As a Xoogler, Google is an "engineering-first" company and in practice doesn't consider "product/program management" to be part of engineering. Ironically, the origin of formal methods used in program management come from operations research and engineering management -- they are part of engineering, but not seen that way at Google.

Engineering leadership is not judged for their acumen in these areas, as they are separate job ladders, and thus to no surprise there is little cultivation of this knowledge or skill.

Before ~ 2007, Google didn't believe in project managers. There were actually no project managers roles (even though some people were probably doing considerable amounts of project management) and the expectation was that engineers would know enough to structure efforts and timelines.

That evolved into a situation where program managers (mostly - programs have a sense of scale right??) exist in most orgs and are critical to keep things aligned. There were (are still?) even internal conferences just for program managers.

The only BigTech company that I’ve worked for is Amazon and there are plenty of articles about how features and products get approved at Amazon.

How does this even happen at any company that isn’t a conglomerate based on acquisitions?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo...

This.

And when you refer to pm-Ing in this way I’m reminded of the guy in San Francisco that did all the management for a huge eve online guild and he didn’t play the game he managed all their affects in a spreadsheet and whatever they were using to chat…. And he was making a boatload of human money a month…

I wonder where he is now…