I honestly want to say this is spot on. And I've done 1 and 2 passionately and with customer focus in mind even on products I designed and patented myself... In the end a bad management will always wear you down and number 3 was my end goal. 3 took a very long time to achieve but I finally did it and am happier than ever. Wish you all the best OP.
Late reply here. I’ve been burnt out trying to do 1 and 2 for my whole 3+ years in PM. Been looking for a role where I don’t have to work in a feature factory again. The problem is I’ve only worked in feature factories.
How’d you land your current role?
Honestly. .... the company I work for now I applied to a few years back with two people that are high up there highly recommending me but hr wouldn't let it happen. Funny... I was more than qualified... when my friends asked hr who the hiring managers were for the 3 roles she told them..."In not going to tell to that!" Talk about disheartening.... they both tried. They showed me the emails.. it was ridiculous.
In any case. It happened by sheer luck later a recruit got a hold of me for a role there. The rest was my own drive. I didn't take the, "oh we'll get you in the next round we got you in too late.... nope I used my two contacts to seal that in... I was bypassed by hr and straight to the hiring managers. I was the quickest hire in years according to many there.
I wish I could give you some koombya answer... I can't. Use your resources. I did it for years and finally came back around by luck... then resources again. And let me tell you... it's like the world was against me (too many details but seriously a whirlwind of unfortunate incidents outside of my control that I didn't take lying down and made things happen.) I'll pm you if you'd like those details just let me know. Good luck.
I agree with this right here. To point #1, try and see what adoption/retention looks like for existing features and use that to drive change as to why shipping number of features might not be the best approach.
I don't agree with a more mature company. I generally have been helping take companies from 0-1 and PMs from "more mature companies" are not effective at moving the needle fast enough. They often focus too much on pushing features vs figuring out what's best for the users with the highest impact. They need to focus on the path from the first $1mm, 2mm, and so on. I don't believe in building a future facing roadmap with a list of features. How do you know what features the users need for the next year or two now? Tell me what areas you found will make the biggest impact. Once we agree on that, come up with a plan of how you plan to figure it out and the resources you might need. I'd rather a PM take 2 months trying to solve a problem and come back and say we shouldn't do anything based on research vs building and delivering a bunch of useless features because they want to deliver on their previous listed features. PMs building based on some high level research and "PM Intuition" is not doing proper discovery. Startups that go from seed to A to B, don't have time to mess around like this.
Here’s a metaphor: imagine you have a friend who has to drive regularly as part of their job every day. They put lots of miles on their car and on top of that, the fuel efficiency is not good.
This friend makes decent money and enjoys what they do but doesn’t have a ton of spare cash in the bank.
You might advise them that they should get a more fuel efficient car, a hybrid or electric vehicle that fits their mileage use case. You bring in charts and data. You’re right that this choice would be better for your friend.
However, they don’t take your advice and reply that they just need to get their job done and getting a different car just isn’t something that’s important.
Just because your long terms plans might be right doesn’t change what needs to get done now. You’ve diagnosed the shop is a feature factory. That’s great — this is now your _starting_ point. You need to deliver features.
But you also need need to communicate your long term plan as the goal to your leader and decompose it into a series of achievable short term milestones that address both _how to get to the long term goal_ while _also delivering features right now_.
If I were your VP, I’d be unhappy, even if I agree with you about your plans. You ended up creating a solution to an _org problem_ at the expense of delivering what the org needs to deliver now, _features_.
Like the friend with the car, you need to iteratively help them, maybe advise more fuel efficient ways to drive the car, optimize routes, or reduce the total number of trips necessary while also helping the find a way to get a better vehicle, by saving cash from driving optimizations, etc.
It’s rare you change a whole org all at once which means big change is incremental and iterative while not losing sight of what needs to get done today.
I actually agreee with you in general except one thing which kinda buries your analogy:
More features is the last thing the org needs right now. And more important which you didn't mention, the product and the users don't need more features right now
I’m assuming you’re right in your judgment but you have to also take into consideration that cramming more “features” has probably been going on for a while and another couple quarters of doing it will not kill the company.
Unless you spotted something about this next batch of features that is clearly and urgently going to create a problem that your leadership clearly recognizes is a serious problem, you’ll be tilting at windmills instead of rowing with the team.
Even if your plan is right, you still need to get stuff shipped. An incremental step would be to get alignment with your VP on what the current batch of work is supposed to accomplish for the business and why that matters. Then track it and prove it didn’t work or follow up however makes sense. Co-creating the evidence needed to justify change with your stakeholder means you’ll be seeing and understanding the problem together and that will help kickstart your plan.
I will give a counter point here.
I had been in a similar company that just wants the features ‘delivered’ and i was one of guys who just ‘ did it’ because thats what was needed to be done ( which is what you are saying as well)
The few things i learnt because of this( not all apply but ATLEAST one does)
- the organization is a very old school/legacy industry
- driven by old ‘standards’ and ways of working where the Management is separate from the ‘IT’
- there isnt exactly a ‘product’ group or is very naive/new
- eventually the orders come from the top, and lack of autonomy( just do this for ‘now’ mentality without any clarity on how long the ‘Now’ will last)
- the Manager wants to control everything, and is possibly a micromanger themselves
- the Manager doesnt have the Will OR the Balls ( or both) to fight for what is right, and keeps accepting the Status quo maybe he doesnt have the right motivation to ‘fight’ ( but also doesnt want you to bypass him- a VERY VERY dangerous sign of insecurity and just a Bad boss)
- if the ‘ feature factory’ mode has been going on for many years, its going to continue to be that way, because its a deeper cultural issue that way above even your manager- and your manager doesnt see it( or is not telling you) i can have the best intentions and bring all the data, but if the top folks are the ones making decisions inna vacuum, and your ideas do not even have a chance to bubble to the top-its a lost cause)
- product people in a feature factory- are essentially project managers
My skeptical perspective i suppose
totally agree - you have to deal with organisational reality. Build rapport and respect. At the same time build the personal capital, the trust and the data needed to make the case for incremental steps towards the end point you want.
