If it has been a long time since you’ve vomited in your mouth and you can’t recall how badly it felt, then check this out….a first-person essay — published in Business Week, no less — by a brand spankin’ new MBA who is ostensibly now a “product manager” at Microsoft.
And let me tell you, the guy sounds like the kind of weenus that gives all those Code Boyz out there just cause for reviling MBA-sporting product managers.
Reason number one for despising him (and the CPM quoteth):
“I’m not a very technical guy. On my first day at Microsoft it took me 30 minutes just to find the latch to open my laptop.”
Dear fraking G#d, is THIS why the Cranky Product Manager is having such difficulty hiring a reasonably competent PM these days? Because Microsoft is hoarding all the ones who take 30 minutes or less to open their laptops?
Reason number two:
“In a nutshell, my job is all about unlocking the value in our products…”
Oh no he di’int! Oh wait, yes, he did! That’s right, he said it. “Unlocking Value.” In public! Indeed. Such MBA tripe. Barf.
Reason number three:
“I have to figure out how to connect with customers directly, to convince them that every day they delay deploying Microsoft Office they miss out on real business value.”
Hmmm. Well this is an interesting job description, but it is not one for product management. Product Management (and, one could argue, Marketing in general) is all about building products the market actually wants so (in theory) you don’t have to convince anyone to deploy them. Honestly.
Sales, not product management, is all about convincing the customer that the steaming turd of a product you are currently serving is, in fact, the world’s most tender Kobe steak served on fine bone china. Microsoft Office 2007 seems to fit the description.
Reason number four:
While he reads emails he “throws some random fist pumps.” Dear God. Plus he listens to a Zune. Need the CPM say any more?
The Cranky Product Manager calls bullshit. This guy is in post-sales, not PM. What, do they give out Product Manager titles like they are soy sauce packets in Redmond? To fist-pumping morons who can’t even open their laptops? Something tells me he wouldn’t make it through the Google interview process…
Argh. No wonder the Code Boyz and Grrrlz of the world despise product managers. In fact, the Cranky Product Manager now feels compelled to apologize to the International Brother/Sisterhood of Code Boyz and Grrrls:
Mea culpa, my friends, please have mercy on our MBA-polluted product manager souls.
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He really seems to have ideas about Customer Support, Sales, Biz Dev and a bunch of other things mixed up with PM. I guess that’s what they call business-school mentality…
They obviously don’t teach the difference between product marketing and product management at his biz skool. It sounds more like he’s taken on a sales evangelist role. Nothing wrong with that…just don’t call him a PM.
One look at his picture though, and I want to steal his lunch money…again.
A *Real* Product Management day would look more like this:
6:15 am – arrive at the office. Getting in at the ass crack of dawn is the only way to actually have “productive time” (i.e., time not spent listening to whining, arguing, or Sales).
6:20 am – storm down to the main floor, wondering while the hell they can’t seem to keep coffee supplies stocked on the Development floor.
6:30 am – return to office, armed (finally) with the appropriate volume of potential caffeinated energy to make the most out of “productive time”
6:45 am – by now, I’ve deleted all of the spam, eggs and spam, spam spam spam hash eggs and spam… wait, I mean the spam, requests for information easily accessible through the Knowledge Base, requests for assistance setting up someone’s home NAS device, and meeting requests to demo the product to prospects because Sales is completely incapable of navigating the structural complexity that is GoToMeeting.
6:50 am – Respond to the VP of Business Development with a W3C-white-paper-length email explaining why the Unrealistic Product Enhancement Request gained that moniker. “No, Bill, there is no Santa Claus”.
7:00 am – “Productive Time” comes to a screeching and abrupt halt (with much gnashing of teeth) as Professional Services manager came in early so as to have “Quality Time” (note the lack of a useful adjective, such as “productive”) and learn how to use the VirtualPC someone else gave him.
8:00 am – Morning Huddle. We follow the “what happened yesterday…what is planned for today?” format. As in, “Why didn’t Build 53 make it to Q.A yesterday?” and “What the hell do you mean ‘today we’re going to start checking code in daily’???”
8:07 am – El Presidente swings in on the door handle, like a bad Kramer impersonator.
