The things engineers are desperate for PMs to understand | Camille Fournier (author of “The Manager’s Path,” ex-CTO at Rent the Runway)
Camille Fournier, a respected tech executive and author, discusses common PM-engineer annoyances, the pitfalls of system rewrites, and how to effectively manage and build platform teams. She also shares insights on leadership, focused work, and career growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Common Annoyances Between Product Managers and Engineers
The Dangers of Major System Rewrites
Balancing Technical Expertise and Leadership in Engineering
Transitioning from Individual Contributor to Manager
Rethinking the Frequency and Purpose of One-on-One Meetings
Cultivating a Focused and Balanced Work Culture
Strategies for Effective Time Management and Delegation
Effectively Working With and Guiding Platform Teams
Structuring and Incentivizing Successful Platform Teams
Defining and Identifying When to Form a Platform Team
Thriving as an Engineer or PM on a Platform Team
Challenges and Best Practices for Platform Projects
Using AI for Writing and Content Reframing
Recommended Books for Personal and Professional Growth
Personal Philosophies on Growth and Curiosity
6 Key Concepts
Hoarding Credit
This occurs when Product Managers (PMs), being front-facing for initiatives, take all the glory for projects that engineers worked hard on. It can be avoided by PMs actively sharing credit and providing engineers opportunities to speak about their contributions.
Playing Telephone
This describes a situation where a manager or PM acts as a middle-person, relaying questions and answers between engineers and other stakeholders without direct connection. It's inefficient and can lead to misunderstandings, suggesting direct communication is often better.
Over-engineering
Engineers may over-engineer solutions, obsessing over frameworks or technical details, when their creative outlets for product ideas or business problems are quashed. This can be detrimental to product delivery and indicates a need for engineers to be more involved in ideation.
Rewrite Trap
The common belief that rewriting an old system from scratch will solve all problems, but often leads to underestimating migration time, supporting two systems simultaneously, and failing to fully understand or replicate the old system's undocumented logic and features. A staged evolution is usually preferred over a full rewrite.
Platform Engineering
This involves developing and operating platforms to manage overall system complexity and deliver leverage to a business. It requires software engineers, systems engineers, and product people, focusing on outcome-based approaches rather than just maintaining infrastructure or adopting fads.
One-on-One Overload
The practice of having too many one-on-one meetings with peers, stakeholders, and other teams, beyond direct reports and one's own manager. This approach is not scalable as a company grows and can be unproductive if there's no clear purpose or genuine investment in the relationship.
6 Questions Answered
Engineers are often annoyed when PMs hoard credit for projects, fail to understand or dismiss technical details, act as a 'middle-person' in communication, or try to monopolize all product ideas, stifling engineers' creative input.
Rewrites are often a trap because people notoriously underestimate the time and complexity of migrating from the old system to the new, supporting both systems simultaneously, and fully understanding and replicating the undocumented logic of the legacy system.
New managers are often surprised that they don't own their time, and management is more of a service job focused on helping the team and company, rather than a position of absolute authority or making all decisions.
A company should consider forming a platform team when it has 50+ engineers, experiences significant inefficiencies from multiple teams solving the same problems, or encounters core scaling issues that require a dedicated team to address.
PMs should identify and maintain good relationships with the effective parts of the platform team, provide clear product feedback, and help them understand what problems need solving, especially if the platform team lacks dedicated product managers.
AI can be helpful for rephrasing sentences or small blocks of text to improve clarity or phrasing, though it's crucial to verify any factual information, especially quotes, as AI models can hallucinate.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Focused Work
Challenge yourself to focus on the most important tasks and avoid overwork, as overwork often sidesteps the hard work of prioritization and can lead to burnout. Regularly audit your time and force yourself to log off at set times to increase productivity and maintain boundaries.
2. Cultivate Growth Through Challenge
Continuously challenge yourself and take calculated risks in your career and life, as this is essential for personal and professional growth. Embrace stepping out of your comfort zone to expand your capabilities and understanding.
3. Maintain Curiosity & Open-mindedness
Always remember there’s more you don’t know than you do, and stay open-minded and willing to be wrong. This approach fosters continuous learning, improves leadership, and contributes to overall happiness.
4. Understand Management as Service
Recognize that management is primarily a service job focused on helping your team and company succeed, rather than a position of absolute authority or control over your own time. Your role involves nudging, encouraging, and setting guardrails, not dictating every decision.