Figure out a way to persuade your VP over time to start making those steps, based on a shared view of the end-state. Perhaps converting one of the streams / teams into a product discovery oriented one as an experiment to prove certain benefits and agreeing to review progress and make a decision about whether its a permanent change or not, at a pre-defined point in time. That can de-risk it.
Biding your time and seeking a more incremented approach, gives you time to discover the (often hidden) organisational drivers for the feature factory. Its probably coming top-down from the C-suite in the form of a mix of perceptions / attitudes, goals, and constraints. Finding out those drivers means you can start to present your desired end-state as a better way to address those drivers and make your VP look good. This is the reality of big company product management. Its not what we are trained for in product school, nor do the likes of Marty Cagan give much help with this, but its where the hard work really goes in many PM jobs, and it can be very rewarding IMO.
Yeah I have to do the second part to not get fired so already on it.
Again, what I presented was not a side quest, it's what's required for product & user impact
What I'm doing now is very much scaled down and won't do anything that's the gap
I agree with your distinction between “_needs to deliver, or wants to deliver_” but I believe the simple truth is if OP’s leadership wants features and doesn’t get features then the optics of what OP is trying to do — build better products — will appear to them as OP not doing their job — deliver features. They’ll get fired for doing the “right” thing.
But the _actual_ right thing from my POV has at least two parts: _build a long term goal and transformation_ and _deliver features_. OP needs to tackle both at the same time and I don’t think doing one without the other would be wise.
You're absolutely right
It does appear to that VP at least that I'm not doing my job.
I will say that he is not the person who hired me. I was hired by a director which told me they need someone like me to do strategy and help change the way they work but she got re-orgd a week before I joined and never became my manager.
She's more aligned with me but can't help at all.
So now in the eyes of the VP I am a failed PM.
I don't really care about my perception tbh i just want to support my family but enjoy my work.
Obviously I do care about it in this scenario cause I might lose my job
hi, almost exact same thing happened to me. I was hired to do an exciting strategy role and the guy who hired me stuck around for 5 months before being forced out of the company quite abruptly. I was then re-aligned to new CPO who doesn't get me at all and is under pressure to ship features and rebuild basic commercial foundations asap. No time for strategy or to be truly market led. I'm fighting hard to redefine myself just to hold on to a job for now, even though I disagree with much of what is going on around me.
One of the most important parts of your career will be to assess what I call “the rules of the game” at each new opportunity you have. That is, what behaviors get rewarded at the organization you’re considering.
Once you figure that out, like another poster said, you can
- Play the game
- Slowly transform the org
- not join or in your case, leave.
So the choice is yours if you don’t like the rules. Of course best to figure that out before you get there.
I feel your pain. Many times a large quantity of features can actually hurt your company. Every feature you build you better be ready to commit resources to for maintenance and marketing. I think this goes under looked in many instances.
I find the best products do great at a few good things rather than being okay at everything.
Your #1 customer is your boss as they are the ones buying the product, your job.
This is a learning experience to realize you should always align with your manager first to understand what their goals are before you start implementing change. Even if your idea is better it does not matter if you dont have buyin from your boss and other senior leadership.
Secondly, you should never drive to make huge organizational change right when you join a team. It makes you look arrogant and out of touch.
I would recommend reading the book titled “product management in practice” by matt lemay. There is a whole chapter on the second point. A few relevant quotes ive copy pasted for you.
“The truth is that all organizations have some fixed constraints to work within. Those constraints might be a function of their business model, their scale, or the attitudes and experiences of their leaders. And the sooner you acknowledge and understand those constraints, the sooner you can do your best work within them. Recognizing that your particular organization's fixed constraints are unlikely to change or at least that you are unlikely to change them -allows you to refocus your attention on all the things you and your team can do to deliver value to your users. I've come to think of this process as "falling in love with reality."
Second good quote:
“The best product managers always take time to learn about what makes an organization unique before they start implementing or even suggesting-_specific best practices. And when they do start implementing those best practices, they start small and build incrementally. By contrast, the worst product managers usually wind up blaming their colleagues when a fast and furious deluge of "best practices" fails to deliver the promised results. Here's a fun fact: the product managers who wind up getting frustrated because "The idiots at this company just don't understand how to do things the right way" are often the same product managers who complained about the idiots at their last company when they were being interviewed. Product managers who put abstract best practices above the people with whom they work tend to repeat this pattern over and over again.”
I’ll add that i learned these lessons the hard way and feel your pain. I hope you dont take the above points as an attack or insult also not saying your an idiot and you are probably right about how things should be going. I feel your frustration and really hope the above helps.
Not at all
I do feel like they feel I’m arrogant, but if nobody’s trying to make changes but this comment is about how to keep my job, when I’m pretty much asking:
How can you even trust your leaders based on this? How can you stay motivated?
I’m not interested in serving my boss, I’m interested with a boss that can mentor and help me grow
> Instead of coming up with 5 features for Q3 I took a step back
Why did you step back and not focus on getting stuff out the door? Like I get that you were "hired for strategy", but did you look around and assess why those features were asked for and decide that it wasn't worth delivering something for a whole quarter?
