[polote]

Well I agree that this is poorly written (I wrote it).

The point of the article is not that companies shouldnt have PM, but that you shouldnt make them owner of the innovation in a B2B context. Of course if you start with the assumption of "Good PMs" it will work, but you will rarely find these "good PMs"

[passwordoops]

100% what others are saying. This is a hot take rant with bad arguments based on an experience with a bad product manager (or maybe you're just difficult to work with and your ideas aren't as innovative or as good as you think).

I can easily flip the script and say "Devs at B2B shouldn't be anything more than oompah-loompahs" or "UI designers shouldn't be allowed to give ideas" based on a couple of my own isolated experiences.

You want to be taken seriously? Don't rant and explain what structure/methods would be more appropriate for a B2B business that would balance the need for innovation that makes users happy with keeping the paying gatekeepers willing to keep paying

[llamaLord]

In this whole article the word "problem" is only written once, and it's in the line "the problem with product managers is".

Given you don't understand that the core pillar of the product manager role is to be the owner of the problem space, I'm not sure how qualified you are to comment on how valuable our role is or isn't.

Discovery isn't about decided what does or doesn't get built, it's about discovering what the real problem is that your customers need solved (almost like it's in the name).

If your PM is good at their job, the answer to that question should be pretty clear once they're done. That's not them "telling you what to do", if you want to go build a solution to a problem nobody actually has, you have fun with that.

And if you PM is defining solutions and telling your team how/what to build, that's on you to push back and take ownership of the part of the process that you're meant to be owning.

A lot of PM's end up overreaching because they're just tired of there being a leadership vacuum and nobody willing to fill it. Trust me, we're busy enough, we don't want the extra work.

[thereddaikon]

I've worked with good and bad PMs and this jives with my experience.

[xbar]

> A lot of PM's end up overreaching because they're just tired of there being a leadership vacuum and nobody willing to fill it.

This kind of apologizing for horrific behavior undermines what I thought were otherwise strong points.

[polote]

Sorry if you took it personally or you think this is a rant. This is clearly not the case, I can repeat it, PM have a lot of value, but there is one specific area that we shouldn't give them control over.

It doesnt mean they are bad PM or good PM, innovation requires just fundamentally opposed skills to the standard product management ones that we see in books.

[le-mark]

I don’t get all this criticism. It’s a rant, I personally enjoy a good rant so thanks! Now everyone saying you don’t understand the role? Hogwash, most companies and their management are incompetent and don’t understand the role either, they simply hobble along on their “chaos is a process” BS. I read this as one of those. It happens, a lot.

[Ialdaboth]

Yep. It's no longer a rant when a recognizable pattern emerges.

(and I don't think they are personnally incompetent - quite the contrary; but in my experience, it's the managerial process that is often designed to generate incompetency as a side-product)

[brianwawok]

I think the article had some good points.

I’ve had the same b2b PM woes. I even had my PM tell someone that they (the PM) didn’t really need to know how to use our product, as long as they talked to users and wrote down what they wanted into stories.

I have since taken back more product owner power as founder. Innovation is up again! So I think it’s helping.

[jayparth]

Paul, it’s a bad article. Your arguments don’t make sense and are mostly strawmen. If you want to improve it, show it to someone in real life and have them talk over it with you. You’ll probably get a lot farther than a few sentences of feedback over the internet. But it’s really bad.

[singleshot_]

Imagine feeling qualified to write this article without knowing the difference between a project manager and a product manager. Imposter syndrome indeed. Thinking you are the correct person to evaluate a “PM” without knowing what half the letters mean is pretty amazing, leaving us to wonder what would happen if this person ever were to encounter a program manager.

[llamaLord]

Let's be fair here... I consider myself a pretty proficient Product Manager and even I would struggle to tell you what the Program Manager in our Org is actually meant to do.

Don't get me wrong, they do a lot and it's all valuable. But even they can't tell me what their fundamental role responsibility is hahaha.