Masters of Persuasion.

Product Managers are a special breed. When writing this comic, I wanted to portray the caricature of one but ended up illustrating the typical annoying freelancing client (yes, I went the easy and unoriginal way). In my defense, it was kind of hard to portray the conventional personality of a PM. They come in all types and flavors. The growth-hacking one, the user-centric one, the one that used to be an engineer, the one that calls themselves the CEO of the Product. “Well, of course, Pablo–all people are different!” you may say, but even their roles and definitions in different companies vary. Some will be the actual product owners, some will sadly just be taskmasters. Some will report to Marketing, some will report to the CEO (the real one).

There is one detail that I have persistently found in several PMs, though. All product managers are Masters of Persuasion, or at least they try to be.

They have other valuable skills, of course; excel sheet ninja abilities, Trello card-management expertise, an analytical mind that thinks in OKRs & KPIs, and executional mastery that allows them to ship major features in 5 day sprints. But it’s their power of persuasion that stands out for me. They’re like chameleons dealing with different stakeholders, smooth-talking people to keep on track, following a vision. They’re truly inspirational human beings! But I can’t help but wonder… Do we really need PMs?

My ignorant and childish imagination pictures the scene when it all happened. Where it all went down. Under the pale moonlight cutting through the meeting room of an old, refurbished warehouse-turned-office in SoMA, SF, two hoodie-wearing dudes talk in the dark…“We can’t trust designers, they’re too flaky and emotional. We can’t trust engineers, they’re too odd and grouchy. We need an emotionally mature person to babysit these weirdos. We need a middle-man. We shall call them ‘Product Managers’!”.

You may think “Pablo, but we need someone that connects teams. Someone that is responsible for shipping successful products!” And of course, you’re right. But my internal hippie can’t help but fantasize an alternative. A place where a company promoting a culture of ownership is enough to get teams to work efficiently and independently. Or is it too crazy to think that maybe a designer or an engineer can be the one that leads a project from point A to point B? Couldn’t she set a vision, inspire, and make confident decisions based on her research and intuition? Can’t we designers and engineers learn about the market and the competition by ourselves? Can’t we set goals and roadmaps and follow them? Can’t we take full responsibility and measure our success in terms of the success of our product? Can’t we be trusted withthe goals of the company or even the investor demands to be able to set our priorities?

I think it’s time for a revolution!

Power Back to the Real Makers!

Down with the Product Bourgeoisie!

Viva la Design Resistance!

Hold on… on second thought. This is all sounding like a lot of numbers work––measuring metrics, and analytics. Having to deal with people, coordinate them, support them––I kinda hate people… I just wanna doodle stuff, make flashy animations, and get credit when stuff looks cool.

I take it back. I take it back!!!

We need someone that does all the boring stuff. We need someone to blame when all goes wrong! We need someone that is selfless, able to wear different hats, and keep us motivated. Someone that is so mature and diverse that is hard to parody in a comic.

We DO need Product Managers!

With love to all PMs. From the unreliable and hyper-sensitive designer you have to deal with on every morning standup. Thank you for doing the poopy, but necessary job ❤️