Whats the relationship between Product Manager and EPM at Apple? is this the same org? Is PM just a fancier title for TPM-type role or is it a true PM? how are job responsibilities different?
Good insight. How about decisions on features? PMs can't even make decisions on individual features?
Everything goes through a ton of red tape. You want to change color of a font, 5 design reviews, you want Siri to say some thing ohhh boy strap in for a year long process.
That's crazy. But makes one ponder - if a consumer company can be so successful without a PM org, why do other consumer companies need so many PMs?
The PM job needs to be done. Weather you have an org for that or divide the responsibility in some other way is a matter of implantation. Don’t be misled by Apples success. They had hell of a Product / Design guy as CEO :) Steve was the best PM&a Design Person for Apple. Look at the last 3-4 years, Apple has no innovation, the I my thing new is new prices. And look how shitty Siri and attempts at home device are. Lack of product vision...
Yes, someone has to do the job. Also agree that Jobs was one of the best product people. The question is - can a big consumer company do with few product people (like Apple from Jobs' era) instead of hundreds of product people (PMs) typically employed by large consumer companies?
There are no product managers. All PMs are labeled EPM and that is in essence a dressed up version of Project Manager, scheduler, bug tracker. Apple is super heavy on process and project management. All product decisions come from management and are dictated top down heavy with a lot of red tape. If you want a product role I would skip Apple.
This is correct but I believe as of recently they are beginning to expand an actual product org and are hiring actual Product Managers. How good is Product at Apple though? Not too sure about that.
That may be, but true cultural change and change in how business is done may never come. It will probably turn into a half hearted attempt where the product role is not truly defined and has no real authority. I do not think managers and current decision makers will truly delegate the product power. Apple is super slow to change and very top heavy and siloed.