from Hacker News

B2B startups stop innovating the day you give power to product managers

by polote on 2/17/23, 4:55 PM with 141 comments

by nandorsky on 2/19/23, 1:48 PM
This is a poorly written article that is all over the place. It’s evident the author had a horrible experience with a PM. Their description of a PM is a description of a PM who’s doing their job poorly.
Qualitative research at any company is critical and poor qual research (interviewing the wrong people, asking the wrong types of questions, etc) will yield poor insights as is the case here. Any PM working at a B2B startup not understanding the complexities of how the buyer and users differ and asking questions such as, “Would you use this feature?” is a poor PM.
Don’t let one bad experience ruin your perception of the role.
by switch007 on 2/19/23, 4:50 PM
Why has every product person I've worked with been obsessed with controlling teams and communication rather than obsessing over the customer and the market?
Friends say the same thing too. It makes me roll my eyes whenever someone retorts "you just need to hire the /good/ PMs"
Even my worst sales/tech colleagues, I've never had as much conflict and annoyance as with product people
by getoffmyyawn on 2/20/23, 10:41 AM
As an engineering leader, I tend to agree that giving Product Managers too much power causes lots of problems. A big one is retaining good engineers.
My experience of bad PMs is that they live in the Y side of the XY problem space[0] and believe they should have total say over how the engineers and designers spend every minute of their time.
Thankfully my company has a great CPO and we have agreed to avoid this type of PM. Anyone who says that the PM should be the Product CEO is not hired. Anyone who says they are the one to define how the engineering teams work is not hired.
At a truly tech lead organization, PMs work for the engineering teams, not the other way around. We have some great PMs who collaborate and provide lots of value.
0. https://xyproblem.info/
by politelemon on 2/20/23, 8:53 AM
> Second, most product managers are not smart in the sense that they make good product decisions. Anyone can be a product manager, you just need to pretend to know how things work and have done other things in the past. Product managers really rarely evaluate themselves on the KPI they have achieved in the past. And finally if you are really good at taking decisions to make a company successful you will have started a company of your own a long time ago (Not everyone want to create their own company, yes I know, but the high performers do :) )
It's pretty clear that this is the author's view of a PM and not what PMs actually do. It is the premise, and an incorrect one at that, of the entire post.
Imagine such hyperbole flipped around and applied to developers, this would be receiving a lot more vitriol.
by dchuk on 2/19/23, 4:12 PM
As soon as an article states you can use “product manager” and “project manager” interchangeably, you can immediately assume the author has no idea what they’re talking about. Convenient this article did that early on, saves everyone a lot of time.
by NickC25 on 2/20/23, 4:02 PM
I've seen PMs "scope creep" themselves to boost their CVs for when they leave and go somewhere else. These PMs suck. They are the type to lead meetings
I was a PM for 4 years in a startup. I helped the engineers avoid (most) meetings, I was obsessed with our customers and their pain points - and spoke with them frequently; as well hyper-obsessed with the competition and where we could improve. I took suggestions from users about what features to build next, and we built a few, and ignored others. I wouldn't bother my engineers unless management (who had a technical background) OK'd the feature after discussion and debate. I probably spent 2-3x the amount of time with my customers than my engineers. Sometimes as the PM the only interaction with my engineers was to bring them coffee in the morning while they cranked out code.
Seems there aren't many PMs like the role I played in my team. In a B2B or B2C startup, a good PM can provide structure, cover for the engineers, and a consistent look into how the product is being used, why it's used versus your competition, and what features users want going forward. A PM doing the right things is more of a design and customer support hybrid role than anything else.
That said, I don't understand why it's a bad thing to "stop innovating". If you have an innovative product that is clearly a hit with customers or users, you shouldn't aim to continually innovate past that in the short-term. You should be eliminating technical debt and making sure your core product's experience just fucking works 100% of the time. A good PM can help with that too, by putting management's ideas onto the backburner and saying "we have to solidify our product first" instead of jumping from one product to another.
by rokkk on 2/19/23, 2:02 PM
This post makes some wild assumptions, like the fact that B2B PMs only interview customers, and not end users. Also, that they mostly build what people are saying they want to have.