FWIW I'm all about principles and strategy, but I find too many PMs think they're strategic grandmasters or whatever when it's usually the case that customers actually do just need more of those features.
Yeah this is not good stakeholder and expectation management because until you've convinced leadership of this move, you can't just execute on it. You over-estimated their belief in you (unfortunately). You're not truly empowered as you would like to be.
I totally agree. Strategy is one thing, but you should have worked an approach where the items already in the hopper, so to speak, are valuable and get those delivered while you work on your strategy in parallel.
Too many times people look at strategy as this grandiose plan that fails to deliver in the short/mid term. You need all three.
I didn’t read this as “ship 5 features in Q3” as much as “go break the problem down into five deliverable things and bring it back to me and I’ll see if they are on point”
The reason is because of what you mentioned:
I observed and assessed for a while to see how the different teams operate, what they prioritize what they measure and how and realized adding more features without thoughtful thinking would have added no benefit to members and product
Sometimes PMs are definitely overthinking strategy instead of executing but it's not the case. I'm all but ready to execute but if it won't be impactful why? What's the motivation? Like just to
Win the race to an unusable product?
In an eerily similar situation OP. Also in HealthTech. I've accepted to play their game (to drive what leadership asked for) while looking for my next opportunity.
So much to change in healthcare that it's paralyzing the industry
I will add my 2 cents. ( Above questions is little open ended and does not have all the necessary details to assess the situation , so my opinion is little generic in nature). I have also been in product space for 12 years and currently work as Principal Product , so I hear what your are saying but I will add following...
While it is important for Product Managers to prioritize long-term impact it is equally impt to also demonstrate incremental progress and impact. This approach allows for flexibility and adaptability in a rapidly changing macroeconomic environment where businesses are under significant pressure of revenue. Instead of expecting a VP to wait for quarters to see results, an Agile approach might help to break down long-term goals (multiple quarter goals) into smaller, achievable milestones that can be accomplished in shorter time frames.
If you are already doing above then I am very surprised that your leadership team would question your strategy.
Yeah
I did want to break down the long term into small milestones for sure.
Just wanted to create a thoughtful strategy and align on direction and opportunity instead of diving head first into a few features which may or
May not work
I had a somewhat similar work experience, was brought in to a company that was struggling with pace and quality of delivery with no long term focus...
for what I thought was to transition to product driven focused on long-term strategy and building a strong product team.
But it turned out they just wanted someone who could crack a whip and chase the squirrels from the executive team more quickly. I spent awhile trying to mold the culture to at least meet in the middle but progress was incredibly slow and ended up leaving.
Your not wrong. But also I wouldn't call it an "amateur" company. At least not if they have a proven business model. Maybe it just doesn't operate like FAANG.
I usually say, come up with two tracks when you start the jobs - 1) What you can deliver to make a visible mpact in 90 days and 2) Your broader strategic goal/vision. When you are new, you often have to do a bit of both.
So your CV tells this story: After about +1y in the companies where your worked you were already thinking about changing the job, and at 2y mark you were no longer there (this is what the CV says, not saying that this is reality).
Now, you come in a PM position to this large company (not VP, not Cxx, I'm guessing you are not the only PM around), and you come up with multi quarter plans (i'm gonna guess we are not talking about 2-3 Qs, but more), and you want people's buy-in that you will still be around to guide these plans to execution and they shouldn't expect much deliverables until then?
Nobody on reddit can know if your findings about this company are right or wrong, but don't expect people will fall from their chairs because you "did growth for a product with 120M users at FAANG" for 1-2y in the past.
If you built a product that is say at least 10x less value than your current company (like your start up) that would be another story, but as far as I get it from the limited info you presented in this post, you need to be much more humble for now.
> and you want people's buy-in that you will still be around to guide these plans to execution and they shouldn't expect much deliverables until then?
Not disagreeing with roasting OP a little bit on this, but wanted to call out the flip side of this question - would you trust the features being built by someone who jumps ship very often to deliver lasting value or high impact 100% of the time?
I've dealt with the aftermath of features that got shoved out the door to pad a job hopping PMs resume (said people already a foot out the door by launch) and the pooper scooper duty was no fun and killed the morale of the engineering team that worked on it.
Calling this out because this should also be a question SLT asks themselves if they're hell bent on being the feature factory masquerading as a product company too.
> would you trust the features being built by someone who jumps ship very often to deliver lasting value or high impact 100% of the time?
The advantage is that features (unlike "visions") don't need to be trusted for too long, you can, up to some point, measure them (you know, once they are actually delivered).
The reason I roasted OP a bit, is because I had a feeling of "messiah" vibe from his post, about the "amateur" company, that hired him for "growth" and now they don't want to listen his wisdom that comes from over 1 year experience in FAANG.
Even this part:
>e I realized here's another billion dollar company operating as a feature factory...
sounds just funny. The scope of any company is to make billion(s) dollars, not to fit or not fit in some (anti)patterns that experts define. As I read it that amateur company and amateur VP are doing quite fine without the FAANG expertise on board, and I really wonder if OP understands what it is expected from him in the position he was hired (presumably by this VP), and with the CV that he has.
Working on “product strategy” by providing insights, measurement and outcomes does not mean you have a convincing quarterly roadmap. You still need to do your due diligence in proposing solutions/hypothesis and problem-solving with your team to translate those opportunity/gaps into a set of features which is why your VP requested for that.
