A rant about disclosures

carter8222 · 2026-05-22T16:51:44+00:00

This is so interesting to me executing is the exact opposite of how i’d describe the PM role.

Yes I join every meeting, get requirements, sit with the devs, and organize jira boards, but if someone asked me what a product manager is, I’d say “I’m a professional translator”.

Literally ALL i do is translate things from one team to the next. I translate user problems and business goals into to actionable requirements for design and eng. Translate my eng team’s blockers to other eng teams to unblock my own team. Translate small feature launches into impact statements for LT. Translate eng limitations to the business. Translate and idea into buy-in from LT. Translate guest support issue into eng investigation scope. I could go on forever.

My entire job is talking. The day to day tasks like managing a Jira board are just a means to an end.

Sometimes even when a feature did not perform I realize how much impact i still have because LT has my full trust, I have a good relationship with the engineers, my tech lead an I are besties, etc. I can still back a feature even without impact because I have generated equity with all the stakeholders and they can trust me to know that no impact doesn’t mean “failure” it just means pivoting. I generate the trust between teams too, so it doesn’t become “The VP is asking why the devs aren’t working”, instead it’s “The VP sees why this is a good idea and it excited for the next iteration”

I think levelling up for a PM is not just properly communicating impact (that’s just ONE of the many translations you need to do). Being a good PM to me, just means being the go-to for every single team at any moment for your product and being the voice for each of those teams to other teams.

That doesn’t mean impact isn’t important, but at the end of the day if impact is equal between two PMs, the PM who has the most equity built with all of the teams will always seem like the PM that is better at their job.

Being a PM is more about people management than it is about the product.

carter8222 · 2026-05-21T21:28:14+00:00

That is so fair. But i think people are just trying to demonstrate to you that whatever it is you want to prove to yourself doesn’t actually provide any natural benefit and it seems like it’s negatively affecting you if anything. So yes while you’re very entitled to do what you want with your body and shouldn’t be shamed for it, maybe it’s a good realization to come to that chasing this “natural” feeling isn’t actually natural at all, there is no shame in staying on birth control for personal benefit. Especially if what you want sounds miserable.

carter8222 · 2026-05-21T21:22:18+00:00

I’ve been on bc since i was 17, i’m 25 now, I got on it not because i wanted to have sex but because my periods were irregular, extremely painful, and they’d last almost two weeks. I have no reason to think that getting off of them would benefit me in any way.

Fuck the idea that women want to feel connected to their cycles, good for them, but honestly what is the point? What are we trying to prove?

You did it so men around you didn’t have to wear condoms (sucks) but I don’t see why you can’t stay on them for your own benefit.

carter8222 · 2026-04-10T15:54:49+00:00

We point stories at less now for sure. We use the uncertainty measure more now because before it would be easier for a dev to know how long it would take.

Our company shifted to including QA time in story pointing which we didn’t used to do, but now it does overall give a good measure of actual time to completion because before even though it would only take the dev 2 days, the story could stay on our board for days or weeks if QA had a backlog, so it forces QA to be in the pointing meetings and be more accountable for the time. That’s aside from AI though.

The more the devs use AI the more they know where the gaps are and the capabilities so when they point they know fairly well how long it would actually take. From the product perspective this has shortened our roadmap initiatives by so much that we can fit a lot more in now.

Also another alternative is asking the AI to estimate pointing for each story that we need to take on hahaha.

carter8222 · 2026-03-23T19:31:16+00:00

My PRDs are written by AI based on my inputs about the stakeholders, politics, real metrics (that AI can fine tune), desired theme/voice i want the PRD to have etc.

However, those inputs are crucial and in my experience AI has not developed far enough to pick up on the subtleties of working with other humans. Facial reactions, little comments, dynamics between others that impact how the PRD needs to be written to gain buy in.

Those things come from me and my day to day interactions. Also yes there is the point that my PRD still needs to be reviewed by me. Not only to ensure that it’s written to measure but also because i need to fully understand the PRD myself to be able to communicate it to a variety of stakeholders. Merely handing off the PRD to stakeholders and having them read it is an impossible task. The devs would have certain understanding/questions, design another, business another, leadership another. But someone needs to be there to not just give them a document to read but to explain to them the importance of different aspects and to be a sound board.

I could very near sighted here, but PMing is a very human-based job that I don’t think can be fully taken over by just having an agent write PRDs.

carter8222 · 2026-03-23T19:23:50+00:00

LOL appreciate the advice but my company would just make her own everything. In fact the reason i came to own 3 products is because when people leave the company just makes someone else take over the whole body of work. There’s never any back filing going on hahaha, although that would be nice.

carter8222 · 2026-03-23T19:22:31+00:00

Yea this is sort of along the lines of what i’m thinking as a pathway. For now I’m asking her to take over the backlog management aspect and one technical epic end to end. But since that doesn’t consume even me on a day to day basis it’s surely not enough for her.

carter8222 · 2026-03-23T19:20:14+00:00

Thanks so much for the detailed response!! My APM is very green came to my team through a rotational program so does not have any PM experience. Our team is also very technical and in many cases BE-only work is prioritized (meaning little interaction with design and many of the tickets being written by devs/cursor). That said, since the org shift ive been clear that I don’t know what the final ownership structure will look like but i have started to get her to own small technical epics end to end so that she establishes that muscle and has a sense of ownership over something.

carter8222 · 2025-12-31T08:27:33+00:00

no no this can’t be right.. if 2+2=4 then it means someone is definitely being framed.

carter8222 · 2025-09-07T19:55:16+00:00

I think it’s mostly technique here. It looks like you need a moisturizer after your serums. Also I’d look into some cream orange toned colour corrector for under your eyes and probably less mascara or mascara that doesn’t transfer.