Ironically, avoiding assumptions is the basis of product management.
At the end of the day, someone has to do the product role on the team. If the founder can scale that, great, and if the engineers can do it, even better! Unfortunately both options are extremely rare to find.
There are a lot of shitty PMs out there, just as there are a lot of shitty engineers or any other job function.. We would do better, I think, to discuss and promote better patterns, than trying to discredit a whole profession by clumsily reverse engineering a handful of gross assumptions and, probably, bad personal experiences.
by sergioisidoro on 2/20/23, 8:52 AM
> If you are a startup B2B founder, I want to give you one piece of advice, don’t ever give a lot of power to product managers as long as you want to innovate. Take your most competent sales person and put him in charge of the product
This is much worse. You'll end up doing what individual customers ask, lose product strategy and run the risk of having a guy in sales deciding the next features on the fly during sales meetings, promising stuff just to get that deal signed.
Some good points here, but it feels more of a symptom of other problems, like the lack of a tech lead who manages the team (so the PM ends up doing it)
by shalmanese on 2/19/23, 8:32 AM
You need to be talking to Users, Customers and Stakeholders and be clear about which is which.
And if you just build what a user tells you to build, then you’re not a very good PM. Users are not designers, you go to users to get an understanding of what the problems are but users communicate problems in terms of solutions so a good PM uses the proposed solution to understand the problem and then creates a solution that actually solves that problem.
by fxtentacle on 2/20/23, 10:58 AM
The only good PM that I ever met introduced himself like this: My job is to answer product questions when the developers ask me and then confirm those answers with our customers.
All those PMs that fancy themselves mind readers in that they believe they can define what the customer needs and what the developers should build, without hearing their perspective first, are just bad managers with a different name.
by evnix on 2/20/23, 12:25 PM
Most good software out there were started by engineers and not by product managers and engineer only products are generally great and liked by people. Linux and the ecosystem is one example.
I am not sure what really happens after Product Managers come in that the product takes a dive. I have seen this repeat almost everywhere. You start with a small team of engineers and have a product that people love, now you need more engineers and hence you bring in a manager and managers almost always demand to have a product manager and the whole thing devolves into a game of promotion.
Doctors are lead by Senior Doctors, Lawyers are lead by Senior lawyers, whereas Engineers need handholding that also sucks the very joy out of engineering.
In my opinion, What could be more beneficial is to have Product Managers who also are senior engineers and who atleast do hands-on development 10% of their time. This is exactly how even the senior most doctors still perform surgeries.
unless it is customized B2B or B2G, where the engineers are not really interested in the mundane chores of the nitty gritty of a drop-down or having to have constant arguments on what the button should be called, you likely dont need a ProductMgr.
The other thing that happens as soon as productMgrs enter is engineers let go of the ownership of the product. The back button doesn't work? well good luck, that was not in the PMs requirements. now raise more unnecessary tickets and show the improved velocity.
by dependsontheq on 2/20/23, 4:05 PM
Product Management is often a role where a lot of strategic business decisions and operational product decisions collide. A product needs to be innovative and relevant for a market but even with our tools today everything built for the future is a bet, so it is risky. Most PMs are not C-Level, so they are not allowed to take that kind of risk. So they manage a small box of possible pathways with low risk and low gain. So as soon as you shift all strategic decisions (a product owner in a software company is not far from a business owner) to the PM roles you limited the future development of your business to this small box.
