Duct Tape Product Manager

Unfortunately this isn’t an interview with the product manager for a leading duct tape product. Its in fact a discussion when the role of Product Manager can risk descending into a growing class of useless jobs known as “Bull-Shit Jobs.”

Going back 15 years, much has been written to describe what the key function of a PM plays in a technology company. From good PM to bad PM and SVGS definition of what a pm does we understand that a good PM in a well functioning organization creates value by identifying and defining the right problem to solve and then evaluating the product or organization effectiveness at solving the problem at ability to capture the value derived.

There is clear value in this role and when paired with a meaningful mission or at least a profitable space it can be a very fulfilling role. In counterpoint to this we have the “duct tape PM.” (A borrowed term.) The duct tape PM is perfect and maybe insidious example of a useless job. It comes in two flavors:

1. The duct tape in a flawed organization. In this scenario a company, likely a startup with 60-120 employees, reaches a point where it tries to put its big boy pants on. Rather than manage the making the changes in organizational structure and putting in place the right cadence to set goals, evaluate process, select projects, it instead hires a PM to fill these gaps. There is no question that the PM is an alignment role, but the when the expectation is to fill gaps that upper management has failed to correct for with resources or process change, it renders the role of PM as almost completely useless. Symptoms include: Defining problems that who’s solutions are a forgone solution. Creating evidence to justify past decisions. Reporting on vanity metrics which have no correlation with value creation.
2. Even in a functioning organization I’ll-equipped or ill-suited can devolve into a duct tape role. Some examples of this include: product manager as project manager. Product manager as developer babysitter. Product manager as management snitch. PM as “scrum master.” Unlike in scenario 1 this PM is actually value detracting in that they simply serve as to add complexity to the organization.

Both of these scenarios are symptomatic of the spread of the useless job.....

wrap up conclusion and tie in to opener

References

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-job-boom

https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/good-product-managerbad-product-manager/

https://svpg.com/the-product-manager-contribution/

Photo by Lucas Dudek on Unsplash