We know Google, Amazon, Meta, and many other tech companies are bloated by Product managers (PM), mostly useless. My friend working at Apple for a long time told me they don’t work with PMs and as engineers they act as product owners. While Apple does have PMs, they are not bloated with PMs like these other companies and my friend told me that they don’t pay much importance to PMs. I want to know if this is true all across Apple? Sounds too good to be true. TC: 400k #apple #productmanager #productmanagement
Very much true. My product manager acts as a program manager gathering status. My program manager acts like a boot licker of my boss who is director of the team.
? Are you at Apple?
No. I am sharing shit at Google
It’s a top down approach. Everyone does what is told by the higher up. Product owners are the higher ups not your regular engineers.
Ic, thanks.
True. Yet to work with a product manager.
Do you feel empowered to make calls on products or is it very top down?
Unfortunately it’s very top down in the traditional sense . You can however still influence depending on your group, role and title I guess.
Product owners are pretty technical and hands on at Apple. They've a mix of technical and product management skills, excel at translating business requirements. Most of them are not all though..
Engineers acting as product owners is a terrible recipe. We are doing that now and like it’s a mess- everyday it’s like wtf am I building / trying to build the airplane as it crashes down from the sky
You need to hire better engineers, not people who solve leetcode hard in 20 minutes.
The engineers in my org are the best of the best. Most independently famous for their work/ google-able. You cannot, as a team engineer, design and concept at the same time- there needs to be a collective product vision and prioritization.