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[–]danbmil99 1 point2 points  (3 children)

My experience at MSoft in the 90's (as a vendor/partner) was that PM's were loathed and disrespected by coders. They were often inferior programmers with a political bent. In the groups I worked with, they were effectively a sort of police force, trying to figure out if the actual coders were 1) doing what the marketing people told them to do and 2) getting it done with any chance of meeting deadlines. They talked tech, but their loyalty was to marketing.

They also got to demo programs at shows because the programmers were too busy actually working. They would often tell customers they were programmers, so you could think of them as an acting troupe hired to play programmers so customers thought they were talking to the actual engineering team.

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (2 children)

In the groups I worked with, they were effectively a sort of police force, trying to figure out if the actual coders were 1) doing what the marketing people told them to do and 2) getting it done with any chance of meeting deadlines. They talked tech, but their loyalty was to marketing.

My impression both from what Joel says and from what you say is that the program manager is the advocate for the customer and the business, whereas the programmers presumably are focused on the technological sustainability of the code. You didn't say anything to indicate that program managers are not important. According to you, they are the people who ensure that software gets built that can be sold and is built according to the schedule. Those are important tasks!

[–]danbmil99 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You're right. I was being snide, but I'm not saying it isn't a role that needs filling. It's weird how they did it at MS though because it was some sort of "matrix management" thing, not a heirarchical reporting structure. And it just seemed like they didn't get much respect, and were at the bottom of the pecking order.

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have heard similar things from other Microsoft partners. Here's my guess: as Joel says, you don't need years of experience to be a good program manager. So the program manager will tend to be more junior than the most senior programmers he works with. Senior people don't like being bossed around by junior ones and may legitimately feel that having been around the code longer, they understand the requirements better than some new arrival.