Project Managers Trying to Own Engineering - All Devs Resigned
I want to write about Product/Project Managers who tries to be a boss of engineering team and cut the all noise from team members.
First, it's important to understand the difference between Product Manager and Project Manager.
- Product Manager: Focuses on the product itself, ensuring that it meets customer needs, aligns with business goals, and is competitive in the market. They are responsible for defining the vision, strategy, and roadmap of a product.
- Project Manager: Focuses on the execution of projects, ensuring that they are completed on time, within scope, and within budget. They manage resources, timelines, and workflows to deliver specific project goals.
Based on this article by by Gergely Orosz, teams with dedicated Project Managers underperforms and has low satisfaction. Because Project Manager destroys the team autonomy and tries to micromanage l the execution part of the strategy.
For Product Managers, they should be responsible for gathering requirements, think how to make products better and only to make sure team is on the right track without interrupting the execution part.
I don't think "Project Manager" role even a thing. It seems a person to me self-proclaimed this title and actually don't know what to do so they just become spy of higher management and obeys them without questioning and forces the team to do the same.
Even "Manager" word in these roles are annoying. I would rename and restructure this role as "Business Analyst" or something similar where this role is responsible working with the business, other departments to build a roadmap, create plans, prioritize work and escalate where needed. That's all. Understand the product and business.
Now, let me go through my one of the worst previous experiences with Project Managers where entire team resigned because of toxic environment that management created.
This experience of mine is from one of the Europe's largest price comparison company which is very well-known.
Prolonged Stand-Up meetings
Assume spending the morning in 45 mins of stand-up everyday by answering PMs questions and instructions.
The update of engineering is max 10 minute. Technical people understand each other quick. The PM's passion to understand the technical details is more than 35 min. Entire team sitting in a stand-up meeting and tries to explain the PM where is the progress.
PM doesn't understand and keep asking same questions then at the end takes estimation as a actual commitment from the developers about when it's going to be finished.
Interrupting the Focus
During a day keep asking where is the progress and how much work remaining. And it's not about update again, PM keep tries to play a word game to catch something or spot that engineer is procrastinating.
- Morning productivity gone
- Team already feels overwhelmed
- Developers distracted with regular useless check-ins.
Due to the high technical debt the potential of something burns is very normal. When that happens PM asking to shift the focus. Again asking the estimate and constantly spams you about the progress.
Tech Lead but without Tech Skills
Now, you probably asking where is the tech lead? The person that can prevent such situations, right?
Let me introduce you a second PM but more like ... I don't know.. with opacity 25%
Turns out HR hired a tech lead without technical skills. Tech Lead joined us for like 5-6 months and still picking up tickets like that can be done by 5 years old.
Because of low context on topic (skill issue 100%) that person always lean to PMs statements. Even we had internal meeting with tech lead thousand's of times explaining the situation still can't get involved into technical discussion. The only conclusion was making PM happy by answering his questions.
I am not even talking about Scrum (Scam) Master. This will be a separate post. So 3 toxic managers and 4-5 engineers.
Unrealistic OKRs
PM creates meeting and comes with new OKRs tells what needs to be done without explaining the value behind it. Then start asking what's your confidence level and estimate when each key results can finish.
Engineering tells OKRs is not realistic with remaining amount of work. PM doesn't care and tech lead calms the team don't worry he will communicate it with higher management. Few days later, tech lead comes with cringe laughing and tells he didn't make it.
End of quarter comes, key results not finished.
Now, you didn't listen to devs, estimated by your own, explained nothing, tried to micromanage and expecting everything will be delivered?
More Meetings
I was seeing sudden brainstorming meetings in calendar with 1.5-2 hours long 2-3 times in a week. Disgusted by listening same questions and statements over and over again. Team energy level is below zero already.
PM asks question and there is no answer from anyone. People are tired like a hell and PM is not caring at all. Only tries to find ways to watch engineering more.
Status Updates in Day Offs (Sick Leaves)
I was very sick with high fever and barely can open my eyes. So I took a day off. While trying to sleep with migraines PM calls me from phone non-stop. I couldn't take the phone but hearing multiple notification sounds from Slack.
I was thinking something is critical then when I opened the channel PM was asking to handover my task to someone by explaining my progress. He mentioned they can't wait a day.
One of our teammates (also pregnant woman) was taking her kid to kindergarten and clearly stated please don't interrupt me in that day. PM mentioned in SU call her and ask for updates we can't wait for her.
Technical Debt
The amount of technical debt was insane. Like beyond you can imagine. Legacy projects. Temporary fixes. Sh*tty code.
Everyone just pushing directly to production. Nobody cares how it went only waits when there is a alert. I think you already guess why. There is no appreciation, no humanity at all. Only forcing to work under high pressure.
Company had massive lay-offs because of this and they fired mostly engineers instead of useless managers.
thepylot
That's why I built a Slack App to gamify resolving tech debts and visualise the impact.
More Watching Layers
The higher management involved one more SM and Staff Engineer to our stand-up meetings as an additional watching layers.
Damage Done. Team Resigns.
While I am writing this article I am getting flashbacks and it makes me furious actually. I am disgusted how these companies operate and tries to micromanage everyone and treating employees as slaves.
There is no team mindset or autonomy at all. Result was all developers resigned including me at the same time.
This is maybe 25% of the entire story. I will post more about my experience and journey in upcoming blog posts.
But in my opinion and based on my other good experiences engineering team should be responsible for execution and Product Manager should only focus to improve product. Both Engineering and Product Manager owns the product.
In >1 year as a PM @ Facebook I've created zero tickets/tasks. We don't do sprints either.
— Ben Erez (@ViableBen) July 28, 2021
PMs here focus on vision, strategy & partnerships. Less on project management & tasks.
Engineers carry most of the project management responsibility & create their own tasks.
It's great.