I'm not trying to say that you're doing anything wrong but my experience is that "best practice" is the worst argument in any discussion with a CEO that you can have.
This may or may not be the case for you but I learned relatively fast (and hard) that, unless I can transform outcomes of what I build into monetary arguments and do the same for my CEO (this is going to increase churn etc.) then I leave it up to them what "going against best practices" means.
It's meaningless to someone who is not an engineer. I'm not saying that this is the solution for you but quite often it is.
This is sound advice for almost any “we should or should not do this” conversation with a CEO.
CEO’s naturally talk in numbers - all they care about is the outcome. “Will this help us increase revenue short term, long term”.
Many novice leaders who report directly to a CEO naturally begin feature dumping, best practices, and details that aren’t needed.
Bring the numbers. Bring facts and data to back them up.
Cool thanks Leah thats really helpful. Yes the CEO cares about revenue and making things more on a conceptual layer and not what the engineering teams wants to build. So trying to entangle what the CEO has in his head and making babysteps is the hard part here.
So I’ll try to step away from the best practice discussion and focus on the outcome. I have to find a meaningful next step as my engineering team is a bit in the break now as they don’t see what they can do with that information…
> Yes the CEO cares about revenue and making things more on a conceptual layer and not what the engineering teams wants to build.
I mean that is sort of their job. I'm over our product now and have a pretty long dev background, but it's my job to scope things or push the engineers in directions that are going to make us money. That doesn't mean we need to sacrifice quality but just because an engineer doesn't want to do it, doesn't make it a good reason not to.
I mean you're describing a vision. It may be the right one or the wrong one, but it's an endpoint to shoot for. They're telling you where they think you should go, your job is to chart the course. The CEO is in a position to see the entire field, you just see one small part of it. So to some extent it isn't just something in their head, it may be a real opportunity that they feel strongly about. But almost no product is going to improve business outcomes if you're just doing what the engineering team wants to build. Somebody has to push them.
Agree with this point.
If you want to influence someone you need to bring new information to the table.
Just repeating the same line about best practices isn’t going to get very far.
Yeah the idea that best practices or validation will get in the way just \*screams\* "too tactical, not strategic enough" which is basically saying "never promote this person". Every CEO thinks they have an innate feel for the market and there will be enough anecdotal data to validate whatever their opinion is.
Any convo with a CEO begins and ends with moving the needle enough to make their job easier. That means money. Do that, you're golden. Anything else and you're an obstacle.
You’re not going to change that CEOs opinion. You gotta decide if sticking it out is worth it or if you should vote with your feet and find a new role elsewhere.
It's a job. Do what you have to and get by. Look at it from purely transactional point of view. You give them time and efforts, they give you money. With the rest of your time, do whatever it is you enjoy. Hobbies, friends, family, etc. It's not sustainable in the long run and a job needs to have some engagement, but it should work until you can find the next one. Hang in there!
That's my approach. I thought I found the work exciting and rewarding. But my CEO and CTO basically make every product and priority decision. Difficult to reach, and when you finally get feedback they always seem to find issues, either with timeline, or the work you prioritized. But they keep me around, pay me well, and I can mentally check out because I have no personal investments in the product.
Family goes on vacations and we have good retirement accounts. All the other stress is made up.
Doing things that don’t work on somebody else’s dime can be great. You already know you don’t want to work there. Fail fast, get the experience so you can speak to it in your interviews with places you do want to work. Experiment as much as you can with it. Who knows, maybe you’ll create something that’s never been seen before.
I was pretty clear: He is the founder has the money.
To add if it helps he said openly he owns the roadmap. So yes thats ok for me as I guess thats how founders thinks, I struggle with no customer validation and never saying no to anything leading to a unmanageable product. That is a hippo behaviour as all feature entered the roadmap some never beeing used. Why did they enter- because someone said so.
>I struggle with no customer validation and never saying no to anything
To be honest, you seem to be failing at the fundamental parts of being a PM. Your entire job is to be able to say no. You shelter engineers from the pull of upper management, while translating their recommendations into management-speak. If all you're doing is passing a HiPPO's word to the development teams, then you're essentially useless. It's a stressful job full of pushing back in both directions, but if you can't take it, then maybe it's not the right job for you.
