What Engineers Desperately Need Product Managers to Understand

Product managers who understand engineering pain points build stronger teams, ship better products, and avoid the common traps that destroy PM-engineer collaboration.

Key insights from "The Manager's Path" author Camille Fournier on transforming PM-engineer relationships through empathy, delegation, and focused leadership.

Key Takeaways

• Engineers get frustrated when PMs hoard credit instead of highlighting technical team contributions during presentations and announcements
• Dismissing technical details without understanding their importance shows lack of empathy and damages PM-engineer trust relationships
• Playing telephone between engineers and stakeholders wastes time and creates translation errors that harm project outcomes
• Hoarding product ideas prevents engineers from contributing creatively, leading them to over-engineer technical solutions instead
• Major system rewrites rarely deliver expected benefits and often underestimate migration complexity and hidden business logic
• Engineering leaders should achieve technical mastery before transitioning to management, typically requiring around 10 years of hands-on experience
• Platform teams need dedicated product managers and software engineers, not just operations specialists, to build coherent internal products
• Effective managers delegate extensively, work focused hours, and regularly audit their priorities to avoid burnout while delivering results
• One-on-ones should be limited to direct reports and managers rather than extended to every stakeholder relationship across teams

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–15:30 — What PMs Do That Annoy Engineers Most: Credit hoarding, dismissing technical details, playing telephone, and excluding engineers from creative ideation
• 15:30–35:45 — The Rewrite Trap: Why major system rewrites usually fail, migration complexity, and the importance of staged evolution over complete rebuilds
• 35:45–58:20 — Engineering Leadership Balance: Achieving technical mastery before management transition, staying credible without hands-on coding, and the 10-year rule
• 58:20–78:15 — Platform Engineering Strategy: Building effective platform teams with product managers, managing internal stakeholders, and scaling infrastructure decisions
• 78:15–95:40 — Management Philosophy on Focus: Working fewer hours through delegation, time audits, and avoiding the trap of excessive one-on-one meetings
• 95:40–END — Lightning Round: Book recommendations, AI tools for writing, workout routines, and ways to stay connected with technical communities

The Four Critical PM Mistakes That Drive Engineers Crazy

Engineers consistently identify specific PM behaviors that undermine collaboration and team effectiveness. These patterns damage trust and create unnecessary friction in product development.

• Credit hoarding represents the most easily fixable PM mistake that immediately impacts team morale and recognition
• When PMs serve as the front-facing person for initiatives, engineers feel invisible despite their substantial technical contributions
• The best PMs talk less and encourage engineers to present their own work, especially for technically complex achievements
• Stepping back during announcements and letting technical teams explain their contributions builds long-term trust and engagement

PMs who act like technical details don't matter demonstrate fundamental misunderstanding of engineering work. This creates a cultural disconnect that extends beyond individual projects into team dynamics and mutual respect.

• Engineering success depends entirely on getting details right, even when managers need to maintain big-picture focus
• Dismissive attitudes about technical complexity signal lack of empathy for the actual work engineers perform daily
• Smart PMs acknowledge they don't need to understand every detail but show genuine interest in technical challenges
• Patient listening during technical explanations, even when some details seem irrelevant, strengthens collaborative relationships

The telephone game problem wastes everyone's time and creates dangerous information distortion. When PMs constantly relay messages between engineers and stakeholders, important context gets lost.

• If you frequently find yourself saying "let me get back to you," you're likely operating at the wrong level
• Direct connections between engineers and stakeholders often prove more efficient than PM-mediated communication
• Group meetings and shared Slack channels can facilitate necessary conversations without overwhelming individual engineers
• The key lies in knowing when to connect people directly versus when to provide protective filtering

Why Engineers Over-Engineer When Excluded from Product Decisions

Product managers who hoard creative control inadvertently push engineers toward technical solutions that may not serve business needs. This creates a predictable cycle of frustration and inefficiency.

• Engineers need creative outlets in their work, and product ideation represents a natural space for technical creativity
• When excluded from product discussions, engineers channel creativity into technology choices and architecture decisions instead
• Over-engineering often results from engineers seeking control in the only domain they're allowed to influence freely
• Smart PMs recognize that engineers may have good technical product instincts while still lacking broader product management skills

The most successful PM-engineer partnerships involve PMs who aren't threatened by engineering input and can effectively incorporate technical perspectives into product strategy.

• Engineers who want to become PMs often underestimate the complexity of customer research, business analysis, and market positioning
• Building relationships where engineers feel heard while understanding PM expertise creates the strongest collaborative dynamic
• Teaching engineers about product management work helps them appreciate the strategic thinking behind product decisions
• When engineers understand the full scope of product work, they contribute more effectively within their technical expertise areas

The Rewrite Trap: Why Starting Over Usually Fails

System rewrites represent one of the most seductive and dangerous decisions in software development. Both PMs and engineers consistently underestimate the complexity and hidden costs involved.

