- The Cranky Product Manager hopes your new Product Management job doesn’t suck. Truly.
Yeah for you! You landed a new product management job in a s#!+hole of an economy! You must be WICKED AWESOME to accomplish such a feat! The Cranky Product Manager applauds you!
But because the Cranky Product Manager is, well, the CRANKY Product Manager, she’s gonna have to let some of the fizz out of your celebratory champagne. Because that’s what she does. It’s her specialty.
So, here’s some signs that your brand new Product Management job is gonna suck – whether you are new to product manager, at a new company, or just in a new line of business at your same old company.
And please, Esteemed Members of the Crankerati, add your own warning signs in the comments.
Warning Signs
- The Product Managers don’t know off the top of their heads, their products’ revenue from last quarter and last year. (Perhaps this is because Finance won’t share the info with them, but it is never a good sign.)
- The Product Managers don’t know off the top of their heads who the major competitors are, their approximate sales, and their approximate growth.
- There are more Product Managers than QA engineers.
- The product documentation group has more headcount that Product Management and QA combined.
- There are no User Experience Engineers.
- The are no Sales Engineers (otherwise known as Pre-Sales Consultants).
- Long-term product investment decisions are predominately based on forecasts from Sales — the one group at the company that is paid to focus almost exclusively on the short-term.
- The company needlessly changes names, brands, messaging, product names, logos, etc, constantly. For no apparent reason other than resume-enhancement for the marketing people, but costing the company millions each time
Addendum: Make SURE you check out the comments to see another 50+ Warning Signs contributed by Esteemed Members of the Crankerati!
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
8. There was no product management for years and nothing is documented.
The PM vs QA engineer metric is a funny one, definitely a bad sign!
A few choice tidbits from people I’ve talked to in the industry of bad signs you’ve stepped into a world of pain at your new PM job:
1) No one, and I mean no one, knows how big the market is for your products. It’s somewhere between all Fortune 1000 companies, and the guy across the street.
2) All the PM’s at your new job really believe in 10 important aspects of what a PM should be doing. After 1 week, you realize no one actually knows how to implement anything but 2 of those.
3) During your ramp up period you ask your manager for product history, key strategic decisions on the existing feature set, and future roadmaps. He eyes you quizzically, hands you a few excel sheets, outdated ppts, and mentions “that’s why we hired someone who can hit the street running”.
so if #3 happened should hit the street running and not look back? LOL
Exactly, although the other analogy I’ve heard is “Able to handle things while the plane is in flight”. Does the comp plan include a (golden) parachute? :)
Re #1: Finance CAN’T share the info!
I would also add:
QA headcount is greater than engineering headcount.
Engineering tell you what functionality the customer wants and needs.
There are no long term product investment plans because they are all reviewed annually (over a 6 month period).
the roadmap is a wish list.
Version 1.0 GA release is pushed out despite PM objections but is “not quite good enough” as opposed to “good enough” (then development gets cut because pipeline is poor).
More signs:
1) Who needs well qualified Market Data when the CEO’s experience and gut tells him otherwise?
2) The Development team believes THEY make the decisions on which features are added to the product – no wait, Sales does…. no wait, it’s your Services’ team that makes those decisions
3) Your product is full of features that are “half-way” complete and were added for demos. No one knows what they do now (no documentation) or if any customers actually use them – sure fire way to find out if they are used? Take them out!
4) Sales complains about the lack of tools and collarteral available, you create exactly what they ask for, but they decide not to use them after all and just create their own materials
5) The CEO changes his mind on corporate strategy more often then they clean the fridge in the lunch room (ok, depending on where you work, that might not be too bad)
6) No one can tell you what is real in the pipeline and not. Consider yourself lucky if you get to see the pipeline.
7) Your cat is less distracted by shiny lights than the CEO is by the last thing he heard
8) Development status? QA status? Why should Dev share those with you anyways?
Here are a few more…
1. The VP of Eng’s favorite quote is: “If Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’”.
2. The CEO’s priorities change regularly and are based on the last 2 customers or prospects s/he spoke to.
3. You are constantly asked, “Product Management? How is that different from Project Management?”
4. It’s a lifestyle business, and the most important thing the owners want is to ensure is that their draw from the company is never in jeopardy.
5. Product Management reports into Engineering or Sales
Corollary to #2:
CEO read something about how YYY is going to be huge, so we need to chase it. Until the next issue of HBR is delivered…
Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
RT @crankypm: #prodmgmt – New Cranky Blog Post! : Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
Oh no! RT @crankypm: #prodmgmt – Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
This is starting to look too familiar. To add a couple more:
Last product that went out took 3 years to get to market.
When faced with several product options shown to be losers they [exec's] cannot choose the ‘do nothing’ option.
Incremental release, that’s a waste of time. You should just know what the customer wants and build it.
