Can You Work With These 5 Types of Engineers if You Are a Product Manager?

How do you know you are a superstar product manager (PM)? I asked one of my mentors this question before and he had an amazing answer: if you decide to change company or start your own today, and your engineers are willing to immediately move to follow you, then you are probably doing very well.

I have worked with hundreds of engineers throughout my PM career and there are five types of them that were particularly challenging for me to win over. I am writing this article to share what I learned from my experience and also recommend some tips that actually worked for me.

Engineers that don’t think they need a PM

They think the only reason they are not your PMc instead is because they can code. They think they know what they should do better than you do. They are self-starters who hate to be ordered around.

You already lose them when you: 1. show them your roadmap doc as if that’s their engineering schedule. 2.assuming they are too nerdy to talk about their project in human language.

Why you should win them over: They are extremely driven and passionate about what they are doing. They are confident, fearless, and capable. If you can win them over, you don’t need to worry about missing the timeline, pinging them three times a day asking if feature A is in production, or hearing push backs like “this idea is too crazy or too hard”.

How to win them over:

• Help them shine. When others ask about this project, give them a chance to explain. (After all, you already get all the credit by default. ) For those people, you can’t reveal your self-worth by hiding their thunders. Instead, make them your allies and your most vocal advocates. After all, it’s a privilege to be able to scale yourself by empowering them.
• When you have disagreements, tell them you deeply care about the success of this project too and you want to help make their vision a reality.
• You win them over when you help them secure an executive review to get more resources for their project. Trust me, they will make sure everyone knows you are their PM, the same way they make sure everyone knows that’s their project.

Engineers who only get excited by the hardest technical problem

They don’t care if your product proposal is going to change the lives of 1 billion people. They don’t care if their product gets used by 5 people since last year. They will start interviewing when you ask them to add a call-to-action banner using an existing framework calling an existing function, even if it helps drive DAU by 50%.

You already lose them when you: 1. fail to recognize their desire to challenge themselves technically and pitch them on north star that doesn’t matter to them. 2. fail to recognize the technical challenge they did overcome, instead only asking if this feature is implemented

Why you should win them over: They are willing to invest the time and energy to be the most capable engineers. They can do wonders and make your crazy product proposal a reality. When they are devoted and motivated, all you need to do is to remind them to ‘have a good weekend’. Let’s be honest here, you need at least one such engineer in your team.

How to win them over:

• Recognize early that they are driven by technical challenges, not product metrics.
• Provide opportunities for them to share their learnings

Engineers who only care if they can get promoted tonight.

They scoff at you when you ask them to fix this small UI bug because would his boss know? If the CEO is not talking about this project, they are not gonna work on it. They are optimizers, utilitarians, and frequent people pleasers.

You already lose them when you:1.fail to recognize their needs to reach to the next level. 2.constantly ‘assign’ them to projects that has no visibility.

Why you should win them over: Firstly, it’s easy to win them over so why shouldn’t you? You already know their exact motivation. Secondly, they are super hardworking because they care. They worry more than you when the product deadline slips. They care about their reputation, and they will make sure they are aligned with the priority of your organization or your company.

How to win them over:

• Make friends with their boss. They will make friends with everyone who is friend to people who have a say in their next promotion.
• Send them a thank you email when they fix something that they were pushing back on, cc-ed their boss and mention why this small fix matters. (They will be more willing to help with smaller tasks like this in the future)
• You can still motivate them to work on a currently smaller project, by focusing on the impact the project can make and how big the scope the project can grow into. Tell them they will be the starting engineer for a big project and they will naturally grow as the project grows.
• You win them over when you ask them “what did you boss say about your growth area for the next level and how can I help provide such opportunities?” When you align your incentive with theirs, they will become your best partners in crime.

Engineers who are quiet and sit in corners

They never talk in meetings. They don’t proactively advertise what they have done. They are not the best salesmen for their own work. They don’t necessarily prefer to be silent, though. Some of them might just get shy in a meeting room with 20 others. Some of them are struggling to speak English in the most fluent way.

You already lose them when you:1.assume they want to be silent, don’t care about their work, or think don’t do any work because they are not visible. 2. assume they prefer to be low-key and avoid visibility.

Why you should win them over: They can be the most dedicated engineers and are actually strong in technical skills. When you help them sell their work and create more visibility for them, they will trust you deeply and will be willing to help you when you are facing challenges. When you go out of your way to ensure they get the recognition and visibility they deserve, they can be the engineers that will follow you when you move to your next ventures.

How to win them over:

• Ask them if they think they are not getting enough visibility/recognition as they’d want, or they actually prefer it the current way.
• Proactively talk with them regularly to understand their work and challenges.
• If they actually want to talk more in meetings and are just being shy, cold call them in meeting and ask what they think.
• Thank them in publicly and help them raise visibility for their work.

Engineers who ask you for permission on every single decision.

They ask you how they should name their help functions. They ask you if you are ok with them scheduling a 10am meeting with another engineer to talk about this technical problem(is that too early?). They ask you if you are cool with how they implement edge case #10.8, which happens precisely 1 out of 1 million times by probability.

You already lose them when you: 1. assume they are actually incapable of making their own decisions. 2. ignore their requests or questions that need your feedback.

Why you should win them over: You waste a lot of your time on things that don’t deserve that much of your time. Those engineers lack opportunities to grow into more independent leaders. I’ve seen a lot of bright, capable, and hardworking engineers who are relatively junior and just enter the workforce or come from companies that are more top-down. In fact, they might have a lot of ideas by themselves, but in their mental model, they just thought they need your permission on everything. Or maybe you have reverted a lot of their decisions, big or small, so now they are afraid of making any calls.

How to win them over:

• Next time when they ask you for permission on something super minor, tell them you will defer to them and they can totally make this decision themselves.
• If their decision makes sense or the decision is on something super minor that you don’t actually care about, show others that you stand by their decisions.
• When you kick off a new project with them, set expectations on the kinds of things that need your input versus things they can just CC you on.

Anything I am missing?

If you are a PM, what are the other type of engineers that are challenging for you to work with? How do you win them over? For the above five types, any other tips that worked?

If you are an engineer, do you think those tips would work if that’s what your PM did? Comment and share your ideas below and let’s start a discussion!