
Chefs and Soldiers Make Good Product Managers - nreece
http://firstround.com/review/why-soldiers-and-chefs-make-the-best-product-managers/
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drblast
A pm job is conceptually one of the simplest jobs but one of the most
difficult to execute.

I've worked with two great PM's and a shitload of mediocre to bad ones.
Technical competence, organization, willingness to work for a team of
engineers, and humility is what it takes.

The military calls it "servant leadership." They teach classes in it.

Ideally, the military has lots of servant leadership but in reality it does
not.

Oh, and bless the good PM's, they're worth their weight in gold. The mediocre
ones might as well not be there. The bad ones are actively destructive.

~~~
trevor-e
The best product managers in my opinion are hands off. All too often I see
PM's micromanage every little detail of their product instead of letting the
engineers/designers (the experts) do their work. IMO the PM should be involved
very little in day to day things and instead focus their time on user
research, new features, feedback, etc.

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ulfw
I wholeheartedly agree. Sadly I have seen (and worked) in organizations that
treat their engineers like they have zero creative thinking and merely use
them as glorified typists.

I have had an inexperienced CPO ask me to pseudo-code JIRA stories for an
engineering team. You can imagine that ask didn't go far...

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babesh
My experience: The organization was rigidly run which allowed good execution
in the short run but blinded us to opportunities. So now the company is still
around but all these companies that came afterwards exploited opportunities
that we either couldn’t see or wouldn’t pursue and had much better outcomes.
Also people saw this and left causing a talent drain. Reminds me of the saying
that generals always fight the last war.

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protomyth
I’m still convinced that a TV show runner might be a pretty good choice for
running a software project particularly if they have experience with FX. I
think they would get the creative part of the process and understand the
business end.

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humanrebar
> There's a whole checklist Patterson looks for whenever he makes product
> hires...

One of my main frustrations with non-technical PMs (chefs and soldiers
probably apply, but not always) is when they aren't actual experts in the
software business, in the business of code. There are Dunning Kruger effects
in play.

The usual response is "find the smart people and listen to them" but hopefully
everyone on the project is smart, in which case the advice isn't actionable.
And the Dunning Kruger effect is a huge deal when trying to find the people
that are specifically great at technical strategy.

Another response is to find a more objective way to find the best technical
advice, whether through metrics or less specific track records. But building a
good software product is complex and time-consuming enough that you get very
few data points to work with. Sometimes the negative effects of bad decisions
(massive technical debt, intractable legacy systems, retention problems, etc.)
are indirect or won't really be felt until at least some of the personnel on
the project has moved on.

A specific concern that a non-technical PM will underestimate is tooling.
Unsupported dependencies, old language versions, old compilers, mostly broken
IDEs, undersized build farms (if they exist), and so on typically happen when
the people making strategic decisions can't code, or at least haven't coded
lately. It's not always easy to know when to buckle down and fix something
like that, but I often see equivalent (organizational-value-wise) feature work
getting star treatment.

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cakedoggie
So the biggest problem is slackers? That is why they make great PM's? What a
joke.

> Making good decisions quickly isn't the only quality PMs need that military
> or kitchen experience instills.

How can you make good decision unless you have intimate knowledge of the
problem area. And to do that, you have to have come through the ranks.

What would a chef or military personal (depending on what they were doing)
know about spinning up extra servers, choosing to go to cloud, or what scope
to cut in a mobile app?

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ZenoArrow
I couldn't agree more.

The worst project managers I've worked with have been keen on deadlines
without understanding what they're asking for. They're more interested in
schedules than understanding the details of the project.

The best project managers are ones that either know the domain inside out or
are good at getting the best out of people (and that doesn't mean acting like
a slave driver). I've never met one that had both, but I can imagine they
aren't short of money.

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crispyambulance
The surprising thing about project managers who use the phrase "when-will-it-
be-done" far too much is that they're often willing to help you with getting
resources and getting help/cooperation "across silos" if you ask them in the
right way.

They want the project to progress. Desperately.

From their point of view they're often powerless people surrounded by line
workers that don't want to interact with them, yet they're somehow responsible
for the success of the project. They're acutely aware that the meetings are
often pointless for workers, deep inside, they know that coloring
red/yellow/green rectangles on a gantt chart is of little value.

You can use that to your advantage if you make a request and frame it such
that they can advance your progress concretely by helping you in some way that
isn't possible for you to do alone.

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pencilcheck
In my opinion, those are PM who are incompetent because they can't pull and
affect those people around them to come to an agreement that everyone is ok
with. This type of PM (which is everywhere) is afraid of confrontation to
their superior and often can't ask the right questions of their peers and
ultimately pull the right resources (in or outside companies) to help out the
rest of the team to move faster or done things right.

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niravs
this piece literally tells only half the story — the execution part.

what makes a great product manager is the raw product level insights and
instincts that very few individuals have about the product itself and the
direction the world is actually moving in.

this is basically the conjoined triangles of success kinda BS.

