When we made the original iPhone, we didn’t have product managers | Hacker News Reader

When we made the original iPhone, we didn’t have product managers

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20 pointswaprin12 comments

Product managers and scrum masters are a hindrance. Yet another attempt at converting software development into manufacturing. Notice apple wasn't following an “agile” methodology. Nor was microsoft or google. Yet they dramatically disrupted their respective domains. Now that they do, they either stagnate or rinse and repeat whatever they built back when they did actual software engineering or build annoying features or tools aimed at managers not engineers.

Couldn't have said it better.

Luckily, this gives people (like me atleast) a great shot at launching a solid product since I won't have an annoying product manager.

The typical product manager today just reads customer feedback and misinterprets data signals. They almost never have a development background where they creatively built something themselves, they always come from some wonky unrelated field... the MBA type.

Do you want to put your career on the line deciding which features or bug-fixes to prioritize by the next release? If the stakes were that high, wouldn’t you rather have an ally who has done at least a minimal amount of analysis to determine which features you should prioritize given a finite amount of resources? If you are comfortable with that responsibility while also deciding how to implement those features than by all means ignore your product manager.

I do. Thats how i work. I feel like there are two tiers of software engineers: programmers and developers. Programmers implement spec sheets, while developers talk to stakeholders or even end users to understand what they need to build. I am the latter. I think good CS curricula should include product and project management and accounting basics. Otherwise software engineering is just conveyor belt work.

I respect that, but you still distilled an entire discipline to a couple semesters of course work. It is as absurd as an MBA saying they could be engineers because they took a few CS classes.

It is incredibly valuable to understand the big picture of the industry but it is not sufficient to distill an entire discipline to a few classes.

Awesome. A once-in-a-lifetime product was created without a incredibly narrowly focused definition of a product manager.

The benefit of a product manager isn’t realized when you have that rare, world-changing product. A PM is useful when you have 47 incrementally better features on your backlog but only have the capacity to deliver 8 of them. Do you want to bet your career on being 8 for 8 on the features to deliver? Or would you rather work with someone who has done the research to help you decide what is important?

The iPhone is a once in a lifetime innovation. Deciding whether the iPhone should allow the end user to select a default browser is a decision most engineers would rather delegate off to a product manager.

The problem is a lot of engineers delude themselves into thinking they are working on the next iPhone when really they just aren’t.

I bet your pm won’t deliver 8/8 if they picked even 4/8 that would be impressive

4/8 is still impressive. It is telling that you don’t realize that.

The problem with product managers in most companies is entirely one of heavy (I'd even say stupid) processes. Their job is to interact with customers, figure out their most pressing needs, and get them across to the development team. They should not act like they manage the dev team, nor should everything revolve around discussions with PMs. PMs should prioritize the backlog and trust devs to get the job done and devs should trust PMs to prioritize things correctly. Discussion should only happen when something is unclear. Importantly, devs can and should prioritize technical tasks over user stories and PMs need to accept that.

His description of DRIs (“directly responsible individuals”) sounds an awful lot like a product manager to me.

Sounds like the big difference is that you can be both a DRI and an IC software engineer. PMs are not normally also devs.

It reminds me of the “Chief Engineer” role in the Toyota Production System. They’re fully responsible for the success of a vehicle. They aren’t necessarily doing day-to-day IC work, but they have the background and expertise to make and understand engineering decisions.

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