How many PMs to engineers does your team have?
My manager has 10 full time reports and 10 contractors
Zero. We fired them. They’re useless on a team of competent engineers.
1:7
6+ 🙄
Microsoft's average is around 1:3-4. Too many PMs and little proactive devs/EMs because of it.
^^^^^ THIS !!
This is Wayfair's problem - now imagine layering in a complete lack of technical leadership (CTO and architects who have never been engineers or haven't been writing code for >10 years) and Product leadership who have never been PMs before (management consulting, business development)
Totally agree, Microsoft’s issue is PMs have to do too much project mgmt. sometimes devs saying can you open a bug? Pls open your own damn bugs if you find a mistake in your system. So PMs become shitty project mgrs. PMs should be doing more architecture and specs and not being told to schedule meetings.Jesus if you know you need a meeting schedule it yourself I’m not your secretary. If you really need a secretary; grow to A director role and get a business admin. . Now PMs barely do competitive analysis because of all this shit. Leads to shit product.
PMs shouldn't do "architecture." They should articulate business needs and customer needs in a clear and concise enough way that engineering understands how to build the thing. It's not up to PMs to do technical designs.
Msft acquired product orgs such as LinkedIn are also getting similarly bureaucratic or so I've heard.
What if I have a 1:3.5 ratio? How would I choose an option?
Then you should quit your current job and join a company with the given poll ratio before choosing an option.
I’m one of those 1:1, go Wayfair lol. Wouldn’t be so bad if PMs could code like at MSFT. Heck I’d take a PM who knew what an api is...