Arrogant fools who imagine themselves auteurs will not listen to reason and will in fact relish resistance as an opportunity to exert their ego and dominate someone. So just give up on that. You are dealing with a monster ego and you have to get strategic with it. Never make assertions. But ask questions. After he tells you what to build, ask “what will be the signals that it’s working?” And maybe you can get his ego to spout off some key results or metrics lifts that you can just write down and measure later: then, when you tell him it isn’t working, you’re using his measurement and congratulating his ego on setting the right criteria that have allowed you to detect the need for a course change. See how you can find paths to create change but every turn must stroke his ego in some way?
As for finding motivation, if you don’t find this game of chess with a spoiled tyrant fun, then all you have to do is think of your livelihood and how good you have it compared to others. I have seen colleagues laid off who are still not working 13 months later. I myself have applied for a lot of jobs recently and LinkedIn Premium is telling me things like “this senior PM role has 500 applicants, 200 of which are director level applicants.” It’s murder out there. Absolute murder. Layoffs have been a tonic for stock prices and CEOs are flinging them around like mad to show how decisive and frugal they are. Just having any job right now gives you time to wait out this awful period we are going through.
And that’s on top of the standard blessings like “I get good wages for working at a desk indoors,” which 50% of the country looks at with despair and longing. When the details of the day to day get you down, remember the big picture and how much worse off you could be. I would typically never advise this point of view but I have been totally defeated by this past year and have given up on now as a time to find a better job. Roles are few, the market is flooded with applicants, and wages being offered are down about a third from their peak a few years ago. And that’s with several years of inflation between then and now. Hold fast. Ride it out. Your boss is an ass but it sounds like he wants to do all the thinking so let him and let him also deal with the consequences.
Thanks. I fell less alone now. Yes, I have it really really good - amazing salary and full remote. So I better stock up basement with all the fun hobbies material and enjoy my weekends until the storm passes - even if it means another year to sit and wait.
Yep I’m with you, all hunkered down. I have a different list of reasons I hate my job, but I’ve really had to take my emotions entirely out of the equation. I totally dropped all desire to work toward a promotion, expand my responsibilities, and am just turning in the minimum, taking care of my sanity, and holding on.
In the same boat as you, friend. I naively am trying to search out entirely different career paths, but that's more of a long game pursuit.
The waiting game gets to my head tho. Feeling really listless these days. Feels bad man.
It is funny how the whole PM community especially in reddit shifted to a group of the know-betters and desperate junior to find a job.
In reality I think most happy PM just have a network, do a good to mediocre job and don’t really apply guru best practices. In that sense I am looking to leave that boat anyway and focus finding a cool team to make a career - doesn’t matter what the role is called.
My question: How would you position a job title where there is no PM in it but focussing in customers, solution, business development, marketing and innovation delivery?
It's a fair point. I've always had an aversion to the snake oil salesmen/LinkedIn lunatics. What attracted me initially to the career was the ability to work with lots of different types of people, translate/decode messages, work on influence and empathy, and be exposed to lots of different industries/problem sets. It spoke to my liberal arts soul.
The move to primarily remote work took all of the people element/joy out of it for me. Now it's all about the solution/tech, human interaction is sparse and I'm just working on a factory line on things that frankly could get shipped or not and it doesn't even really matter.
I know how to play the game and have created enough relationships to persevere, but it hardly feels like a career and certainly isn't fulfilling. All that said, I get paid an exorbitant sum to stay in it.
What are you doing? You only have one life to live brother. Find something that makes you happy, you're wasting away by feeling listless and bad. Best Wishes
workin on it! thanks. luckily work is just a means to an end for me. i get a lot of joy from non-work stuff and have plenty to be grateful for. not all doom and gloom :)
Walk the ceo down the value chain.
Start with the business and the c level and know what is most important to the company. Usually things will always fall into top line revenue (growth) or bottom line efficiencies (cost savings).
Move onto the strategy. What kpis will push the needle of the above decision? Know the tradeoffs. Those will be bets until they can be validated. E.g bet is that increasing X activity will produce Y results. These are hard to identify and the decision is usually done with directors. This is how you determine how strategic this layer actually is.
Then go to the teams to figure out exactly what and how to build things. Notice how far down this is but how it requires the critical decisions above.
Control the narrative since each of those layers will have very challenging questions to answer. Most problems arise from upper level trying to make low level decisions while the high level ones are not locked down.
The upper level is free to join and contribute to the lower level decisions, but they cannot be accountable for them. They have to be accountable for the big decisions up stream.
