
The Age of the Product Manager - sheri
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2013/12/marissa_mayer_product_manager_a_new_better_kind_of_ceo.single.html
======
ajiang
The author lost me with his unabashed bias in speaking of other executives:

 _In the case of someone like Mayer or Steve Jobs—who was accused of many of
the same flaws—those strengths and weaknesses make for far better results than
the executive alternative, whether it’s a corporate hatchet woman like HP’s
Carly Fiorina, an overpaid functionary like Citi’s Vikram Pandit, or an
unrepentant economy wrecker like Lehman’s Dick Fuld, not to mention
undistinguished wheel tillers like Apple’s John Sculley and his current
reincarnation, Tim Cook. Whatever Mayer does with Yahoo, she at least has a
fighting chance to revive the company, something that could never have been
said of her predecessors._

He could easily make the same point without adding the unnecessary negative
adjectives: "Overpaid", "Unrepentant", "Undistinguished". For the record, I
think Tim Cook is a very distinguished wheel tiller (if by wheel tiller you
mean operationals/supply chain expert) and Vikram Pandit earned $1 in total
compensation in 2009-2010, only getting paid starting in 2011 when Citi had
already been profitable for a year. Before anyone argues the merits of Tim or
Vikram, let me emphasize that my point is not on their merits as CEOs but on
the way they were described to make a point for Marissa Mayer.

~~~
felipe
What is the problem in calling public people for what they really are? Vikram
Pandit _is_ overpaid [1], John Sculley was clearly unfit for the position, and
although Tim Cook is talented as a supply chain expert, he is not the
visionary that Steve Jobs was.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=vikram+pandit+bonuses](https://www.google.com/search?q=vikram+pandit+bonuses)

~~~
jljljl
I'm not going to argue about how much Vikram Pandit should be paid, but its
worth noting that the 2011 bonus and beyond came after:

1) Pandit was paid a $1 salary for 2009 and 2010 2) Pandit not receiving a
bonus for nearly 4 years [1]

It's probably better to look at Pandit's pay across his entire tenure as CEO,
vs. objecting to a single lump sum payment.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-12/pandit-
compensation...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-12/pandit-compensation-
climbs-toward-53-million-as-citigroup-revenue-slumps.html)

Also, while Tim Cook is not quite the visionary that Steve Jobs is, Apple's
supply chain and ability to exert quality and pricing pressure over suppliers
is a huge competitive advantage, and arguably one that keeps their profits so
far above other hardware manufacturers.

There are plenty of companies with awesome vision that fail because they can't
execute the way Apple can.

~~~
felipe
When Steve Jobs accepted the job as a interim-CEO to clean-up Sculley's
mistakes, back when Apple was almost bankrupt, he accepted the $1 salary on
the expectation that he would be paid only if Apple would perform well. That's
how much faith and commitment he had in Apple succeeding, and that was before
the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad...

Compare Steve Jobs attitude with Pandit's, who announced he would "reduce" his
salary to $1 in 2009, only after the $25b in govt bail-out. On that same year,
he was compensated "just a few million dollars" (as opposed to $38m in 2008),
plus $165m for his hedge fund. [1]

Yes, Pandit was overpaid.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Pandit#Compensation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Pandit#Compensation)

~~~
jljljl
First, including the $165M from the sale of a hedge fund in his CEO
compensation is misleading. He received this for a completely different reason
than his tenure as CEO.

Second, if you are going to include Pandit's full compensation, you need to
include the millions of Apple shares that Steve Jobs received for his tenure
as Chairman of the Board at Apple:

In 2003, The Board awarded Jobs 10M restricted shares of Apple, arguably a
much larger compensation than what Pandit received:
[http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-07-...](http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-07-28382&CIK=320193)

He also received a Gulfstream Jet from the board, valued at something like
$40M:
[http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-235835.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-235835.html)

~~~
felipe
My statement "on the expectation that he would be paid only if Apple would
perform well" meant "paid in bonuses", which includes the shares and perks.
Also, I never stated that Jobs made less than Pandit -- You said first: We are
not arguing about compensation here.

Point being: Jobs accepted a new position and would earn money only if he
would deliver. Pandit in the other hand would make money regardless what was
the outcome, staying on the position he was before. He screwed it up, got
bail-out by the government, reduced his salary to $1 as a mea-culpa, then made
a bunch of money and left. Is this what a good CEO would do?

