Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
by toomanyrichies on Monday October 25, 2021 @01:37PM
(#28990725)
Ditto. As an engineer, it feels like product managers often feel a need to keep cranking out new features as a way to justify their seat at the table. I would love to work in an engineering culture which found a way around that problem. If that means the job falls on me instead, so be it.
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Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
by ryanSrich on Monday October 25, 2021 @07:53PM
(#28994742)
> If that means the job falls on me instead, so be it.
Precisely this. I don’t know when “engineer” turned into “order taker”. There’s no reason to have a Product Manager define and engineers work. Good engineers are more than capable of defining their own work.
Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
by tomnipotent on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @12:07AM
(#28996281)
> There’s no reason to have a Product Manager define and engineers work
The PM isn't supposed to define features in isolation, but crystalize them into consensus between engineers and stakeholders the PM is accountable to.
If your PM isn't your peer, the org is setup wrong. Tech leadership should be helping define this, but people don't know what they don't know and so things end up with PM's becoming de-facto "team leads".
Re:WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers
by nickthemagicman on Monday October 25, 2021 @05:00PM
(#28993068)
They had me at adequate design spec.