> This is the type that refuses to tell you if they think, completely ballpark, whether something will take a day or a week or a month
Software development is about figuring out how to do something. Sometimes you can still kind of estimate how much time something will take, especially if it is some grunt work. But truly meaningful changes are unestimatable. If I told you 'I want you to make me some Japanese kuhoo kuhoo. I wont tell you what it is, what goes into making it and if it is even a real thing that can be made. Now tell me how much time it will take', how can you react to that ? I am not saying you acted this way, but I have seen managers act this way.
> but if they disagree with a tiny aspect of the feature you've brought them, the deep domain knowledge you were hired for and dozens of customer visits you've done are nothing in the face of the awesome might of their computer science degree
Why not just let the developers do all these things ? We have been asking our product managers for customer visits for years. Would that be the end of the world ?
Software development is about figuring out how to do something. Sometimes you can still kind of estimate how much time something will take, especially if it is some grunt work. But truly meaningful changes are unestimatable. If I told you 'I want you to make me some Japanese kuhoo kuhoo. I wont tell you what it is, what goes into making it and if it is even a real thing that can be made. Now tell me how much time it will take', how can you react to that ? I am not saying you acted this way, but I have seen managers act this way.
> but if they disagree with a tiny aspect of the feature you've brought them, the deep domain knowledge you were hired for and dozens of customer visits you've done are nothing in the face of the awesome might of their computer science degree
Why not just let the developers do all these things ? We have been asking our product managers for customer visits for years. Would that be the end of the world ?