• Engineers convince themselves that building new systems will solve all the problems with legacy code and outdated technology
• The reality involves massive migration challenges that teams consistently underestimate by months or years of additional work
• Supporting old systems while building new ones doubles the maintenance burden during transition periods without delivering customer value
• Thoughtful evolution through staged improvements typically delivers better results than complete architectural overhauls

The cognitive dissonance of rewrite projects reveals itself in a fundamental question: if the system works well enough that you can ignore it for months while building a replacement, why replace it at all?

• Systems that truly need replacement typically can't be ignored during development of their successors because business needs continue
• Legacy systems contain enormous amounts of undocumented business logic, edge cases, and domain knowledge that gets lost in rewrites
• Migration complexity grows exponentially with system age and the number of external integrations that depend on existing behavior
• Successful system evolution involves identifying specific components that need improvement and upgrading them incrementally

Modern development teams achieve better results by breaking large systems into smaller, well-contained pieces that can be updated independently without requiring massive coordination efforts.

• API-based architectures allow teams to upgrade recommendation systems, web frameworks, or data processing components separately
• Staged evolution plans let teams tackle the most problematic areas first while maintaining overall system stability
• Rewrite projects that promise to solve all problems rarely deliver on those promises and often introduce new categories of bugs

Engineering Leadership: Staying Technical While Managing People

The transition from individual contributor to engineering manager requires careful balance between maintaining technical credibility and developing leadership skills. Most engineers struggle with this transition timing.

• Technical mastery should feel "in your bones" before making the management leap, similar to fluency in a second language or musical instrument
• Around 10 years of hands-on coding experience typically provides the baseline competence needed for confident technical leadership
• Women and underrepresented groups especially benefit from developing strong technical confidence before facing the additional challenges of management
• People who transition to management too early often lose technical skills without gaining equivalent leadership capabilities

Staying technically credible as a manager doesn't require writing production code daily, but it demands continuous engagement with technical challenges and smart engineering teams.

• Asking thoughtful questions about technical decisions and understanding trade-offs matters more than prescribing specific technology choices
• Surrounding yourself with smart technical people and listening to their detailed discussions maintains technical awareness effectively
• Conference attendance, group chats with experienced engineers, and following technical discussions help maintain industry knowledge
• Natural curiosity about technology problems and genuine interest in technical challenges make this ongoing learning sustainable

The most effective engineering leaders guide teams toward better technical decisions through questioning and collaboration rather than top-down technical mandates.

• Senior engineers respect managers who understand their work and can ask insightful questions about implementation approaches
• Direct technical prescription from hands-off managers often backfires because the manager lacks current context about specific technologies
• Thoughtful guidance about technical challenges, performance considerations, and architectural trade-offs provides more value than specific tool recommendations

Building Effective Platform Teams That Actually Deliver Value

Platform engineering requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional application development, combining software engineering skills with operational excellence and product thinking.

• Successful platform teams need software engineers, systems engineers, and dedicated product managers working together cohesively
• Platform engineering isn't just "SRE version 2" or advanced DevOps—it requires building coherent, product-like offerings for internal customers
• Companies with 50+ engineers typically reach the point where centralized platform investment becomes more efficient than distributed ad-hoc solutions
• Platform teams should focus on measurable outcomes like reduced cycle time, improved developer productivity, or significant cost efficiencies

The stakeholder management challenge in platform work often proves more difficult than the technical challenges, requiring sophisticated communication and relationship-building skills.

• Internal customers (other engineering teams) can be demanding stakeholders who don't always understand platform constraints and trade-offs
• Platform teams need to balance requests from multiple product teams while maintaining coherent architectural vision and technical standards
• Product managers on platform teams help translate business needs into technical requirements and manage competing stakeholder priorities
• Regular communication about platform value and impact helps justify continued investment and organizational support

Platform projects typically involve longer development cycles and more complex migrations than application features, requiring different project management approaches.

• Traditional agile methodologies need adaptation for platform work because infrastructure changes often require months of careful planning and execution
• Migration projects represent a significant portion of platform work, requiring specialized skills in change management and customer communication
• Platform teams must maintain existing systems while building new capabilities, creating ongoing operational responsibilities alongside development work

Management Philosophy: Working Hard vs. Working Smart

Effective leadership requires constantly questioning what truly matters and having the courage to cut activities that don't deliver proportional value to the effort invested.

