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The article discusses why the product manager role is a mistake and why hiring tremendous people is essential for a successful product company. It highlights the dangers of putting mediocre people in charge and suggests an alternative model that focuses on hiring great people and allowing them to work in teams without individual responsibilities.

The product manager role is a mistake

How much of this was specific to product managers?

I think it is mostly a strawman argument: He constructs a meaningless position and then attacks it. By his definition, a co-founder is never a product manager. In his initial list of tremendous people there are at least two which I would consider as product managers: Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Moreover he classifies a product manager as someone without technical skill: But that is an false assumption, I know a lot which have technical skills.

Interesting read but there are quite a lot of assumptions being made in order for this opinion to ubiquitously exist, because not everyone without tech skills is inept and tremendous to one person is disastrous for another.

So, don’t hire Product Managers unless you could afford good Product Managers (and they probably cost 7-digit per year).