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Comment by shostack | Hacker News Reader

I really hope you're not implying that project managers are or need to be less smart than product managers.

They are different disciplines, and like any profession there's likely more people who are not good at it than people that are.

But I've worked with great visionary product people and excellent project and program managers (and strive to be one every day myself). Neither could do the other's job well or effectively. They need to be laser focused on different things, and their EQ tends to be tuned to different wavelengths.

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Perhaps it was inelegantly put by the original commenter, but I think the gist is that the product managers who lack some of the important product management skills around vision, ability to be customer facing, and effective and articulate communications tend to work more like project managers—effective acting as tactical managers within a product as opposed to strategic ones for the product.

We can define and name the roles all sorts of things (project manager, product owner, product manager, product marketing manager), but what it boils to is for any complex product there is a need for the management of the product at a holistic level and a need for management of a product at a granular level.

I wasn’t writing a treatise on every occupation and was being a little jocular.

What I’ve witnessed over a 20 year career is that weak product people devolve to mediocre project managers. It’s easier to be a shitty project manager.

Good project managers are gold. I worked with one who stood out a decade ago - his leadership at execution was such that a $350M, 20 month implementation, with collaboration with construction, tech, and external suppliers completed 45 minutes ahead of the original schedule. He’s since retired and passed away, but an inspirational leader I was privileged to get to know. Ponder that - how many project managers are acknowledged as leaders?

Couldn't agree more. I didn't really get project management until I'd worked with a few good ones.

> his leadership at execution was such that a $350M, 20 month implementation, with collaboration with construction, tech, and external suppliers completed 45 minutes ahead of the original schedule

This made me smile. I'm assuming you mean 45 days or something. Not that any number 'ahead of schedule' is inherently a bad thing (within reason), but my mind went to "Are there really companies out there tracking 2 year projects and counting the minutes?" (and sadly, there probably are).

It's a little tongue in cheek. There were completion incentives around certain tasks, especially on the construction and physical side, being completed on a date. Date was defined as 4PM on the date, and there was a financial benefit to be early in many cases. The last physical task required to be completed and submitted was done at 3:15, thus "45 minutes early".

That said, some major elements were tracked to the minute. I wish I could share more, it's a great story!

Project managers usually don't need to know as much as product managers, or be as thoughtful as them to be a great value add. Project managers have a larger range of "acceptable" performance to be able to add value, so their job certainly is easier.

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