Is that the fault of a PM?
by nooorofe on 2/20/23, 3:41 PM
I think the article and most of the commentators are missing a real problem. The real problem is that there is an underlying complexity, which has no simple solution - collaboration of teams/groups of people with different expertise and even different interests is a universally unsolved problem. When a company passes the "startup" stage and gets real customers, it isn't a startup anymore. It has more tasks to handle and needs more people to work, people with different expertise. There are sales, operations, developers (with multiple expertise), lawyers, coordinators (of all kinds). Innovation is not a self-evident target, at some point startup needs to cash innovation. There are frameworks which attempted to address that complexity, for example scrum or more flexible superset "agile manifesto" or even waterfall. They all may work or fail, but there is no guarantee, no recipe.
by jt2190 on 2/20/23, 2:38 PM
There is an anti-pattern I’ve seen at many companies I’ve worked for over the years: I’ll call it the “No-longer-in-touch customer proxy”.
Sometimes this is a Product Manager, but just as often it’s a VP, or someone in Sales, or someone in Customer Support. It can even be multiple people, who all echo and amplify each other’s description of what the customer really wants.
It’s a very easy pit to fall into once a company has some success: Everyone’s busy, the product has a clear direction, and the customers are paying. There’s a lot of unglamorous work to be done, but it’s much more fun to go off into a room and work on “design” or “vision” for weeks and months. Any attempt to bring reality into the is met with “This is what the customer wants.”
This can go on for years, especially at profitable companies.
by huksley on 2/19/23, 9:32 AM
It is because product managers should only be hired at the company after post product-market fit. And they innovate usually not in creating the new product, but improving the existing one, or identifying the possible new product to be created.
by arka2147483647 on 2/20/23, 4:16 PM
Well, he really struck a ligthning rod, people here seem to be arguing that,
1. He is wrong, PM are not at all like that
2. He is wrong, ofcourse that is what PM does
3. He is wrong, the criticism is written the wrong way
Amusing…
by beebmam on 2/20/23, 10:20 AM
Devs working directly with customers will always be better than relying on PMs to do it. But it's hard to find devs with the soft skills needed, and are willing to do so.
by al2o3cr on 2/17/23, 5:10 PM
LOL somebody's PM told them to stay on task and stop making up features out of thin air
by baxtr on 2/20/23, 4:55 PM
AFAIK Apple doesn’t have any PM roles for their major products. Think about that for a second.
The most successful product company doesn’t have Product Managers.
Saying this as a product person.
by andyish on 2/20/23, 10:32 AM
I imagine there's a lot more going on behind the scenes that the author realises. If it's a single product startup a PM will be getting pulled in different directions by sales, marketing, tech, clients and investors. All who have their own agenda, all of whom may want different things.
It only sounds like PMs have all the power because they put the tasks in the order that you work on them in, after haggling with all the other stakeholders.
I'd guess that the PM in the story trying to get some evidence to backup a decision/convince someone of something.
by rukuu001 on 2/20/23, 9:05 AM
This article is pretty wrong, but look at the upvotes. It obviously speaks to a lot of people.
I think it says more about the disconnect between dev and product, than the actual sins of product people.
by achow on 2/20/23, 1:13 PM
Though mentions enterprise space (B2B), should mention that in hardware and software consumer product companies the product manager roles does not show much value.
Investing in Design+Engg gives maximum return. These two disciplines have other ones around them like project management, overall product owner (PO, General Manager), etc.
It is really weird when one sees PMs being mentioned as the one who talks to customers or users.
Usually designers were doing that right from beginning, going back to half a century or more..
by s3p on 2/20/23, 5:32 PM
> ...to facilitate decision making, make the project move forward. This is what is called “delivery” in the product management discipline. And this is usually the part that “Product managers” hate doing. The other part is “discovery”, it is meant to discover what to build, and this is the part that “Product managers” love doing.
>If you are a startup B2B founder, I want to give you one piece of advice, don’t ever give a lot of power to product managers as long as you want to innovate.
The article seems to make the point that PMs both love exploring and finding out what people want but also that they don't and that is the issue.
It seems the author started by arguing project managers are all over the place, and (my line of thinking) that B2B companies therefore should be focused more on execution and delivering, not just finding a bunch of cool new tech/ideas to pursue.
But then in the next few paragraphs they diverge by saying PMs actually stifle innovation because they want to look at data and improve things. They don't actually want to imagine something brand new.
