Rands: The Product Engineer

You don’t need Product Managers. There. I said it.

As someone who just moved into a product management role, you had best believe this line caught my eye. 👀

The post makes some reasonable arguments, although I think a lot of it is an argument against having bad product managers. I'd personally say that a weak link in product, design, or engineering brings down the whole team, so I'm amenable to the idea that a bad product manager will have a real impact on product quality on an otherwise high-functioning team. My general take is that teams operate best when engineers have product sensibilities, when product managers have a keen understanding of the product and its users, and when designers empathize with those users and understand what's technically possible.