• Regular time audits help identify activities that feel productive but don't actually contribute to meaningful outcomes or team success
• Challenging yourself to work fewer hours forces prioritization decisions that reveal what truly matters versus what feels urgent
• The ability to delegate effectively becomes essential for scaling impact beyond individual contributor levels of productivity
• Learning to say no to low-value activities creates space for high-impact work that only leaders can accomplish

Delegation serves dual purposes: it frees up leadership time for strategic work while developing team members' skills and career growth opportunities.

• Team members genuinely enjoy taking on new responsibilities when properly supported and given appropriate autonomy to succeed
• Teaching others to handle tasks you previously managed yourself requires initial time investment but pays compounding returns over time
• People who struggle with delegation often become bottlenecks that prevent their teams from scaling effectively with organizational growth
• Strong delegation skills separate successful senior leaders from those who burn out trying to maintain individual contributor productivity

The most productive approach involves working intensely during focused time blocks rather than spreading attention across endless meetings and low-value activities.

• Forcing yourself to log off at specific times creates natural pressure to prioritize and complete important work efficiently
• Deep focus periods during individual contributor work translate directly to leadership effectiveness when applied to strategic thinking
• Caffeination rituals, quiet environments, and instrumental music can help maintain concentration during demanding mental work
• Regular reflection on time allocation helps identify patterns that support or undermine productive work habits

Rethinking One-on-Ones: Quality Over Quantity

The modern trend toward extensive one-on-one meetings with every stakeholder creates unsustainable time commitments that don't actually improve relationships or outcomes.

• Sacred one-on-ones with direct reports and your manager remain essential and should be protected as high-priority time investments
• Expanding one-on-ones to include all peers, stakeholders, and cross-functional partners doesn't scale beyond small team environments
• Many people agree to one-on-ones out of politeness rather than genuine interest in building deeper working relationships
• Stakeholder management through individual meetings can actually backfire by preventing stakeholders from hearing each other's perspectives directly

Group communication often proves more effective than individual meetings for managing complex stakeholder relationships and ensuring transparent information sharing.

• Unhappy stakeholders benefit from hearing that others are satisfied with platform or project performance rather than just being told secondhand
• Slack channels, group meetings, and shared documentation can facilitate necessary coordination without requiring individual meeting time
• Some managers excel at casual relationship building through informal coffee meetings, while others achieve better results through focused project collaboration
• Playing to your natural communication strengths typically produces better outcomes than forcing yourself into uncomfortable networking approaches

Time management becomes increasingly important as leadership responsibilities expand and more people compete for your attention throughout each day.

• Respecting your own time helps establish boundaries that benefit both you and the people who depend on your leadership
• Every meeting request represents someone asking for your time, and you should evaluate whether you have something meaningful to contribute
• Default "yes" responses to meeting invitations often lead to calendar overload that prevents deep work on truly important priorities

Common Questions

Q: How can product managers avoid hoarding credit from engineering teams?
A: Step back during presentations and encourage engineers to explain their technical contributions directly to stakeholders and executives.

Q: When should PMs connect engineers directly to stakeholders versus filtering communication?
A: If you frequently say "let me get back to you," you're likely playing telephone too often and should facilitate direct connections.

Q: How long should engineers work hands-on before transitioning to management?
A: Around 10 years of intensive coding experience typically builds the technical mastery needed for confident engineering leadership.

Q: What's the difference between platform teams and traditional DevOps or SRE teams?
A: Platform teams build coherent internal products with dedicated software engineers and product managers, not just operational tools.

Q: How can managers work fewer hours while maintaining team productivity?
A: Regular time audits, aggressive delegation, and forcing yourself to log off create pressure to focus on truly important work.

Platform engineering represents a fundamentally different discipline than application development, requiring product thinking applied to internal tools and infrastructure. The most successful PM-engineer relationships develop through mutual respect, shared creative ownership, and clear communication about technical complexity and business constraints. Building effective teams requires leaders who understand that management is fundamentally about serving others, not commanding them, and that sustainable productivity comes from focused work rather than endless hours.

Practical Implications

• Schedule weekly credit-sharing reviews where you identify opportunities to highlight engineering contributions in upcoming presentations
• Create direct communication channels between engineers and stakeholders for technical discussions that don't require PM translation
• Include engineers in product ideation sessions and feature prioritization meetings to leverage their technical creativity
• Before approving any system rewrite, demand a detailed migration plan that accounts for data transfer, user training, and parallel system maintenance
• Wait until you have approximately 10 years of hands-on technical experience before transitioning to engineering management
• Audit your calendar monthly and eliminate one-on-ones that don't serve clear purposes for both participants
• Implement forced log-off times to create natural pressure for prioritizing high-impact work over busy work
• Establish platform teams only when you reach 50+ engineers and can dedicate product management resources to internal tools
• Practice delegation by identifying one task each week that you can teach someone else to handle independently
• Set up regular feedback loops with engineering teams to identify and address PM behaviors that create friction