Didn’t you get the meeting request?
What? No. Is there a meeting right now??
Manufacturing Company X is downstairs right now waiting on a demo [because I still don’t know how to show our product].
Since when is manufacturing part of our market? We don’t have a manufacturing product!
Just come down now, please [attempting a menacing emphasis]
8:15 am – Attempt to show how our register till management software for retail will help their business: automotive parts manufacturing.
We have all run into sales support people who carry the title “PM.” It is unfortunate, but I like to think that these schmucks make it easier for me to shine. On the other hand, I still can’t get anyone in my family understand what I do. I have tried to draw pictures, even! ;-)
As a PM of 12+ years who has an MBA, the MBA is applicable to real PM work. I am detecting some negativity in the above blog entry about MBA-wielding PMs. I would be disappointed if CPM has made a sweeping statement against the positive impact the MBA has on one’s PM career. Did I misread something?
Thank you.
Ron, It may surprise you to learn the Cranky Product Manager also has an MBA in maketing and strategy from a top school. In fact, it might even be the same MBA program that produced this weenus. Maybe. Maybe not. (Remember, the CPM is a fictional character.)
Earning said MBA was one of the best career decisions the Cranky Product Manager ever made. She learned a shitload that she puts to use every single day.
But you will never see her talking like this guy. MBA Buzzword-Speak is lazy, pretentious, usually imprecise, and not meaningful to most audiences. And it especially reviled in software. There’s no faster way to earning the disrespect of Engineers than to tell them you’re “unlocking value.” Unless you also throw in some blather about “strategic synergies” and “core competences” as well.
As much as I want to make fun of this Grad School Tool, it’s really Microsoft that takes the blame here. For whatever reason, what everyone else in the world calls “Product Manager,” MSFT calls a “Program Manager.” At MSFT, a “Product Manager” is really an Product Marketing role, 100% outbound, and primarily a sales support position.
And now this guy has “Published in Business Week” on his resume. Must remember that “Business Week” has low standards.
Anyway, I’m even more disappointed I missed him in my car when he was crossing the street at 9:45am….
I agree with all the negative comments. Some context: I think it’s worth remembering as you read Scott’s essay that while the tasks of a product manager remain constant, they are sometimes distributed differently within an organization.
I speak as a more “real” product manager who has also held the Microsoft product manager role. The Microsoft product management culture is very marketing-y and can devolve into “yay MS” cheerleading–hence some of the tone of the piece.
Also, Ron L. is dead on about the role of product management at Microsoft. They effectively split the inbound and outbound responsibilities of product management into “program management” (engineering facing, what do we build?) and “product management” (market facing, what should we build and how do we bring to market what we’ve built?) Windows product managers I knew were 100% focused on launch and partnerships; Office ones were 100% focused on customer experience. Not such a bad thing, but I think somewhat different from what we’re all used to.
Because the quickest way to be a good product manager of a technical product…is to announce that you are not technical.
Now, MS developers are getting away telling him (and he is not technical you see) how the new release is 50% more secure and stable than the previous one. He is psyched and is all pumped up to tell the world as to why they absolutely need the new release. Little does he realize what that 50% means – now it only has 3 million bugs and not 6 million, it only has 10 million security holes compared to previous 20 million.
He is now figuring out how to evangelize the value of the new release to the customer so that the customers can unlock these security holes and bugs on themselves.
OK, I am exaggerating, but after reading the article, he just comes across as young and naive. I wonder if business schools strip out common sense out of you when you leave.
Most product managers at Microsoft are actually more like product marketing managers. The role of “product manager” is more like Program Manager at MS
*puke*
I am having a hard time believing this guy is real. I might be a paranoid cynic, but the amount of cheese oozing all over my keyboard makes me doubt the veracity of this article.
Can you imagine what the life of the REAL product manager for “microsoft office deployment and adoption” is like? Swimming in a sea of hate I bet.
Yeah, this guy really did make me want to puke. I hate hate hate buzzwords, so that didn’t help him. The random fist pumps – at that point I knew if he sat near me I’d kill him. When he said “unlock the value” I thought no, that’s sales, and if the value of your product is “locked”, then your product sucks. When he boasted about not being techie, I knew he was one of those idiots who will believe everything that dev and QA tell him about the product and would never realize whether the product had serious bugs or usability issues, since he’s too ignorant to actually use and support his product. Pathetic.