~~~
jljljl
>>> He screwed it up

To say that Pandit, who became CEO in December 2007, somehow screwed up
Citibank, reflects a misunderstanding of the history of the crisis.

The CDO and MBS markets had been in place for a decade, and were already
cratering when Pandit was brought on, and in fact he was brought in to replace
the previous CEO following "unexpectedly poor Q3 performance."

Pandit took a reduced salary in 2009 following the collapse of Bear Stearns
and Lehman Brothers in fall 2008, which eventually led to the creation of TARP
funding. His compensation was only brought back after 2 years and 5
consecutive quarters of profitability.

------
onebaddude
Marissa Mayer gets more media coverage than any CEO on the planet now that
Steve Jobs is gone. I don't understand why.

She's been CEO of Yahoo! for 18 months, and I've been compelled to visit the
site exactly zero times in her tenure.

~~~
abvdasker
The Whole Explanation: She's a woman and the CEO of a major website; which
isn't to say that she doesn't deserve more attention given the smaller number
of female CEOs/women in tech.

~~~
dragonwriter
> She's a woman and the CEO of a major website

No, she's the CEO of a significant _corporation_.

~~~
gaius
Again, so what? Carly Fiorina is a woman CEO of a significant corporation, and
her tenure has been a disaster.

Incidentally, the CFO of Lehman's at the time of the crash was a woman too,
yet it's Dick Fuld who gets mentioned...

~~~
RougeFemme
When Fiorina _was_ the CEO of a significant corporation, HP, she got a lot of
ink, too. Of course, HP itself, got a lot of ink before, during and
immediately after her tenure there.

~~~
gaius
Yeah. Red ink.

------
klochner
The successful PMs listed from google are more lead developer than product
manager, and they are strong engineers.

------
omarkatzen
Miss. First of all, citing Google as an example in product management is a
mistake. Google has, overall, pretty bad product management. Its strength is
hard engineering. Being a PM at Google is like having Risk Management at LTCM
or Amaranth (hedge funds that blew up) on your resume.

Second, in many tech companies, PMs outrank engineers and the commoditization
of tech talent hasn't really gone away. It's just that the titular concept of
the "executive" is out of style among the rising generation. Meet the new
boss, same as the old boss.

A good engineer can PM his own work, and doesn't need someone else to tell him
what color to paint the bike shed.

~~~
mattzito
> A good engineer can PM his own work, and doesn't need someone else to tell
> him what color to paint the bike shed

A good product manager, having done their job, has provided the good engineer
with enough information about goals, features, requirements, user profiles and
so on that the good engineer can run with that information and build something
kickass. In many cases, the good engineer has enough information that they can
make informed decisions about things that were not covered by the PM, such as
what color to paint the bike shed.

~~~
jjoonathan
Sure, but the process can become wildly unbalanced. If the engineering is
enough of a limiting factor that 90% of the planned ideas never happen and the
10% remainder consists entirely of mission-critical features, then a PM
doesn't have much value proposition and it makes sense to combine the engineer
and PM roles (supplemented with a culture of "why are you doing that" at
standups to prevent tunnel-vision).

The opposite can happen too, of course, when the engineers focus on features
that nobody actually wants. I think grandparent's point was that PMs aren't
always a good cure for this problem.

~~~
guyzero
"If the engineering is enough of a limiting factor that 90% of the planned
ideas never happen"

in other words...

If the team is wildly dysfunctional, then bad things are going to happen.