This makes no sense. I would agree that in a B2B environment, you want things that work, not a shiny new UI and new products every couple of months. Businesses are focused on revenue, not flashy new things like consumers might be. They want to know if it works. And if you're selling to other businesses, reliability is far more important than new features. Why does everyone use SAP and Oracle? It is certainly not because they innovate.
I think the author just got very confused with their points and didn't know how to argue against PMs, but they clearly have a vendetta.
by thewellis2 on 2/20/23, 2:50 PM
In the startups I've worked at, where they start hiring in product people, the point in time that normally happens it that critical t0 point. Basically, where the innovation will have to slow down, because you need to stop thinking about just coding the solution but start on the build pipelines, tests, infra, support, analytics, feedback loops... And yes, you can think of these things on day one, but it is that point, t0, where you need to actually have those things defined (even if it's simply a wikipage that has"No" written on it). And that is the point of bringing in a PM.
The worst PMs I've worked for aren't the ones who stifle innovation. The worst are the ones who encourage it to increase the feature factory appearance to make their own CVs look good. The best ones gather and present the data to inform the decision that the team has to make.
But in terms of power, yes there needs to be an emphasis on them being facilitators of the conversation and not the decision-makers. As Devs (QA, DevOps, SRE etc) we need to make sure that it isn't a one sided decision and learn to argue without undermining or name-calling.
by karaterobot on 2/20/23, 4:34 PM
This is overstating the case by a lot. I guess I agree that innovation should not come from the management layer of a company, organization and motivation should. But, I have worked with great PMs who multiplied the effectiveness of their teams, and they were indispensible. A lot of people who should not be PMs end up in PM roles, but I wouldn't generalize that to the whole profession.
> First most product managers believe that the most important thing to do, is to interview users, look at data of usage, and then take some obvious bet to take the best decisions
Heaven forfend! We've got to put a stop to that sort of behavior. I agree with the author, people should be making big, incomprehensible bets without talking to users or looking at data first.
by dandare on 2/19/23, 9:12 PM
> And finally if you are really good at taking decisions to make a company successful you will have started a company of your own a long time ago
Except this is true of anyone in the company. Unless the author says who is capable of making these really good decisions this article is empty rant.
by zhrvoj on 2/19/23, 10:46 PM
Product manager - person that screwed up Evernote.
by nickdothutton on 2/20/23, 9:02 AM
Where to start with this. All I will say is that the job of the Product Manager is if nothing else, to manage the product through the product lifecycle. Concept, development, release, revision, maturity, retirement/death, including likely migration to some new product/service that is a logical replacement. These core duties are most clearly exercised in small product-lead companies. In large firms the job can become very bureaucratic and political as everyone wants to put a hand on the ships wheel, especially if the company is a single-product company.
Edited for typo.
by drclegg on 2/20/23, 11:41 AM
I think this is what separates good from bad PMs. I work with a good PM who gives engineers a bit of room for innovation, and importantly identifies how to productise that innovation.
by LASR on 2/20/23, 8:52 AM
While my experience has lined up with the content of this post, I also think the conclusions only apply to a narrow set of organizations and products.
There are a lot of products, especially in enterprise or B2B where the customer is not someone asking for a faster horse. They themselves are innovators and they want something they’ll use and pay for.
So there is certainly value in pouring through the data and finding the best value to build next. And for that a PM is pretty important to lead product.
by trollied on 2/20/23, 10:37 AM
This article is terrible. Lots of speculation and biased opinion, with absolutely no facts or alternative team structure suggestions. It's more of a rant.
by LatteLazy on 2/20/23, 2:18 PM
I've wondered in the past if product management (especially for externally facing functionality) is too much to ask for one person:
* You need someone very technical to understand the engineering aspects
* You need someone politically and socially astute for the internal politics and prioritisation
* You need someone who actively knows the market, clients, prospects and competitors
by bkfh on 2/19/23, 8:21 AM
> The consequence of that is interviewing users in B2B is almost useless, and taking decisions from what users tell you is a severe error and in most cases the path to stagnation.