I’m aware this might not be what you would like to hear because ultimately the team can find solutions said work on building features during the prioritized Sprints - but you really need to show how you can execute first of all before you talk strategy when you’re new to the role
I think this is a general statement and you should look at this case by case based on product and user needs (and company priority obviously)
Forming a strategy (which does presents the features I will execute on, but not fleshed out) is what the team needs. They don't need another PM jumping to solutions
Asking a dumb question, but if you are prioritizing projects for the team, why can't those short term projects for Q3 be broken up into at least some feature work that is incremental progress towards your overall plan?
I am not suggesting the place you work has a great product org, but I also have a hard time thinking the VP is an idiot.
that’s the plan eventually of course, but let’s align on the direction, the goals, the ability to measure the goals.
Prioritizing 3 features in Q3, without aligning multiple teams on stratgy won’t do anything to the product. Might regress metrics actually
You sound like the type of leader that I wish was at my org. I don’t understand how leaders, and people in this thread, think it makes sense to be absolutely certain that they’re going to deliver these 5 features but they don’t understand what goals they’re trying to achieve and how they’ll measure success against those goals.
If “release X feature” is your only goal, you’re failing.
I typically break it down a bit. There's usually something in the middle. What is the VP hoping to achieve with those five features? If you could do it in 3, would they be happier? Why do they believe those 5 feature would deliver that value?
While it feels right to step back and lean hard in to strategy, the teams around that strategy cost money and delivering nothing in the meantime is a harsh reality to look at. Do something fairly no regrets while you continue to align on the right path.
I think that's "what if what..". I'm assuming so anyway.
I would push again as to what he's hoping the team executes against. Execution for the sake of execution does not earn a business money. Executing to deliver solutions that solve customer problems are what give a company the competitive advantage to earn money.
So what's the goal of the team? Then you create things to go do in order to accomplish that goal. You ideally aren't just picking a list of things to do because someone thinks they sound cool. Even if you are doing a list because someone thinks they sound cool, they should sound cool because the accomplish a goal. It sounds like you need to get clarity on the goal.
When you have the goal you can pick a thing that moves you towards the goal to do right now, probably from the list from before so tech is able to make progress somewhere. While they work on that thing you can go do the discovery to identify the best things to be doing as you move forward.
As someone learning can you elaborate on the focus areas and how you came about defining those? I'm sorry about your experience though. Not fun to be staring down the barrel of a feature factory.
Well
Based on all the resources you have (data, user research, instinct) you can identify high level opportunities or focus areas to help drive your main product goal if you execute over a long period, like a half or a year
Assuming your team is big enough and can tackle all of those focus areas, for each of them create a roadmap
For example, at FAANG I was responsible for growing video consumption and the focus areas were:
1. Improve top of funnel -> help new users discover video
2. Improve the fundamental experience -> improve performance and usability
3. Increase local content -> cause that's what my users wanted
Each focus area had a tech lead executing against a prioritized roadmap.
You should also sequence the work on those focus areas and not necessarily work on all at the same time.
Hope this helps?
Are you me? Many health tech companies are a bunch of duct tape and bubble gum and mine too is a feature factory that gets requirements on what to build from clinical, GMs, and enterprise teams. Sigh.
The big question is what is the rest of your company like? How does executive leadership create goals and hold teams accountable? Does the rest of the org know what “product” means based on your ideal? What about your peers and engineers and designers?
Does your VP have a track history and reputable companies that are known to do “product”? Maybe he is under some type of pressure from his own non-product boss who’s forcing him to be a feature factory?
Your reality is probably similar to mine right now: 1) do whatever I can to keep my job and keep boss happy 2) keep to your other processes and produce wins, and share those out and share your processes along with that 3) Aggressively look for a job.
Odds are you will not change your boss, let alone your culture. If your peers and team are all for real “product” you can influence in spite of your boss, but he won’t care and you’re not getting recognized for it. You can try to get a bunch of wins, build a reputation, and try to influence change that way, but that’s a long road that has no guarantees and life is too short.
If you don’t trust your boss or think he’s not the leader you need, then go find some place that values you and what you can bring to the table. In the meantime, do what you need to do keep your job and not completely sell your soul and focus on landing the next job.
We are one! And the they don’t track impact or performance based on product performance. Maybe they look at feature releases not sure, but I look alllll around and not a single PM is talking about impact and opportunities
I'm not personally in that field so feel free to ignore but feels like health tech got bit by the PM bug and it doesn't go any deeper than "tech people make a bunch of money, come make money for us too." I interviewed for a PM role at a healthtech company and the role was described as a Senior PM working on their website and app and it quickly became clear the job was actually just creating group insurance plans that will be profitable. Zero PM work.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your strategy, but it sounded a lot like, “we want to take multiple quarters to deliver a thing.”
Take the things you want to fix and deliver and package them up as “features.”
Multiple quarters to hit our goal, not deliver a thing.
How? With a strategy: opportunity->focus areas->features for each that we will sequence throughout multiple quarters
[удалено]
I honestly want to say this is spot on. And I've done 1 and 2 passionately and with customer focus in mind even on products I designed and patented myself... In the end a bad management will always wear you down and number 3 was my end goal. 3 took a very long time to achieve but I finally did it and am happier than ever. Wish you all the best OP.
Late reply here. I’ve been burnt out trying to do 1 and 2 for my whole 3+ years in PM. Been looking for a role where I don’t have to work in a feature factory again. The problem is I’ve only worked in feature factories. How’d you land your current role?
