Great insight and objective elaboration into the Zynga culture. "Adapting to thrive" and "treat[ing] crises differently" is what made this guy have a fair-headed and upbeat retrospective instead of it deteriorating into a rant that happens so often.
I that this post reflects more on the author than it does on the organisation. The challenges the author overcame are mostly to do with organisational frictions and processes that make Zynga sound like a terrible place to be for engineers.
Good for the author, not so great for Zynga to lose someone who could tolerate their environment.
Where I work it seems product managers have the most sway. But I just read a GlassDoor post by a PM who said the engineers had more. Depends on where you stand I guess.
I've always had trouble working with PMs. Whenever a new one comes along they make sure to mention that they've worked as programmers before. When I ask them how long, it's usually 2 years.
I think I don't like working for PMs because they are the client (at my company at least). And I always forget this. I always think "we are a team" and that the product is the main focus. But I always forget that isn't reality.
At a lot of companies, the project manager is the first line of defense against a late project, it's their job to harass their people to move quicker, otherwise they are often the first to be on the chopping block if things don't go smoothly. It's their job to fire ineffective employees when they notice slowdowns or incompetence.
Product Managers don't have to put long hours at work when the schedule they came up with is unreasonable. Engineers have to make adjustments, put long hours to make things work.
Product Managers should be doing better than just shouting in morning status meetings.
Why is that? I worked with exactly one good product manager in the last 5 years, and she used to be a manufacturing engineer. I think the reason is a lack of respect for the product they're developing (or maybe just the coders making it).
I work for one of Zynga's competitors. We have the same culture of product managers running the show. None of them understand how software development works or how to get the best work out of their engineers. Maybe I just need to realize that building the actual product is only 5% of running a business. But I'm having a real hard time believing that.
I used to believe "that building the actual product is only 5% of running a business". Because if you don't have good sales people the product won't get sold. If you don't have good managers, resources will be wasted. If you don't have a good HR dept, good employees will be lost.
But I think the product has to be good. You need it all, but a software company needs its product to be good. Doesn't have to be the best or even great but at least good. Pulling a number out of my *ss I'd say the product is about 75% of running a business.
As for the culture of product managers, we have the same. And I loathe them.