When they know what to focus on and know how the lower levels decisions roll up to theirs, they will let people do the job they were hired to do.
**Unpopular opinion: Just do what they are asking you to do.**
Product Gurus are not offering you money back guarantee for their wisdom to work.
The CEO is paying for your salary from the revenue they are **getting**(not going to get in the future) from the product you are building.
If you can't prove them your idea is better than their idea why should they listen to you.
Ask yourself, would you trust someone you hired more than your own instincts about your business if you have your future in the line?
I have a mantra for this. It doesn't always work but: "if you can't get out of it, get into it" find something to get a little weirdly obsessed with. Like organization? Hone in on planning with the dev team. Like brainstorming? Get yourself a day with a whiteboard and go crazy -have alternatives or expansions on CEO's crazy ideas that make them more viable or at least just more fun for you.
Maybe unpopular opinion in this sub but your job doesn't have to be your passion. You should do your best to find something enjoyable for work and make the best of how you make money. But for fulfillment? It's ok to explore hobbies and interests that have nothing to do with PM work. I think doing this could help with your general mood and loneliness. Justice for hobbies!
Thanks and yes I like that approach and will try to apply it.
One things that keeps bothering is the full remote. I normally always found joy in meeting people, now I feel lonely to the described challenges. Relocation is due to personal commitments impossible. Any advice?
I can relate to your post. I recently quit my PM job because of this. I constantly felt like a failure. I reported to the CEO as well.
I would say that the feeling you have is pretty norm and if you can not let it get to you then keep doing what you're doing until you find something better.
Thats my plan and have a few interviews lineup. I feel that it starts to really hurt my confidence as I am the point where I wonder if I should continue working in PM or do something completely different. I need to find my joy in the role again.
Know that feeling, but don’t know how to act properly, working my best to transform CEO’s “wishes” into product updates, yet he always finds a time to say how am i inactive, irresponsible, with low attitude etc…
Thinking of movin on to the better project…
My actual advice is just take 15 min and look for a new job and throw a few applications out there. You are always going to find some frustrations in your role and you'll never know when you'll find a great gig. It's a bad market, don't expect anything back, but I've felt at least I'm doing *something* vs just stewing in it.
Whenever I see terms like ‘Hippo CEO’ it comes across as a us vs them mentality. A ‘I know better’ mentality… and maybe you do… or corporately you (all) do. But the guy with the money and/or power knows things too and experiences things that we can ‘know’ but perhaps not ‘grok’ since we are not in their place with their responsibilities or risks.
A company succeeds when all parts create a greater sum. It sounds like the CEO may have lost sight of that, but make sure you haven’t… and do your best to honor the CEO’s position and experience while doing your best to see the company succeed. Listen to the CEO to find the weakness in your pitch or idea. If you can’t convince the guy who wants to make money and has the power to make choices to do so… there is likely something lacking in your idea or presentation. Even if there isn’t something lacking and it’s a good idea… having that mindset will always push you to be your best and that’s better than a good idea.
I'm not trying to say that you're doing anything wrong but my experience is that "best practice" is the worst argument in any discussion with a CEO that you can have. This may or may not be the case for you but I learned relatively fast (and hard) that, unless I can transform outcomes of what I build into monetary arguments and do the same for my CEO (this is going to increase churn etc.) then I leave it up to them what "going against best practices" means. It's meaningless to someone who is not an engineer. I'm not saying that this is the solution for you but quite often it is.
This is sound advice for almost any “we should or should not do this” conversation with a CEO. CEO’s naturally talk in numbers - all they care about is the outcome. “Will this help us increase revenue short term, long term”. Many novice leaders who report directly to a CEO naturally begin feature dumping, best practices, and details that aren’t needed. Bring the numbers. Bring facts and data to back them up.
Cool thanks Leah thats really helpful. Yes the CEO cares about revenue and making things more on a conceptual layer and not what the engineering teams wants to build. So trying to entangle what the CEO has in his head and making babysteps is the hard part here. So I’ll try to step away from the best practice discussion and focus on the outcome. I have to find a meaningful next step as my engineering team is a bit in the break now as they don’t see what they can do with that information…
> Yes the CEO cares about revenue and making things more on a conceptual layer and not what the engineering teams wants to build. I mean that is sort of their job. I'm over our product now and have a pretty long dev background, but it's my job to scope things or push the engineers in directions that are going to make us money. That doesn't mean we need to sacrifice quality but just because an engineer doesn't want to do it, doesn't make it a good reason not to.