Who would come up with such a nonsense? Regardless of B2C or B2B, knowing what your users need solved is crucial, irrelevant who eventually the buyer is (user vs Manager)
by anentropic on 2/20/23, 10:12 AM
> What matters is to make your customers happy, and sometimes, and pretty often this is not needed, so all time spent on it is time you will not spend on the most important people, your customers.
I don't understand, this seems to say: "all the time spent on making your customers happy is time not spent on your customers" ...huh?
by revskill on 2/20/23, 10:31 AM
PM to me means communicators. They free developers from doing such social work. Developers in most case is the implementers, not communicators.
The issue is, what's the scope of an efficient PM. Should they involve in product development process ? Should they involve in the UX design process ?
by christkv on 2/20/23, 1:23 PM
I have a theory about when innovation slows down to a crawl. Its the inflection point of where there are too many stakeholders to take quick decisions. I don't know what that inflection point is (3-4 ?) but its what I have observed again and again in big organisations.
by xyzelement on 2/20/23, 3:09 PM
Didn't read article but can react to headline.
I am a PM who used to be an engineer and eng manager. In my engineering life, in retrospect I did PM work too - ie, orient my teams work to highest value as expressed in financial and user impact terms.
The eng/PM split is an unfortunate outcome of the fact that many engineers and engineering leads aren't capable of thinking in practical business terms, and so they need a PM in the mix to steer the ship.
The problem starts not when you get a PM but when your engineers need one.
For what it's worth, I find being a mix of the two really optimal - I am still capable of having hardcore technical discussion even as my focus is on the business, but I was doing that from the engineering seat as well.
by mabbo on 2/20/23, 11:37 AM
I don't know what awful experiences this author has had with product managers, but all this article has done is made me appreciate the brilliant PMs I get to work with every day.
by hahahanononono on 2/20/23, 8:56 AM
This is the kind of post a shitty PM would write...
by SheddingPattern on 2/20/23, 4:39 PM
Ironic that the author calls PMs "not very smart at making product decisions" while the author is not smart enough to understand the role of sales or product.
Also, innovation is not an end in itself. The question is do, PMs add value?
The author is right that the founder is the best product manager and should only handover to a dedicated PM once the business is ready to scale.
by dschuetz on 2/20/23, 11:28 AM
What is B2B?
by gregw2 on 2/20/23, 11:11 AM
Is this phenomena better or worse if you make your tech lead a product manager?
by numlock86 on 2/20/23, 9:56 AM
The funny part is how the article starts off with how others are missing the point, and then the article continues to completely miss the point. I didn't know you could put that much bias and wrong assumptions into such a few paragraphs.
by snupas on 2/20/23, 2:39 PM
The whole article seems really juvenile and poorly written.
by spacecadet on 2/20/23, 12:20 PM
I immediately thought. Tech culture has become... "Im upset. Im going to rage write a blog post. Im going to publish it on another site. Now I somewhat have to manage the blow back." Why? What an overly complex way to vent, but as a "PM", exactly what Ive come to expect. My recommendation would have been to vent to a friend in private, research says "over beer" works best...
by dohman on 2/20/23, 10:04 AM
The writer's trying to argue that product managers aren't useless, but that they have too much power. Okay, sure, but they go about it in the most confusing way possible. They start off by saying that developers who think PMs are useless are missing the point, which is fair, but then they go on this whole tangent about how PMs are actually important because they can help with decision-making and project delivery..?
And then they start shitting on PMs, saying that they're not actually that smart and they only like the discovery part of their job where they get to make all the decisions. And to top it off, they say that PMs in B2B companies are useless because they're not actually talking to the people who use the product... That's literally the job of a PM, to talk to customers and figure out what they want.
And then they go on to say that if you want to innovate, you shouldn't listen to PMs, but instead put your most competent salesperson in charge of the product. That makes no sense at all.
Sadly, as someone else said, I'd assume that this article was driven by poor experiences with a PM in the past. And it's not cool to take a bash at the whole segment due to having a bad experience with someone.