RT @crankypm: #prodmgmt – New Cranky Blog Post! : Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://j.mp/bhhK7Q
RT @crankypm #prodmgmt – New Cranky Blog Post! : Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
some more…
Developers are dragged off site by sales to give demo’s
Your boss (the guy who hired you) is fired in your first week
Your new fellow PM’s “dont have time to go on customer visits, or out with sales, or out to industry seminars….or…”
There are 5 different systems for tracking requirements and a few spreadies too
There isn’t a formal beta process
1) Your boss is in the Engineering hierarchy (mentioned before, but all too true)
2) Finance can’t share the revenue/profit numbers for your products, because their systems are so fouled up, they can’t do better than the whole division numbers
3) Your product has a 20+ year history, and a lot of dead code/abandoned features/Things that “seemed good at one time” in it.
Ugh, I’m suffering through #1, #2, and #8 at my new gig.
And to lmckeogh:
“Incremental release, that’s a waste of time. You should just know what the customer wants and build it.”
Tell it from the mountain top, brother! Sweet Zombie Jebus, I’ve been waging a battle against the “we need to have regular releases to show we can hit a dependable cadence” mindset. As if somehow customers will be impressed that we regularly crank out stuff that never fulfills their needs in a complete or high-quality way.
Here’s another sign or two -
X) All of the PMs, including your boss, started their PM careers at your company and made up the roles as they went along.
Y) The engineering team requires PMs to write “requirements” for everything – including a requirement that broken stuff “shall” be fixed, you know, stuff like the installer.
Z) You NEVER see ANYONE in sales ask ANYONE in PM to help with a sale. Crikey, if even the salesdroids think the PMs are useless, you know you’re screwed.
You know the “Product Management” job you were hired for is going to be @!%^&* when your first assignment is to “write a lead generation” piece that “makes our data driver sound sexy” (this was after I asked for the product roadmap and then had to explain myself…)
Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck – The Cranky Product Manager http://bit.ly/ddknHk @justinpirie :)
RT @jezzaman03 Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck – The Cranky PM http://bit.ly/ddknHk @justinpirie :)
The product management job is really a project / program management job. You don’t get to define strategy, requirements, or at anything related to the product, you are just supposed to pull all the existing pieces together and ensure something is delivered.
No mas! I’m getting all depressed about my new job…just kidding.
Awesome comments. How about hearing these quotes:
1. “The strategy is all set. We just need you to implement it.”
2. “You need to make sure that all 17 corporate priorities are accommodated in the next release”
3. “I don’t know who gets to decide what’s in the product. Good question….”
My favorite:
Your director of marketing gets booed by your customer board for all the name changes your company keeps on pushing through.
And my runner up
All of the product managers are also development managers and all new product ideas come from internal executive ideas
Shared Via GReader: Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bAf92A
“theprodmgr” and I clearly work at the same company. :^)
1) The Dev and QA teams are empowered and encouraged to question the validity of PM’s requirements, but PM is scowled at when questioning Dev’s implementation and QA’s testing rationale.
2) You have more processes that must be followed than there are lines in the US Tax Code.
Sales reps don’t let you speak directly with key customers. Worse, VP of Sales filters customer requirements before PMs even get to see the “roadmap”.
RT @crankypm: #prodmgmt – New Cranky Blog Post! : Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
Here are things that have happened in my career:
1) You are told that “talking to customers” is disruptive to how things are done in the company.
2) Your boss who knew how to run a business is fired because he asked the right questions and you now report to the first developer of the company (now a VP) who then reports to CTO. You are told by your new boss that everything that you are currently working on is wrong and he will tell you what to work on in 24 hours (I waited for 7 months and got the same list back)
3) You spend weeks putting together a Powerpoint presentation and spend weeks iterating through it, so that what you present to the CEO is politically correct (Yah, market really cares about that and was waiting!)
The absolute worst thing that can happen, independent of any messed up development process or engineering team:
There are no product support people so after the people that take the initial calls, level 2 is product management. So forget doing anything strategic, or even being able to plan out any future releases, just deal with the customer issue of the day.
This will be the #1 obstacle to any product manager, and you must act dumb in order to keep from getting sucked into the support structure.
Cranky is blogging again. Yay! Great comments, peoples. But this post + comments will give me nightmares.
Really good article, anyone could feel identified in the text http://lnkd.in/dbsgJc
RT @crankypm: Warning Signs That Your New Product Management Job is Going to Suck ##prodmgmt http://bit.ly/bP1lTP
It’s good to see these because they prove you’re not alone. No matter what anyone says, misery loves company.
Also, they all give ideas for questions I will have the good sense to ask next time.
Another two:
You start to suspect that instead of a PM, you’re really a business analyst (much respect for BA’s) whose responsibility is to document wishes from sales and services and to make excuses when development is late. No customer contact or decision making authority AT ALL.
There is no appreciation for product management as a discipline and everyone else thinks it’s their job to perform key aspects of the job.
"Warning sings that your new product management job is going to suck" http://t.co/z05qHpLb
always a good one! RT @marcusf: "Warning sings that your new product management job is going to suck" http://t.co/DRtNTQoy #prodmgmt