The Cranky Product Manager is feeling a bit burned out on blogging this week. DysfunctoSoft is in slash and burn mode and it’s a total bummer, dude. Anyway, to help keep the Blog Beast fed, today we have a most excellent guest post by “A Cranky Ex-Engineer.”
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When I started my first software job, still wet behind the ears from grad school (note 1), I had never heard of “product management.” Sure, when I interviewed at Voice-A-Roo (note 2), I saw people who weren’t wearing t-shirts. There was the HR guy. There were obviously some accountants or something. I even interviewed with one of the shirt-and-tie people … a “Professional Services Manager.” (Never mind that the only thing I could really associate with “professional services” usually involved back alleys and guys with fur coats and big shoes … and I still can’t … ba dum dum, rimshot.)
Not long after starting, though, I encountered my first “Product Manager.” She showed up at a team meeting, which … okay, the Cranky PM made me promise not to be sexist, but “she” was a “she”, which was obviously not one of “us” (note 3). (Like many engineering organizations, yes, this was a boys’ club.) I wasn’t really sure about this one –- we already had a “Project Manager”, an old guy (like, 35 or something, jeez), and then there was a “Program Manager”, who, like, what the hell, already? I’ve been here a week and now there are 3 “PMs”. Only one of them had a role I actually understood, namely, to make Gantt charts.
I wanted to believe that there was a business going on. Even though no one seemed to be buying our product, I felt the need to know that there was a method to the madness. As it turns out, that was her. I wound up a traitor to my engineering brethren and believed in her decisions. But PM and Voice-A-Roo were not long for this world; we were laid off on the same day. The oldest of the code monkeys stayed on, as did the douchebag VP of Marketing and the other shirt-and-tie people (note 4).
After the layoff, it was the great Silicon Valley career guru Patti Wilson who guided me onto my next path. She knew that I wanted to be near the technology, but not spend my days compiling java.hack.wank.DOMImpl. I wanted to be near the business, but wasn’t an extrovert (note 5) and just couldn’t deal with the glad-handing that went along with it. But … product manager? I didn’t have an MBA, not even a business degree. Bullhockey, says Patti Wilson, and sends me on my way, but not before sharing this gem: you can stay in the same industry, and change your role, or you can say in the same role but move to a different industry. You seem to really like the subject matter of what you do, but not the role. Figure out another way of doing it.
I spent five years and two companies after the layoff figuring it out. Part of it took me through consulting and professional services roles, pimping myself out (see above) to customers, but at least having a chance to hear what they actually wanted. Part of it took an amazing mentor, a VP with a technical degree and a big smile who could write demos in Python and then walk into a meeting with the investors. Mostly it meant learning the market players, the products, the technologies, the personality types, and lots of intangibles. It meant not loathing the sales droids, in the hope that one or two of them might end up having some valuable feedback. Worst of all, it meant learning PowerPoint.
But “net net,” as one of my least favorite business adages goes, it comes down to Patti’s advice. If Aspect-Oriented Programming jazzes you, and you don’t care whether your company sells cigar boxes or software, by all means –- do it. If you have an MBA and an obsessive personality, be a product manager, and learn everything about your market, whether it’s ICBMs or RDBMs. But if you love your subject matter and you have an obsessive personality, if you’re a compulsive but an articulate know-it-all… like it or not, you’re going to be a product manager.
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Note 1: Not that kind of grad school – I have a technical degree.
Note 2: Maybe not 100% obviously a fictitious boom-era startup.
Note 3: Might I also note that of “The 7 Types of Engineers,” only one is caricatured as female? I can’t speak for “Offshore.”
Note 4: See recent Cranky PM post on layoffs.
Note 5: I’m an INTJ (“The Strategist”), see recent Cranky PM Facebook poll on the topic.
{ 3 comments }
I love how we product managers wear our Myers-Briggs like lapel pins. I’m an INTJ, as well. My favorite boss is an ENTJ, though he probably sits on the border of I/E. My first boss out of college was an INTJ (but somewhat on the dysfunctional side). His VP boss (who got axed after 6 months on the job) was an ENTP.
Taking the Myers-Briggs was always something I associated with gifted class activities that were intended to help us not feel too bad about having higher aptitude than some of our classmates. It never seemed relevant. And then, everywhere I turn with product management, we all know our types.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m fine with being a “mastermind.” I mean, c’mon…Niels Bohr was a mastermind. He’s a freakin’ celebrity in my book…
I like this…”But if you love your subject matter and you have an obsessive personality, if you’re a compulsive but an articulate know-it-all… like it or not, you’re going to be a product manager.”
Myers-Briggs: an effective way of identifying tendencies in order to effectively motivate and communicate with diverse groups of people.
It’s also an effective way for some douche-bag VP to skip to the grid at the end and preemptively decide which people are gonna be winners and losers :)
I recall a team-building event where we did the test, and we had a workbook that listed famous people for each of the types, and some were more “infamous” than famous. I found it oddly appropriate that our head tech writer had the same personality traits as Mussolini. Something about keeping the trains on time…
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