Working with product managers · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
The essay argues that ex-engineer “technical” PMs can worsen engineer–product relationships because they lack system-specific context yet gain overconfidence, causing distrust and repeated challenges—so epistemic humility and calibrated authority matter more than engineering credentials.
Working with product managers · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
When trust erodes, product managers tend toward manipulation and engineers toward deception, creating escalating bad-faith interactions that are hard to repair and convert execution problems into durable trust breakdowns.
Working with product managers · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
Engineering–product conflict is usually a structural trust failure: each role must accept unverifiable claims because of non-overlapping skills, and repeated instances of ‘impossible’ features shipping or ‘critical’ requirements being dropped erode trust even when both sides act in good faith, so fixes should close verification gaps and reset expectations rather than rely only on interpersonal coaching.
Working with product managers · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
Feuding with product managers is usually a bad career move for engineers because PMs have greater political reach and can quietly shape reputations, while building trust with PMs can give engineers outsized influence over decisions.
Working with product managers · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
The author recommends an asymmetric engineer–PM trust playbook: politically align with the PM, be consistently technically accurate, defer organizational/prioritization judgments to the PM, respond to sudden changes with a shared-problem stance, avoid public undermining, and accept that truly incompetent PMs may require workarounds—treat trust as a compounding credibility asset.