I have worked at Google and Amazon. I never required PMs to be in the loop for a feature launch at either of the two.

Having said that, both Google and Amazon has excellent PMs and there are teams that require PMs to be in the loop for a feature launch but it is not universal.

Really? Did you require any non-engineers to be in the loop before launching the features? Were these public facing changes?

Netflix barely had any PMs. Almost all Netflix features are pushed without a PM being involved in any way.

Depends on which part of the company you're talking about. The studio engineering side has many PMs.

My google team didn't even _have_ a PM for most of my tenure there.

That sounds awesome TBH. I hate Reddit, and think it's Orwellian, but smart engineers shouldn't have to slow down to appease PMs.

A good PM saves work for the team by shifting work away from from valueless investments. If a team is "slowing down to appease a PM" then that PM is worthless.

> A good PM saves work for the team by shifting work away from from valueless investments.

Knowing what’s valuable and what’s not is a function of being an employee. Designers and engineers should know where value exists.

If they need a PM to shift them away from valueless work, then I highly question their efficacy as an engineer. I also highly question that organization’s management structure and communication.

Can imagine PMs at a product focused HN like forum complaining about the opposite aka engineers spending time at the wrong places

I've managed enough PMs to know that's 100% true. It happens at work, in the open.

So do Netflix engineers. That says good culture to me.

Says the ex-Reddit employee :)