Thinking back to my experiences at smaller companies this might make sense given a lot of product (and engineering) work was just picking low hanging fruit. At a larger company now both product and engineering work seems to require “deeper” effort such that I’m less inclined to think I could do what product does nor do I want to spend the bandwidth.
This one I struggle with. I feel like captain obvious stating that someone needs to represent the business/mission objectives and manage accordingly. That’s a completely different swim-lane than most tech/UX folks are focused on. (Not that everyone shouldn’t share similar perspectives).
I can't really agree with this, possibly for the wrong reasons: What I've always appreciated most about (good) product managers is that they act as a buffer/filter between management/sales and development, "one of our important sales wants this easy feature ...".
Having a sales team incentivized to the extent where it can demand engineering time for features that are specific to one customer -- and not benefit the product and customer-base long term -- is not too dissimilar to an organizational software security vulnerability.
You have to build the organization to be resilient to the types of incoming requests that it will receive. Some sales leads could -- intentionally or accidentally -- lead your organization and product down a path that limits future potential or causes cultural damage.
One of the ways to counter this is simply to spend more time collecting requirements and discussing the topic both internally and externally. Benevolent partners shouldn't want to rush to determine the shape of a feature.
Another slightly-less common counter would be to make the entire process more transparent. That could be difficult for some partners who might want to collaborate on the basis of creating a unique advantage that they'd like to achieve ahead of competitors. However, increasingly, I think that the cost to hide or obscure such plans is becoming greater than the benefits.
(and yep, none of this suggests anything about whether product manager roles are required or not: I think that's more to do with the size of the organization and whether specialization is required. my point is mostly that, regardless of scale, the organization needs to guard itself against misaligned incentives)
> companies don't need product managers if they have great UX and tech people
1. if these great UX and tech people do the product management themselves?
2. who does product and customer discovery?
3. Is it highly likely that the UX and tech people will know how to do product and customer discovery well - for example ask questions and carry out research the right way?
I was thinking about this yesterday that at my next company that I may not have PMs and just work with our Eng's. We've had incredible PMs in the past but I do wonder how necessary they are with a team that has focus and knows what to build (better than I do at most times).
PS: I am saying this as a former head of product management...