News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role?. Parent comment

Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by mikeryan on Thursday October 15, 2009 @03:09PM (#884030)
I'm just wondering why you find it necessary for a PM to code?

I've seen this sentiment a lot around HN and find it curious. I've worked with many Product Managers were fairly technical but weren't going to do any coding (or architecture).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by rantfoil on Thursday October 15, 2009 @05:52PM (#884362)
They don't have to code, they just have to be able to do everything else not coding.

When you're starting out (like 2 or 3 people) -- it's ideal if everyone can move the needle in big ways.

A PM at that stage (someone who just writes specs / defines the product) becomes dead weight if they can't also design or hustle.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by maukdaddy on Thursday October 15, 2009 @04:58PM (#884261)
The prevailing attitude on HN is that all founders and early employees at a startup must be coders. As a technical person with a business background (and MBA in progress) I find this attitude short-sighted, since technical employees with business background can bring a LOT of value to a startup vs hiring yet another programmer.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by anamax on Thursday October 15, 2009 @06:19PM (#884387)
> The prevailing attitude on HN is that all founders and early employees at a startup must be coders.

That's not quite right, but code is the product.

> As a technical person with a business background (and MBA in progress) I find this attitude short-sighted, since technical employees with business background can bring a LOT of value to a startup vs hiring yet another programmer.

I'll bite - what value do you bring that exceeds the value of a coder? I'll assume that you're not coding, so be specific about what that business background provides.

Note - coders can talk with customers, get requirements, etc. Some of us own suits and have some VC "greenstamps" to cash in.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by anamax on Thursday October 15, 2009 @09:38PM (#884607)
I forgot to ask. When is that value "full-time" and what should happen before then?

While this whole line of disucssion has been about "code", I'm interested in how things might be different when for "not software" products.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by rantfoil on Friday October 16, 2009 @09:28PM (#886496)
I agree with you -- not everyone has to code. I am not against non-technical founders at all. The great nontech cofounders are people who can either design or hustle with the best of them. Those are the phenomenal non-technical cofounders.

Note: MBA does not a hustler make. MBAs are made to be great at working for others in larger organizations. But getting an MBA does not preclude hustle, nor value to a startup.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? by gruseom on Thursday October 15, 2009 @05:01PM (#884267)
He didn't mean a PM has to do all three things, just one of them, or ideally two.

The ambiguity of Boolean expressions in English is strangely fascinating.

[ Parent | on HN ]