He is a salesperson with a product manager title, as evidenced by the following statement:
“I have to figure out how to connect with customers directly, to convince them that every day they delay deploying Microsoft Office they miss out on real business value.”
His job is to talk, not listen. PMs listen. In fact, it’s the job of good salespeople to listen too.
So he’s a bad salesperson with a product manager title. But he got Big Press, and you and I did not. So he wins.
Can anyone say Dwight Shrewt?
I’m pretty sure Kellog doesn’t want MBAs to admit “On my first day at Microsoft it took me 30 minutes just to find the latch to open my laptop…”
Historically the term Product Manager is used in the Consumer Goods industry (first by Procter and Gamble). This is the person ultimately responsible for the product. Because in CPG the largest portion of a product’s budget is spent on advertising to build, enhance, and promote a brand, the Product Manager is also called the Brand Manager. At P&G the person responsible for new product development or product enhancement is called the Technical Brand Manager.
When the technology industry started borrowing the Product Manager concept in the late 80’s and 90’s — no doubt encouraged by the business school types and due to the need to have a head to chop off in case something fails — unfortunately it created a lot of confusion. In high tech, the largest portion of the budget is of course spent on product development (if not, don’t call your self a technology company, yours is a sales company). To distinguish the marketing role, sometimes the Product Marketing Manager position is created (or sometimes just added onto the PM’s full plate).
So don’t blame the poor guy. It’s really not his fault. And those of you who hate the b-school types, you wish you had an MBA from a top school.
Wensley,
Interesting history lesson, but the Cranky Product Manager must admit she does not understand how it explains why this guy’s title is Product Manager and not Sales. He is not responsible for the product, nor the development, nor the marketing, not the brand. True, it’s not his fault, but he is not a product manager and should not be showcased by Business Week as a representative of the profession.
He is a sales dude who calls on customers to convince them to use the product that’s already out there.
And your comment “those of you who hate the b-school types, you wish you had an MBA from a top school,” well that’s CRAP. There’s a big difference between being a “b-school type” and possessing and adeptly using an MBA. The TYPE is what drives people nuts… the buzzword dropping, the arrogance, the sense of entitlement that so often accompany an MBA that make people go ballistic, not the MBA itself.
In fact, the CPM thinks you’ll find that top Product Managers are almost never recognized as a “b-school types”, even though a large percentage of them DO have MBAs.
And the CPM will bet that her MBA program is better than yours. That’s why you’re so jealous of her, right?
Cranky, I agree with you that buzzwords, jargons, etc. have no place in the industry and it is our responsibility as PMs to get rid of them from our product communications.
My point is to give this guy a break. He’s just a freshly minted MBA trying to be excited about his first job. He will make a lot of mistakes until he finally learns what it means to be a Product Manager, or Account Manager, or whatever role it is that he’s doing. It is Microsoft’s fault for picking titles that confuse the hell out of people, and the Business Week reporter/editor for publishing that piece of junk.
My other point is that the stereotype about MBAs (arrogant, buzzword speaking) is totally false. Sorry for not making a clear distinction – as you pointed out – about MBA holders and “B-school types”.
Cranky, I have been in this industry for too long to be jealous of anyone’s station in life or what MBA program she graduated from.
Peace.
Oh my, as an alumni of the same MBA program I am embarrassed to contemplate the stain this guy is leaving on the Kellogg escutcheon.
That Microsoft hired him into the Office team is hardly surprising. I met many a Marketing idiot looking and sounding JUST like him in my years of working as a partner and navigating the halls of Redmond’s offices. I always immediately asked to speak with the Program Manager or the Business Dev Manager because almost any Product Manager who joined the company post 2000 was a fairly untechnical person who was useless for getting real work done when it came to building joint partnerships and joint tech endeavors. You’re right CPM, he is a sales tool.
That BusinessWeek profiled him is not surprising either since Microsoft ranked in the top 25 recruiters (might have been top 10 for all I recall) at Kellogg when I was there.
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