EricHolden12

The rise of the tech industry has no doubt brought a surge in interest of people wanting to work in tech. The stereotypes of paid lunches, flexible working hours, unlimited PTO, work from anywhere, and not least of all the compensation has made many suddenly want to be a designer, developer, or PM.

Here’s the cold hard truth. Most of these career u-turners are bad for tech. They often do bootcamps or online courses to get some worthless accreditation but don’t understand technology.

The worst culprits are PMs.

Backed with some MBA degree or something like Chem Eng, Mech Eng etc they believe they can do the job. Most couldn’t successfully update their phone OS.

And these are the folks designers and developers have to fight tooth and nail to convince them about the rationale for their decisions, to teach them about the nuances of tech, to make a case for why something needs more time to build or design.

They just don’t get it.

I hope the year 2024 brings a recalibration in companies to thoroughly examine their team structures and to create a process that lets builders build.

Or at the very least, let’s just change Product Manager to Project Manager and let the people who do the work figure out how to do it, and let the project manager slice and dice timelines and communication.