Spare Me From THAT Product Guy

Like most people in the tech world, I read TechCrunch. Like most product managers in the tech world, I cringed when I read Spare Me From The Product Guys – one of the most atrocious pieces I have read in a while.

For example:

… to drive a product means understanding the full scope of the vision of your company.

—sorry dude, but what does that even mean?

I don't have a problem with inaccurate, meaningless writing online – I mean we've all learned to cope with it – but I do have a problem when some dude tries to self-promote his own startup on TechCrunch by selling some complete rubbish about a role that we (the actual product community) have been so carefully trying to educate people and companies about. While I think he's trying to say product is hard and you can't call yourself a product guy without the scars to prove it, mainly he just manages to call all product professionals idiots.

All I can say is anyone wishing to move into Product Management, do not follow this advice. Hat's off to Stephanie Robesky, who amongst a storm of angry comments, so eloquented put it:

Blah blah to reading all these books and thinking you are going to be a great product person. Learn some methodologies like XP/Lean/Kanban, figure out how to prioritize a roadmap when you have 1,000 things on it and 6 platforms, write user stories, fight and love with engineering, deal with backlogs and try to make launch happen with a beautiful and usable product. When you can do those things, you might be a product person. But if you call yourself a great product person because you figured out where to put a pretty button on your app and you read a Paul Graham essay, then you haven't a clue…