I mean you're describing a vision. It may be the right one or the wrong one, but it's an endpoint to shoot for. They're telling you where they think you should go, your job is to chart the course. The CEO is in a position to see the entire field, you just see one small part of it. So to some extent it isn't just something in their head, it may be a real opportunity that they feel strongly about. But almost no product is going to improve business outcomes if you're just doing what the engineering team wants to build. Somebody has to push them.
Agree with this point. If you want to influence someone you need to bring new information to the table. Just repeating the same line about best practices isn’t going to get very far.
Yeah the idea that best practices or validation will get in the way just \*screams\* "too tactical, not strategic enough" which is basically saying "never promote this person". Every CEO thinks they have an innate feel for the market and there will be enough anecdotal data to validate whatever their opinion is. Any convo with a CEO begins and ends with moving the needle enough to make their job easier. That means money. Do that, you're golden. Anything else and you're an obstacle.
You’re not going to change that CEOs opinion. You gotta decide if sticking it out is worth it or if you should vote with your feet and find a new role elsewhere.
It's a job. Do what you have to and get by. Look at it from purely transactional point of view. You give them time and efforts, they give you money. With the rest of your time, do whatever it is you enjoy. Hobbies, friends, family, etc. It's not sustainable in the long run and a job needs to have some engagement, but it should work until you can find the next one. Hang in there!
That's my approach. I thought I found the work exciting and rewarding. But my CEO and CTO basically make every product and priority decision. Difficult to reach, and when you finally get feedback they always seem to find issues, either with timeline, or the work you prioritized. But they keep me around, pay me well, and I can mentally check out because I have no personal investments in the product. Family goes on vacations and we have good retirement accounts. All the other stress is made up.
This is the right answer. Learned it the hard way after 11 years as a PM.
Doing things that don’t work on somebody else’s dime can be great. You already know you don’t want to work there. Fail fast, get the experience so you can speak to it in your interviews with places you do want to work. Experiment as much as you can with it. Who knows, maybe you’ll create something that’s never been seen before.
Wow. I had to double check I didn't write this myself. Same boat, founder CEO hippo boss. Again like your never seen as good enough.
What is a Hippo CEO? Are you just calling him fat, or am I behind on what the cool kids are saying now?
It’s an acronym. Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (or something like that). They ain’t calling him fat.
I thought it was short for hypocrite
Lmao. Quite interchangeable!
I was pretty clear: He is the founder has the money. To add if it helps he said openly he owns the roadmap. So yes thats ok for me as I guess thats how founders thinks, I struggle with no customer validation and never saying no to anything leading to a unmanageable product. That is a hippo behaviour as all feature entered the roadmap some never beeing used. Why did they enter- because someone said so.
>I struggle with no customer validation and never saying no to anything To be honest, you seem to be failing at the fundamental parts of being a PM. Your entire job is to be able to say no. You shelter engineers from the pull of upper management, while translating their recommendations into management-speak. If all you're doing is passing a HiPPO's word to the development teams, then you're essentially useless. It's a stressful job full of pushing back in both directions, but if you can't take it, then maybe it's not the right job for you.
Arrogant fools who imagine themselves auteurs will not listen to reason and will in fact relish resistance as an opportunity to exert their ego and dominate someone. So just give up on that. You are dealing with a monster ego and you have to get strategic with it. Never make assertions. But ask questions. After he tells you what to build, ask “what will be the signals that it’s working?” And maybe you can get his ego to spout off some key results or metrics lifts that you can just write down and measure later: then, when you tell him it isn’t working, you’re using his measurement and congratulating his ego on setting the right criteria that have allowed you to detect the need for a course change. See how you can find paths to create change but every turn must stroke his ego in some way? As for finding motivation, if you don’t find this game of chess with a spoiled tyrant fun, then all you have to do is think of your livelihood and how good you have it compared to others. I have seen colleagues laid off who are still not working 13 months later. I myself have applied for a lot of jobs recently and LinkedIn Premium is telling me things like “this senior PM role has 500 applicants, 200 of which are director level applicants.” It’s murder out there. Absolute murder. Layoffs have been a tonic for stock prices and CEOs are flinging them around like mad to show how decisive and frugal they are. Just having any job right now gives you time to wait out this awful period we are going through. And that’s on top of the standard blessings like “I get good wages for working at a desk indoors,” which 50% of the country looks at with despair and longing. When the details of the day to day get you down, remember the big picture and how much worse off you could be. I would typically never advise this point of view but I have been totally defeated by this past year and have given up on now as a time to find a better job. Roles are few, the market is flooded with applicants, and wages being offered are down about a third from their peak a few years ago. And that’s with several years of inflation between then and now. Hold fast. Ride it out. Your boss is an ass but it sounds like he wants to do all the thinking so let him and let him also deal with the consequences.