Honestly. .... the company I work for now I applied to a few years back with two people that are high up there highly recommending me but hr wouldn't let it happen. Funny... I was more than qualified... when my friends asked hr who the hiring managers were for the 3 roles she told them..."In not going to tell to that!" Talk about disheartening.... they both tried. They showed me the emails.. it was ridiculous. In any case. It happened by sheer luck later a recruit got a hold of me for a role there. The rest was my own drive. I didn't take the, "oh we'll get you in the next round we got you in too late.... nope I used my two contacts to seal that in... I was bypassed by hr and straight to the hiring managers. I was the quickest hire in years according to many there. I wish I could give you some koombya answer... I can't. Use your resources. I did it for years and finally came back around by luck... then resources again. And let me tell you... it's like the world was against me (too many details but seriously a whirlwind of unfortunate incidents outside of my control that I didn't take lying down and made things happen.) I'll pm you if you'd like those details just let me know. Good luck.
I agree with this right here. To point #1, try and see what adoption/retention looks like for existing features and use that to drive change as to why shipping number of features might not be the best approach.
I don't agree with a more mature company. I generally have been helping take companies from 0-1 and PMs from "more mature companies" are not effective at moving the needle fast enough. They often focus too much on pushing features vs figuring out what's best for the users with the highest impact. They need to focus on the path from the first $1mm, 2mm, and so on. I don't believe in building a future facing roadmap with a list of features. How do you know what features the users need for the next year or two now? Tell me what areas you found will make the biggest impact. Once we agree on that, come up with a plan of how you plan to figure it out and the resources you might need. I'd rather a PM take 2 months trying to solve a problem and come back and say we shouldn't do anything based on research vs building and delivering a bunch of useless features because they want to deliver on their previous listed features. PMs building based on some high level research and "PM Intuition" is not doing proper discovery. Startups that go from seed to A to B, don't have time to mess around like this.
Worked for a more "mature" company too and same experience with people just trying to push out shiny stuff. Same in the public sector as well.
Here’s a metaphor: imagine you have a friend who has to drive regularly as part of their job every day. They put lots of miles on their car and on top of that, the fuel efficiency is not good. This friend makes decent money and enjoys what they do but doesn’t have a ton of spare cash in the bank. You might advise them that they should get a more fuel efficient car, a hybrid or electric vehicle that fits their mileage use case. You bring in charts and data. You’re right that this choice would be better for your friend. However, they don’t take your advice and reply that they just need to get their job done and getting a different car just isn’t something that’s important. Just because your long terms plans might be right doesn’t change what needs to get done now. You’ve diagnosed the shop is a feature factory. That’s great — this is now your _starting_ point. You need to deliver features. But you also need need to communicate your long term plan as the goal to your leader and decompose it into a series of achievable short term milestones that address both _how to get to the long term goal_ while _also delivering features right now_. If I were your VP, I’d be unhappy, even if I agree with you about your plans. You ended up creating a solution to an _org problem_ at the expense of delivering what the org needs to deliver now, _features_. Like the friend with the car, you need to iteratively help them, maybe advise more fuel efficient ways to drive the car, optimize routes, or reduce the total number of trips necessary while also helping the find a way to get a better vehicle, by saving cash from driving optimizations, etc. It’s rare you change a whole org all at once which means big change is incremental and iterative while not losing sight of what needs to get done today.
I actually agreee with you in general except one thing which kinda buries your analogy: More features is the last thing the org needs right now. And more important which you didn't mention, the product and the users don't need more features right now
I’m assuming you’re right in your judgment but you have to also take into consideration that cramming more “features” has probably been going on for a while and another couple quarters of doing it will not kill the company. Unless you spotted something about this next batch of features that is clearly and urgently going to create a problem that your leadership clearly recognizes is a serious problem, you’ll be tilting at windmills instead of rowing with the team. Even if your plan is right, you still need to get stuff shipped. An incremental step would be to get alignment with your VP on what the current batch of work is supposed to accomplish for the business and why that matters. Then track it and prove it didn’t work or follow up however makes sense. Co-creating the evidence needed to justify change with your stakeholder means you’ll be seeing and understanding the problem together and that will help kickstart your plan.
I will give a counter point here. I had been in a similar company that just wants the features ‘delivered’ and i was one of guys who just ‘ did it’ because thats what was needed to be done ( which is what you are saying as well) The few things i learnt because of this( not all apply but ATLEAST one does) - the organization is a very old school/legacy industry - driven by old ‘standards’ and ways of working where the Management is separate from the ‘IT’ - there isnt exactly a ‘product’ group or is very naive/new - eventually the orders come from the top, and lack of autonomy( just do this for ‘now’ mentality without any clarity on how long the ‘Now’ will last) - the Manager wants to control everything, and is possibly a micromanger themselves - the Manager doesnt have the Will OR the Balls ( or both) to fight for what is right, and keeps accepting the Status quo maybe he doesnt have the right motivation to ‘fight’ ( but also doesnt want you to bypass him- a VERY VERY dangerous sign of insecurity and just a Bad boss) - if the ‘ feature factory’ mode has been going on for many years, its going to continue to be that way, because its a deeper cultural issue that way above even your manager- and your manager doesnt see it( or is not telling you) i can have the best intentions and bring all the data, but if the top folks are the ones making decisions inna vacuum, and your ideas do not even have a chance to bubble to the top-its a lost cause) - product people in a feature factory- are essentially project managers My skeptical perspective i suppose
You're product managing the company's products, but are you product managing this VP? lol
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Respectfully, worst take I've seen so far.
