> Anyway, it might be good to talk to your PMs and not assume they're evil villains.
I've always thought PM's to be more or less aliens with a ray gun tapping at their watch. Communicating with them goes nowhere since they don't empathize with your point of view. The only thing they're concerned with is when something's going to get done. The only form of motivation is threat of existence in the company.
> While I've certainly seen incompetent, bureaucratic and/or poorly incentivized PMs, I don't think I've ever met one who wants to throw their developers under the bus to get a job done.
Perhaps, it's also possible you've never worked at enough shops to see it.
> one reason PMs might not "care" about scaling up that database, is that it almost never needs to be scaled. Seriously.
You're not the one going to be called at 4am when postgres takes a dump. If you volunteer to cycle into the on-call hours, I'd feel more compassionate for your point of view. Until PM's do this, I decline to see it that way.
I guess I feel like the PM is worthless position unless the PM is writing code along side the team, and can fully appreciate the technical problems -- and more importantly -- offer technical solutions.
A good PM is worth their weight in gold, but the problem is that the qualifications for a good PM are very hard to make objective. This leads to the role becoming magnet for power-hungry MBAs with a bean counter mentality who will tend to outcompete anyone with real knowledge of UX or engineering unless the company understands the danger of money/power-driven PMs and actively counteracts it by focusing on actual product skills.
I've been the guy who gets called at 4am when postgres takes a dump. I've also been the guy doing the calling (well, not really as a PM, since again, we don't generally have the ability to tell anyone what to do at 4AM, but I digress.)
> Communicating with them goes nowhere since they don't empathize with your point of view.
Can't speak for everyone, but again, I've been on both sides of the table, and I've never seen an example of this. I think it's rare.
> The only form of motivation is threat of existence in the company.
This is so extreme that I feel I must respond just for the sake of other people reading it: if your PM is motivating you via threats, something is very wrong.
> if your PM is motivating you via threats, something is very wrong.
Seriously? This is how 80% of companies work. In many of those companies, stack ranking is a very effective tool for running people out the door. It's often _baked_ into corporate culture.
Without knowing what your experiences are, as context, it's not possible to see the value in this. How many places (for how long) did you work as a dev?
I've always thought PM's to be more or less aliens with a ray gun tapping at their watch. Communicating with them goes nowhere since they don't empathize with your point of view. The only thing they're concerned with is when something's going to get done. The only form of motivation is threat of existence in the company.
> While I've certainly seen incompetent, bureaucratic and/or poorly incentivized PMs, I don't think I've ever met one who wants to throw their developers under the bus to get a job done.
Perhaps, it's also possible you've never worked at enough shops to see it.
> one reason PMs might not "care" about scaling up that database, is that it almost never needs to be scaled. Seriously.
You're not the one going to be called at 4am when postgres takes a dump. If you volunteer to cycle into the on-call hours, I'd feel more compassionate for your point of view. Until PM's do this, I decline to see it that way.
I guess I feel like the PM is worthless position unless the PM is writing code along side the team, and can fully appreciate the technical problems -- and more importantly -- offer technical solutions.