5. Avoid Full System Rewrites
Instead of undertaking complete system rewrites, plan thoughtful, staged evolutions of existing systems by uplifting specific components and cleaning up technical debt. Full rewrites often underestimate migration time and system complexity, leading to stalled feature development and unexpected problems.
6. Share Credit with Engineers
Actively share credit for project successes and be inclusive of the engineering team, giving them opportunities to speak about their contributions. This prevents engineers from feeling their hard work is unacknowledged and reduces resentment towards product managers.
7. Show Empathy for Technical Details
Demonstrate genuine empathy for the technical details engineers are working on, even if you don’t need to understand every single one. Avoid dismissing details or acting like they don’t matter, as this can be very off-putting and shows a lack of respect for their work.
8. Connect People Directly (Avoid ‘Telephone’)
When faced with technical questions you can’t answer, connect engineers directly with the relevant people (e.g., other engineers, stakeholders) instead of acting as a middle person. This prevents loss of information in translation, saves time, and reduces annoyance for all parties.
9. Involve Engineers in Ideation
Don’t hoard all product ideas; instead, involve engineers in the ideation and decision-making process. Suppressing their creativity can lead engineers to find outlets in over-engineering or unnecessary rewrites, which is detrimental to the product.
10. Master Technical Skills Before Management
If you are technical, aim to achieve a deep level of technical mastery (around 10 years of hands-on work) before transitioning into management. This builds internal confidence, maintains technical credibility, and fosters empathy for engineers, allowing you to guide effectively without dictating.
11. Limit Non-Direct Report One-on-Ones
Restrict one-on-one meetings primarily to your direct reports and your own manager, and avoid scheduling excessive one-on-ones with peers and numerous stakeholders. This approach is not scalable, often unproductive, and can be an ineffective way to manage broad stakeholder relationships.
12. Delegate More Effectively
Actively delegate tasks and responsibilities to your team members, even if it initially takes more time to teach them. Delegation empowers your team, provides growth opportunities, and frees up your own time to focus on higher-leverage activities, enabling greater scale.
13. Collaborate with Platform Teams
For customer-facing product teams, actively understand and collaborate with platform teams, especially if they lack dedicated product managers. Provide clear product feedback and articulate your needs to help them build more relevant and effective internal tools.
14. Structure Effective Platform Teams
When building a platform team, include a mix of software engineers, operations/SRE specialists, and product managers, and focus on delivering measurable, impact-based outcomes. This ensures the platform develops cohesive products that manage complexity and provide leverage to the business.
15. Recognize Signs for a Platform Team
Consider establishing a dedicated platform team when your organization reaches approximately 50 or more engineers and experiences significant inefficiencies from repeated problem-solving across teams, or encounters core scaling issues requiring specialized focus. Avoid creating one too early.
16. Thrive as a Platform Team Member
As an engineer or PM on a platform team, cultivate an interest in operational quality, scaling challenges, and the long-term evolution of systems, rather than solely focusing on ‘zero-to-one’ new feature development. Be prepared for longer project cycles and frequent migrations.
17. Utilize AI for Writing Refinement
Use AI tools like ChatGPT to rephrase or reframe sentences and short text blocks when you’re struggling with phrasing or flow. This can help improve readability and clarity, but always verify factual information provided by AI.
6 Key Quotes
I find the best PMs are the ones that talk the least and encourage other people to do the presenting.
Camille Fournier
Engineers notoriously, notoriously, notoriously, massively underestimate the migration time for old system to new system.
Camille Fournier
If you don't regularly like reset your expectations of like what you should and shouldn't let slide, do you have any idea where the line of what is actually important to work on is?
Camille Fournier
I'm really good if you want to, if I work with you. Like if I work with you on something, generally speaking, people really come to respect me because I'm very, like, engaged and, you know, I'm a really good collaborator in various ways. But I'm really bad at just, like, getting to know you random one-on-one where we don't have a purpose to the meeting.
Camille Fournier
If you don't have any software engineers on your platform team and you only have like, you know, more like operation systems engineers, DevOps, SRE, which I realize there are some SREs that are software engineers, but they tend to not want to write like big software. I think you're kind of missing the picture.
Camille Fournier
I don't know, but like PMs are more fun to manage in my experience. So actually, you have a point. You have a point. But I wonder, yeah. Because I haven't seen a lot of PM managers move back to IC product management.
Camille Fournier