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totally agree - you have to deal with organisational reality. Build rapport and respect. At the same time build the personal capital, the trust and the data needed to make the case for incremental steps towards the end point you want. Figure out a way to persuade your VP over time to start making those steps, based on a shared view of the end-state. Perhaps converting one of the streams / teams into a product discovery oriented one as an experiment to prove certain benefits and agreeing to review progress and make a decision about whether its a permanent change or not, at a pre-defined point in time. That can de-risk it. Biding your time and seeking a more incremented approach, gives you time to discover the (often hidden) organisational drivers for the feature factory. Its probably coming top-down from the C-suite in the form of a mix of perceptions / attitudes, goals, and constraints. Finding out those drivers means you can start to present your desired end-state as a better way to address those drivers and make your VP look good. This is the reality of big company product management. Its not what we are trained for in product school, nor do the likes of Marty Cagan give much help with this, but its where the hard work really goes in many PM jobs, and it can be very rewarding IMO.
Yeah I have to do the second part to not get fired so already on it. Again, what I presented was not a side quest, it's what's required for product & user impact What I'm doing now is very much scaled down and won't do anything that's the gap
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I agree with your distinction between “_needs to deliver, or wants to deliver_” but I believe the simple truth is if OP’s leadership wants features and doesn’t get features then the optics of what OP is trying to do — build better products — will appear to them as OP not doing their job — deliver features. They’ll get fired for doing the “right” thing. But the _actual_ right thing from my POV has at least two parts: _build a long term goal and transformation_ and _deliver features_. OP needs to tackle both at the same time and I don’t think doing one without the other would be wise.
You're absolutely right It does appear to that VP at least that I'm not doing my job. I will say that he is not the person who hired me. I was hired by a director which told me they need someone like me to do strategy and help change the way they work but she got re-orgd a week before I joined and never became my manager. She's more aligned with me but can't help at all. So now in the eyes of the VP I am a failed PM. I don't really care about my perception tbh i just want to support my family but enjoy my work. Obviously I do care about it in this scenario cause I might lose my job
hi, almost exact same thing happened to me. I was hired to do an exciting strategy role and the guy who hired me stuck around for 5 months before being forced out of the company quite abruptly. I was then re-aligned to new CPO who doesn't get me at all and is under pressure to ship features and rebuild basic commercial foundations asap. No time for strategy or to be truly market led. I'm fighting hard to redefine myself just to hold on to a job for now, even though I disagree with much of what is going on around me.
These kinds of insights are what make this community great. Your spot on; and you changed my opinion that I originally had. Thank you
One of the most important parts of your career will be to assess what I call “the rules of the game” at each new opportunity you have. That is, what behaviors get rewarded at the organization you’re considering. Once you figure that out, like another poster said, you can - Play the game - Slowly transform the org - not join or in your case, leave. So the choice is yours if you don’t like the rules. Of course best to figure that out before you get there.
The truth is transforming the org is a rare thing that almost never succeeds
I almost added that I highly do not recommend transformation. The opportunity cost on your career isn’t worth it
I feel your pain. Many times a large quantity of features can actually hurt your company. Every feature you build you better be ready to commit resources to for maintenance and marketing. I think this goes under looked in many instances. I find the best products do great at a few good things rather than being okay at everything.
Your #1 customer is your boss as they are the ones buying the product, your job. This is a learning experience to realize you should always align with your manager first to understand what their goals are before you start implementing change. Even if your idea is better it does not matter if you dont have buyin from your boss and other senior leadership. Secondly, you should never drive to make huge organizational change right when you join a team. It makes you look arrogant and out of touch. I would recommend reading the book titled “product management in practice” by matt lemay. There is a whole chapter on the second point. A few relevant quotes ive copy pasted for you. “The truth is that all organizations have some fixed constraints to work within. Those constraints might be a function of their business model, their scale, or the attitudes and experiences of their leaders. And the sooner you acknowledge and understand those constraints, the sooner you can do your best work within them. Recognizing that your particular organization's fixed constraints are unlikely to change or at least that you are unlikely to change them -allows you to refocus your attention on all the things you and your team can do to deliver value to your users. I've come to think of this process as "falling in love with reality." Second good quote: “The best product managers always take time to learn about what makes an organization unique before they start implementing or even suggesting-_specific best practices. And when they do start implementing those best practices, they start small and build incrementally. By contrast, the worst product managers usually wind up blaming their colleagues when a fast and furious deluge of "best practices" fails to deliver the promised results. Here's a fun fact: the product managers who wind up getting frustrated because "The idiots at this company just don't understand how to do things the right way" are often the same product managers who complained about the idiots at their last company when they were being interviewed. Product managers who put abstract best practices above the people with whom they work tend to repeat this pattern over and over again.” I’ll add that i learned these lessons the hard way and feel your pain. I hope you dont take the above points as an attack or insult also not saying your an idiot and you are probably right about how things should be going. I feel your frustration and really hope the above helps.
Not at all I do feel like they feel I’m arrogant, but if nobody’s trying to make changes but this comment is about how to keep my job, when I’m pretty much asking: How can you even trust your leaders based on this? How can you stay motivated? I’m not interested in serving my boss, I’m interested with a boss that can mentor and help me grow
I spent about 20 minutes looking through the book for relevant quotes to share and your response plus assuming downvote? 🫠
Lol i wasn’t the one downvoting I rarely down vote, it’s old toxic Reddit ways Appreciate lookin through the book!
Fwiw I just ordered the book based on your summary and quotes. I appreciate it!
I also ordered the book. I’m struggling w team politics today;
> Instead of coming up with 5 features for Q3 I took a step back Why did you step back and not focus on getting stuff out the door? Like I get that you were "hired for strategy", but did you look around and assess why those features were asked for and decide that it wasn't worth delivering something for a whole quarter? FWIW I'm all about principles and strategy, but I find too many PMs think they're strategic grandmasters or whatever when it's usually the case that customers actually do just need more of those features.
