The Dev ?? PM Paradox

Here's a trend I've noticed in tech that I'm not sure anyone else has picked up on. It seems like there's a growing number of software engineers that are moving into product. Conversely, it also seems like there are a lot of PMs that are moving into engineering or design. Why?

First things first, I tried to find some data on this and came up embarrassingly empty handed. There are a decent number of reddit posts talking about it but no solid numbers. If you know how I can source some stats for this, I'd love to hear from you.

Engineers are traditionally in their happy place when they can focus on the "how" but still have full trust and visibility on the "why" of whatever product they're building. Organizations that do this well have developers with a high confidence in the decision making process. A lot of the job that a developer does is implementation and if they start second-guessing higher level decisions then something is probably broken in the product management process. This is where I think the first motivator is starting to emerge for engineers going into product - trust.

Put yourself in the shoes of an amazing developer. You care deeply about delivering amazing features. You pour your heart and soul into your work and come out with beautifully written and architected code. You deliver on time and get a pat on the back from your local PM. A few months later you check the metrics. No one is using your feature. Or even worse, it's still not released yet.

What do you do?

Probably nothing initially. It more than likely becomes a bullet point in a retro. But if this happens once, it's more than likely going to happen again.

So it does, and you start to ask "What's the point?". Why spend energy creating things if they aren't going to be used? When the next feature rolls around, you start to pick up the slack from the product team. You ask hard questions. You dig through insights. You look at problems. And you realise that this is a much better use of your time. You go on reddit and ask "What does it take to move from engineering to product?".

I've painted a dismal picture here, but there's another, brighter path that people can take to this same conclusion. Picture a customer-centric organization that exposes as many customer insights as it can to all of its staff. In an organization like this, some people may naturally be drawn to high level problem solving. Individual motivations differ between everyone, and some engineers see programming as more of a tool than a vocation. To those engineers, the broader problems that customers face may be a lot more appealing than the technical specifics on how you solve those problems. They naturally move up the "stack" so to speak and they naturally transition to product simply by following their interest.

So engineers moving to product isn't always some massive organization failure. What about the other direction?

Put yourself into some different shoes. This time it's an amazing Product Manager. You deeply care about customer problems and go above and beyond to make the people your product serves feel listened to. You engage with your engineers; cut scope accordingly; prioritize and communicate like only the best PMs do. Then, during your monthly chat with an executive, you are told your team is going to be building AI next quarter because "it's the future". Goodbye well designed features, hello single sentence requirement from the CEO. For the next 6 months you are a jira ticket machine. Eventually the CEO loses interest. It's never released.

What do you do?

Probably nothing initially. But you might think "At least the devs get to actually create things.". You upskill on design or dev depending on your affinity. Over the next few years you transition out of Product, never to return.

I'm pulling together some stories from my personal network here, but I've seen this trend in a few places. I call it the Dev - PM paradox. Both parties believe the other creates more impact. I can imagine both of the people I've described here existing in the same organization. Hell, I can imagine them being the exact same person at different points in their career.

I don't think good devs or good PMs can do much about this (other than quit). The change has to happen higher up, at the exec level. Both of the scenarios I've created here are an example of organizational dysfunction. If leadership don't care, then nothing will change. That's the solution to the paradox. Care about your company. Care about your people. Care about the symptoms.