
  * senior developers
  * delivery lead

Is this because of my biased experience with consensus culture, or is the article a simplification?

Also, an Engineering Manager would typically decide which technical experts are suitable for a given task, but would not be the one deciding which tech to use, apart from budget constraints.

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The article felt accurate to me - The PM and EM absolutely make the decisions. If they are good at their job, yes, of course they listen to everyone else before making those decisions. Failing to let everyone have their say would lead to not only a poor product, but a poor team. But at the end of the day, it is not a consensus, it is the PM/EM listening, researching, thinking, and then deciding.

FWIW, the best teams I've been on have been mostly driven by consensus anyway - if everyone is in consensus, the PM has an easy decision, so that is how it happens as often as not. But a good PM will know when to strive for that solution, and when to just make their own call.

I'd always expect EM to be drawing experience from tech lead / senior developers. EM can sometimes be a facilitator (rather than developer) to ensure that right people are tasked to answer the How, When & Who.

I wonder how other people see design fitting into that mix? The fact that EM is recognised - but somehow "Design Management" (research, prototyping, design vision, user experience etc) isn't feels like it too often leads to an imbalance in the way that products are built.

I think the assumption here is that at least the tech lead and senior developers, and possibly delivery lead, report to the EM, so the EM can speak for them (hopefully after consulting them, of course). QA sometimes also reports to engineering, or may not even exist at all. Designers are, unfortunately, often overlooked when making schedules...

But I think the simplification comes from the idea that the EM owns those decisions, even if the EM doesn't make them in isolation.

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