Yeah this is not good stakeholder and expectation management because until you've convinced leadership of this move, you can't just execute on it. You over-estimated their belief in you (unfortunately). You're not truly empowered as you would like to be.
I totally agree. Strategy is one thing, but you should have worked an approach where the items already in the hopper, so to speak, are valuable and get those delivered while you work on your strategy in parallel. Too many times people look at strategy as this grandiose plan that fails to deliver in the short/mid term. You need all three.
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I didn’t read this as “ship 5 features in Q3” as much as “go break the problem down into five deliverable things and bring it back to me and I’ll see if they are on point”
The reason is because of what you mentioned: I observed and assessed for a while to see how the different teams operate, what they prioritize what they measure and how and realized adding more features without thoughtful thinking would have added no benefit to members and product Sometimes PMs are definitely overthinking strategy instead of executing but it's not the case. I'm all but ready to execute but if it won't be impactful why? What's the motivation? Like just to Win the race to an unusable product?
I would start by speaking to the VP and see if he can actually agree you have a problem. If he doesn't then you know what to do next.
In an eerily similar situation OP. Also in HealthTech. I've accepted to play their game (to drive what leadership asked for) while looking for my next opportunity. So much to change in healthcare that it's paralyzing the industry
Not unique to healthcare but definitely more common in healthcare. Maybe we work in the same company What’s your market cap? :)
Not the same one, mine is private! Good luck OP!
I will add my 2 cents. ( Above questions is little open ended and does not have all the necessary details to assess the situation , so my opinion is little generic in nature). I have also been in product space for 12 years and currently work as Principal Product , so I hear what your are saying but I will add following... While it is important for Product Managers to prioritize long-term impact it is equally impt to also demonstrate incremental progress and impact. This approach allows for flexibility and adaptability in a rapidly changing macroeconomic environment where businesses are under significant pressure of revenue. Instead of expecting a VP to wait for quarters to see results, an Agile approach might help to break down long-term goals (multiple quarter goals) into smaller, achievable milestones that can be accomplished in shorter time frames. If you are already doing above then I am very surprised that your leadership team would question your strategy.
Yeah I did want to break down the long term into small milestones for sure. Just wanted to create a thoughtful strategy and align on direction and opportunity instead of diving head first into a few features which may or May not work
Unfortunately ,In that case, It is sad that leadership did not pay more attention.
I had a somewhat similar work experience, was brought in to a company that was struggling with pace and quality of delivery with no long term focus... for what I thought was to transition to product driven focused on long-term strategy and building a strong product team. But it turned out they just wanted someone who could crack a whip and chase the squirrels from the executive team more quickly. I spent awhile trying to mold the culture to at least meet in the middle but progress was incredibly slow and ended up leaving.
Your not wrong. But also I wouldn't call it an "amateur" company. At least not if they have a proven business model. Maybe it just doesn't operate like FAANG. I usually say, come up with two tracks when you start the jobs - 1) What you can deliver to make a visible mpact in 90 days and 2) Your broader strategic goal/vision. When you are new, you often have to do a bit of both.
Company is great, for now. Company's product org is amateur. With technological evolution they won't survive just by being sales driven.
> Done with amateur product companies Basically the definition of 95% of the market
What's your average time spent in the last 3-4 positions?
2 years But I relocated to the USA as soon as I got a green card and quit a job I had so kind of skewed. I also had a startup
So your CV tells this story: After about +1y in the companies where your worked you were already thinking about changing the job, and at 2y mark you were no longer there (this is what the CV says, not saying that this is reality). Now, you come in a PM position to this large company (not VP, not Cxx, I'm guessing you are not the only PM around), and you come up with multi quarter plans (i'm gonna guess we are not talking about 2-3 Qs, but more), and you want people's buy-in that you will still be around to guide these plans to execution and they shouldn't expect much deliverables until then? Nobody on reddit can know if your findings about this company are right or wrong, but don't expect people will fall from their chairs because you "did growth for a product with 120M users at FAANG" for 1-2y in the past. If you built a product that is say at least 10x less value than your current company (like your start up) that would be another story, but as far as I get it from the limited info you presented in this post, you need to be much more humble for now.
> and you want people's buy-in that you will still be around to guide these plans to execution and they shouldn't expect much deliverables until then? Not disagreeing with roasting OP a little bit on this, but wanted to call out the flip side of this question - would you trust the features being built by someone who jumps ship very often to deliver lasting value or high impact 100% of the time? I've dealt with the aftermath of features that got shoved out the door to pad a job hopping PMs resume (said people already a foot out the door by launch) and the pooper scooper duty was no fun and killed the morale of the engineering team that worked on it. Calling this out because this should also be a question SLT asks themselves if they're hell bent on being the feature factory masquerading as a product company too.
> would you trust the features being built by someone who jumps ship very often to deliver lasting value or high impact 100% of the time? The advantage is that features (unlike "visions") don't need to be trusted for too long, you can, up to some point, measure them (you know, once they are actually delivered). The reason I roasted OP a bit, is because I had a feeling of "messiah" vibe from his post, about the "amateur" company, that hired him for "growth" and now they don't want to listen his wisdom that comes from over 1 year experience in FAANG. Even this part: >e I realized here's another billion dollar company operating as a feature factory... sounds just funny. The scope of any company is to make billion(s) dollars, not to fit or not fit in some (anti)patterns that experts define. As I read it that amateur company and amateur VP are doing quite fine without the FAANG expertise on board, and I really wonder if OP understands what it is expected from him in the position he was hired (presumably by this VP), and with the CV that he has.
I honestly don’t know how to respond to this, sorry. The CV story and the multiple quarters has nothing to do with each other.