~~~
jdavis703
I think it really depends. If you have a visionary at the top (say the CEO,
CPO, VP of product etc) then you just need good colonels and lieutenants
below. If you're relying on bottom up innovation (e.g. Google's 20% time) then
you absolutely need a different set of skills.

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Ryel
As someone who has cooked at the Michelin level in NYC I just wanted to say
thanks to the author(s), whoever that may be, and to the OP for sharing.

This came at the right time. I'd been reminiscing about my kitchen families
across the country all week.

I also normally take my restaurant experience off of my resume but maybe I'll
try putting it back in.

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kamilszybalski
Every time I see a PM related post I always think back to
[https://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-
content/uploads/Good_Produ...](https://www.khoslaventures.com/wp-
content/uploads/Good_Product_Manager_Bad_Product_Manager_KV.pdf)

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anjc
I don't think the skills translate from a kitchen in the manner described. No
doubt being in a kitchen environment is demanding, requires rigorous prep, can
be high pressured, is high energy etc. These are attributes of the environment
though, not the people within it. New people who enter the environment just
adapt to it.

Having worked in tech and as a cook, being in an office environment can be
draining and torturous and could turn Gordon Ramsey into the worst slacker.
This is also due to attributes of the environment, and not the people within
it.

If you want the personal attributes described (ability to work under pressure
etc) then seek them from people within the corporate world, e.g. people who do
field sales, because at least then there's a chance that these skills will
remain.

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nitwit005
> Both the military and professional kitchens are environments where there's
> zero tolerance for slackers and indecision

I'm fairly certain the military would be surprised to learn they lack slackers
and indecision.

~~~
product50
Yeah totally. Also the fact that people in military command authority by
structure. Try doing that as a PM and you will immediately piss off all your
XFNs and, in general, build an inferior product.

I think what these articles lack is that being a good PM is more about the
process vs. what one knows. A good cook, for instance, would generally have
intrinsic knowledge about flavors, cuisines, preparation, plating etc. The
more the cook knows about these areas the better she is and would command
respect. PMing, on the other hand, has very little to do with the domain of
the area you are working on. It is more about the process you use to figure
out the following - building out a long term strategy for the area you are
working on, breaking down the strategy into smaller parts and prioritizing
those, working with and convincing your eng, xfn & leadership team that what
you have going is the right thing, being very data driven to figure out what
is working and doubling down on it, focussing on a market which is large
enough but where you are differentiated etc.

I am not saying a cook or military person can't do that but I would be
cautious to generalize.

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mockery
Tangent: What's an XFN? (Google and Wikipedia don't seem to provide plausible
answers, and I'm pretty sure you don't mean "XHTML Friends Network"...)

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product50
Apologies for not being clear there. XFN means cross functional teams (design,
research, product marketing, analytics, sales etc.) in my comment above.

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gumby
In my experience, hiring enlisted folks has been super successful (especially
coast guard veterans), while hiring commissioned officers has been, with one
exception, poor. I'm referring to officers with substantial careers in the
military, not ROTC folks who put in their time and bugged out.

This is despite the fact that given my background I know more commissioned
officers than I do enlisted folks. I assume this is simply that to be
successful in the military you have had to adapt to a bureaucracy and
structure which is radically different from the business world _I_ live in.
Certainly the risk/reward calculus is different. I am not trying to imply they
are idiots.

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squozzer
I won't hate too much on this article, but in my experience, the question
always comes down to "How do you get there?"

How do you get to "being able to lead without authority"? How do you get to
"always taking blame while giving credit away"? And so on.

By practicing, and making mistakes along the way.

Something that most corporate policies / deadlines don't accommodate.

Maybe the question companies should ask themselves is, "Why would someone
whose qualities make them a good PM want to work for us?"

Good luck with that.

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kyberias
Survivorship bias anyone?

"I hired a chef and military person and they performed well as product
managers. Let's see what conclusions I can make..."

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mattschmulen
I would add to that oil and gas project managers. When I moved to SF from
Dallas I was astounded how little Product Managers assessed resource costs +
risk to value. I get that it's a different world with different objectives but
there were clear moments in the SV where some good old fashion blue collar
project management would have made a significant impact.

~~~
dalacv
Isn't the article about product managers, though?

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jonbarker
Whenever there is a discussion about why there are a lot of bad examples of
{{insert job description}} my bubble radar goes off.

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ryanjodonnell
Usually I enjoy articles from firstround, but this article is kind of
clickbaity. I see what they're getting at here but if their claim that chefs
and soldiers make the best product managers is true... then most PMs be would
be former chefs and soldiers.

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nemo44x
"Self reliant and a team player" \- that's what I think makes the best
managers and what I strive for and this alludes to that idea. I can see the
"chefs and soldiers" analogy. Independent within in a team in that you can
take on a role when needed and run with it but always work within the confines
of a team when available. I like it.

