News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product managers (2016). Parent comment

Re:The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product ma... by robviren on Monday October 15, 2018 @02:46PM (#18222488)
It is a job where your goal is to try disappoint people most slowly. You are pretty much rigged to disappoint everyone. Gotta spread that around though. Marketing, sales, and the business end all have expectation of perfect execution, on-time delivery, bug free, and the development, testing, support teams all just want realistic requirements and timelines. Somewhere in the middle is the island of slight disappointment that makes everyone only slightly sad. I enjoy the challenge, but it is not for everyone.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product ma... by samstave on Monday October 15, 2018 @03:11PM (#18222731)
This was very well put. And one of the hardest topics to navigate in an interview process: "how would you handle a case when peron X is failing to meet requirement Y or delivery date Z?

I freaking hate this question as there is no magic answer aside from "whatever it takes to minimize the overall negative impact of the outcome for the company/project/product"

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product ma... by x220 on Monday October 15, 2018 @04:56PM (#18223666)
That's a lot like asking "how would you turn water into wine?" Manage expectations and deal with angry people (aside from, in your example, mitigating those failures in the future).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product ma... by pm90 on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @02:20AM (#18227066)
That’s the joke
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are product ma... by capkutay on Monday October 15, 2018 @05:13PM (#18223817)
Its also basically impossible to avoid office politics as a PM. Suddenly you're in a role where you have to make decisions that come down to opinions. And you know what they say about opinions. You can justify and be as transparent about the process as you possibly can be, but you'll still have people in other parts of the business that have their own assumptions and disagree...and suddenly there's stress and friction in the job.
[ Parent | on HN ]