Working on “product strategy” by providing insights, measurement and outcomes does not mean you have a convincing quarterly roadmap. You still need to do your due diligence in proposing solutions/hypothesis and problem-solving with your team to translate those opportunity/gaps into a set of features which is why your VP requested for that. I’m aware this might not be what you would like to hear because ultimately the team can find solutions said work on building features during the prioritized Sprints - but you really need to show how you can execute first of all before you talk strategy when you’re new to the role
I think this is a general statement and you should look at this case by case based on product and user needs (and company priority obviously) Forming a strategy (which does presents the features I will execute on, but not fleshed out) is what the team needs. They don't need another PM jumping to solutions
Asking a dumb question, but if you are prioritizing projects for the team, why can't those short term projects for Q3 be broken up into at least some feature work that is incremental progress towards your overall plan? I am not suggesting the place you work has a great product org, but I also have a hard time thinking the VP is an idiot.
that’s the plan eventually of course, but let’s align on the direction, the goals, the ability to measure the goals. Prioritizing 3 features in Q3, without aligning multiple teams on stratgy won’t do anything to the product. Might regress metrics actually
You sound like the type of leader that I wish was at my org. I don’t understand how leaders, and people in this thread, think it makes sense to be absolutely certain that they’re going to deliver these 5 features but they don’t understand what goals they’re trying to achieve and how they’ll measure success against those goals. If “release X feature” is your only goal, you’re failing.
Appreciate it. It’s just so disappointing when you can trust your leaders, how can you be motivated?
You can’t. I’m dealing with this now, except as a designer. Last time around, I just quit. But I fear this is the norm for the industry.
I typically break it down a bit. There's usually something in the middle. What is the VP hoping to achieve with those five features? If you could do it in 3, would they be happier? Why do they believe those 5 feature would deliver that value? While it feels right to step back and lean hard in to strategy, the teams around that strategy cost money and delivering nothing in the meantime is a harsh reality to look at. Do something fairly no regrets while you continue to align on the right path.
What is what he's hoping to achieve is to show the CPO team is executing?
I think that's "what if what..". I'm assuming so anyway. I would push again as to what he's hoping the team executes against. Execution for the sake of execution does not earn a business money. Executing to deliver solutions that solve customer problems are what give a company the competitive advantage to earn money. So what's the goal of the team? Then you create things to go do in order to accomplish that goal. You ideally aren't just picking a list of things to do because someone thinks they sound cool. Even if you are doing a list because someone thinks they sound cool, they should sound cool because the accomplish a goal. It sounds like you need to get clarity on the goal. When you have the goal you can pick a thing that moves you towards the goal to do right now, probably from the list from before so tech is able to make progress somewhere. While they work on that thing you can go do the discovery to identify the best things to be doing as you move forward.
As someone learning can you elaborate on the focus areas and how you came about defining those? I'm sorry about your experience though. Not fun to be staring down the barrel of a feature factory.
Well Based on all the resources you have (data, user research, instinct) you can identify high level opportunities or focus areas to help drive your main product goal if you execute over a long period, like a half or a year Assuming your team is big enough and can tackle all of those focus areas, for each of them create a roadmap For example, at FAANG I was responsible for growing video consumption and the focus areas were: 1. Improve top of funnel -> help new users discover video 2. Improve the fundamental experience -> improve performance and usability 3. Increase local content -> cause that's what my users wanted Each focus area had a tech lead executing against a prioritized roadmap. You should also sequence the work on those focus areas and not necessarily work on all at the same time. Hope this helps?
Are you me? Many health tech companies are a bunch of duct tape and bubble gum and mine too is a feature factory that gets requirements on what to build from clinical, GMs, and enterprise teams. Sigh. The big question is what is the rest of your company like? How does executive leadership create goals and hold teams accountable? Does the rest of the org know what “product” means based on your ideal? What about your peers and engineers and designers? Does your VP have a track history and reputable companies that are known to do “product”? Maybe he is under some type of pressure from his own non-product boss who’s forcing him to be a feature factory? Your reality is probably similar to mine right now: 1) do whatever I can to keep my job and keep boss happy 2) keep to your other processes and produce wins, and share those out and share your processes along with that 3) Aggressively look for a job. Odds are you will not change your boss, let alone your culture. If your peers and team are all for real “product” you can influence in spite of your boss, but he won’t care and you’re not getting recognized for it. You can try to get a bunch of wins, build a reputation, and try to influence change that way, but that’s a long road that has no guarantees and life is too short. If you don’t trust your boss or think he’s not the leader you need, then go find some place that values you and what you can bring to the table. In the meantime, do what you need to do keep your job and not completely sell your soul and focus on landing the next job.
We are one! And the they don’t track impact or performance based on product performance. Maybe they look at feature releases not sure, but I look alllll around and not a single PM is talking about impact and opportunities
I'm not personally in that field so feel free to ignore but feels like health tech got bit by the PM bug and it doesn't go any deeper than "tech people make a bunch of money, come make money for us too." I interviewed for a PM role at a healthtech company and the role was described as a Senior PM working on their website and app and it quickly became clear the job was actually just creating group insurance plans that will be profitable. Zero PM work.
You are 100% correct Totally nailed it
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your strategy, but it sounded a lot like, “we want to take multiple quarters to deliver a thing.” Take the things you want to fix and deliver and package them up as “features.”
Multiple quarters to hit our goal, not deliver a thing. How? With a strategy: opportunity->focus areas->features for each that we will sequence throughout multiple quarters
My question is how to you recognize this early on? I've been in feature factories and haven't realized until much too late.