- He (or she) knows his real job title is professional nagger, and he’s pretty sure his dev team calls him something else, but that doesn’t stop him from proudly handing out embossed business cards.
- Casual hangouts between product managers and coders will always devolve into communal cursing. The trick is to see whether they curse together or at each other.
- A good product manager knows it’s always better to make Sales seem like the big enemy to his dev team. And vice versa.
- He could combine two bugs into one issue on Youtrack, but there’s something satisfying about seeing a long list of issues being completed in one sprint. Nevermind the dev team’s state of mind.
- No matter how many shiny iPads and Google Drives you give him, he’ll always have some Post-it notes floating around.
- He could let you demo his product, if you really really insist. Just make sure not to click anything besides the four links he shown you. And don’t you dare click any of them more than once each. Actually, could you get by with just screenshots?
- Whatever you want is always in the next sprint. Always. Even if he hasn’t figured what, exactly, you want.
- He’ll tell you he’s tired from a late call with the Indian dev team, but really he was playing League. If he’s a little older, he played WoW.
- He has a love/hate relationship with the dev members who come in only two days a week due to long commute hours. On one hand, he can never find them. On the other hand, once he does, there’s nothing stopping him from dumping four days’ worth of work on them.
- Two product managers for one product is one and a half too many, not unless he (or she) is also a marketing associate and a ux designer in disguise.
Want to hear other (anonymous) confessions about your employees? Stay tuned for our upcoming Workforce product.
Karen Chen is the Product Manager of Workforce at QuestionPro.