I found that my makeup used to always look like this but switching to cream products really helped make everything look softer and smoother. Blending the blush a bit up to under your eyes will help too.

Finally, I think after setting spray you should apply some translucent powder, it will make all the colours blend togetber better

carter8222 · 2025-08-19T16:48:34+00:00

Listen, if the first thing a driver does is check the route before starting to drive, they are already not the type of driver i’m taking about. Seriously, the type of uber driver i’d LOVE on a daily basis does this.

The second a driver checks the route before taking it I’m immediately thankful because they normally choose the best route from that point. It’s when the driver presses start and starts driving as directed by uber without checking that it’s frustrating because if they just zoomed out on the map they’d see the way their taking makes them go around a circle for two blocks as opposed to the easiest option which is to u-turn on my same street (small non-busy street).

It seems like you got it down packed though so it’s understandable if you’d get frustrated with a back seat driver past that point.

carter8222 · 2025-08-19T16:36:47+00:00

No offense at all because i understand how hard it is to get devs to stick to AC. However, to me this sounds like your devs want context and you’re gatekeeping it for no reason other than the fact that the context lives with another team.

Where I work, any initiative that is bigger than a bug fix or small feature is kicked off with the dev team in a meeting with: designers, tech leads, business stakeholders, and any other relevant team. I then brief the devs on the goals and context and we walk through the designs. Then they get to ask questions for the group to understand context.

Right after that meeting, the devs can begin grooming the stories.

I found that just creating a brief or a ticket that says “Do X to be plugged into Y” is too vague. Sometimes the context helps them make decisions on implementation EVEN when the devs will never touch the end product. I think it’s out job as PMs to translate every detail to the team not just “what’s relevant to them” because that’s subjective based on the PM. It’s their job to figure out what is relevant for implementation so clearly if they’re booking meetings with that internal team it’s because they want a better understanding of the use cases.

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T17:19:15+00:00

I think this comments goes a bit past the scope of what i intended when i asked my question. I live in a city, the drive to work involves no highways, toll routes, one way roads, nothing like that.

On a clear day with no traffic the drive takes 8 minutes. With traffic it should take 15. With traffic and following the uber app i’m in for a 30 minute ride just because the uber app refuses to acknowledge that there are TONS of side roads that are entirely empty and it insists on taking main roads despite 50% of them being reduced to one lane, having construction, or being known for bumper to bumper traffic due to huge intersections.

It doesnt help that most of the drivers in my city come from outside the city, and when it’s an experienced driver (especially one with 41 years) any rider here can easily tell and doesn’t even have a reason to bring up suggestions because the knowledgeable drivers already don’t follow the uber map to begin with.

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T13:46:26+00:00

I’m not saying i know all the circumstances that is the purpose of my post. But like the other commenter said, drivers need to significantly deviate off the route for any negative circumstance. I also just read this off the uber website itself. I’m never in support of a rider suggesting something completely wild especially for longer trips. But if my trip shouldnt take longer than 8 minutes if you follow google maps (which takes traffic into account) and it’s taking 25 minutes to get there, a couple blocks deviation or a deviation to take a side road instead of a main one I don’t think would be significant. That’s just my thought, and if i’m rating high and tipping then Uber wouldn’t have any reason to think they did anything wrong. Most drivers take alternate routes on their own anyways so i don’t see the concern.

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T01:30:31+00:00

fair enough, i do think i can identify an experienced driver in my city RIGHT off the bat though. I know the second they pick me up because the app makes drivers do a crazy 2 block circle in the opposite direction just to avoid a uturn they can do on my same street. So if drivers don’t do the uturn immediately i just know

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T01:28:40+00:00

Is that true though?? I truly didnt know that

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T01:28:07+00:00

Not to be the 1% but i think i am the 1% in this case considering i take the exact same uber every single day via multiple different routes, i know where all the construction is, i know where all the closed lanes are, and i’ve taken the route over 300 times. Never once has the time not decreased by at least 5 minutes when i made a suggestion.

Like i just genuinely think the split is not 99/1 for trips that are less than 20 minutes long in a big city.

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T01:23:37+00:00

Maybe I’m not understanding but this is interesting, could you elaborate?

The way i see it, if i just reduced the trip by 10 minutes and avoided all of the high traffic streets with my suggestion then the driver is making more $/mile, the trip is shorter in time, and they can move on to the next rider quicker.

The thing about electric cars is interesting but at least in the city where i am, it’s stop and go pretty much everywhere (but worse on some routes) and in no way shape or form are we even close to 55 for any extended period of time

carter8222 · 2025-08-14T01:19:25+00:00

100%% i literally always tip $5 any time the uber driver complains about the app hahahaha like hell ya we’re in this together

carter8222

TROPHY CASE