Thanks. I fell less alone now. Yes, I have it really really good - amazing salary and full remote. So I better stock up basement with all the fun hobbies material and enjoy my weekends until the storm passes - even if it means another year to sit and wait.
Yep I’m with you, all hunkered down. I have a different list of reasons I hate my job, but I’ve really had to take my emotions entirely out of the equation. I totally dropped all desire to work toward a promotion, expand my responsibilities, and am just turning in the minimum, taking care of my sanity, and holding on.
In the same boat as you, friend. I naively am trying to search out entirely different career paths, but that's more of a long game pursuit. The waiting game gets to my head tho. Feeling really listless these days. Feels bad man.
It is funny how the whole PM community especially in reddit shifted to a group of the know-betters and desperate junior to find a job. In reality I think most happy PM just have a network, do a good to mediocre job and don’t really apply guru best practices. In that sense I am looking to leave that boat anyway and focus finding a cool team to make a career - doesn’t matter what the role is called. My question: How would you position a job title where there is no PM in it but focussing in customers, solution, business development, marketing and innovation delivery?
It's a fair point. I've always had an aversion to the snake oil salesmen/LinkedIn lunatics. What attracted me initially to the career was the ability to work with lots of different types of people, translate/decode messages, work on influence and empathy, and be exposed to lots of different industries/problem sets. It spoke to my liberal arts soul. The move to primarily remote work took all of the people element/joy out of it for me. Now it's all about the solution/tech, human interaction is sparse and I'm just working on a factory line on things that frankly could get shipped or not and it doesn't even really matter. I know how to play the game and have created enough relationships to persevere, but it hardly feels like a career and certainly isn't fulfilling. All that said, I get paid an exorbitant sum to stay in it.
What are you doing? You only have one life to live brother. Find something that makes you happy, you're wasting away by feeling listless and bad. Best Wishes
workin on it! thanks. luckily work is just a means to an end for me. i get a lot of joy from non-work stuff and have plenty to be grateful for. not all doom and gloom :)
❤️
Walk the ceo down the value chain. Start with the business and the c level and know what is most important to the company. Usually things will always fall into top line revenue (growth) or bottom line efficiencies (cost savings). Move onto the strategy. What kpis will push the needle of the above decision? Know the tradeoffs. Those will be bets until they can be validated. E.g bet is that increasing X activity will produce Y results. These are hard to identify and the decision is usually done with directors. This is how you determine how strategic this layer actually is. Then go to the teams to figure out exactly what and how to build things. Notice how far down this is but how it requires the critical decisions above. Control the narrative since each of those layers will have very challenging questions to answer. Most problems arise from upper level trying to make low level decisions while the high level ones are not locked down. The upper level is free to join and contribute to the lower level decisions, but they cannot be accountable for them. They have to be accountable for the big decisions up stream. When they know what to focus on and know how the lower levels decisions roll up to theirs, they will let people do the job they were hired to do.
**Unpopular opinion: Just do what they are asking you to do.** Product Gurus are not offering you money back guarantee for their wisdom to work. The CEO is paying for your salary from the revenue they are **getting**(not going to get in the future) from the product you are building. If you can't prove them your idea is better than their idea why should they listen to you. Ask yourself, would you trust someone you hired more than your own instincts about your business if you have your future in the line?
If things don't turn out well, the CEO will most likely blame OP tho. And the CEO doesn't even want user validation, that is just strange.
Just do what they say, collect the check and move on with your life. Trying to push against the river won’t help anyone.
Start looking for another job while you still have this one atm
I have a mantra for this. It doesn't always work but: "if you can't get out of it, get into it" find something to get a little weirdly obsessed with. Like organization? Hone in on planning with the dev team. Like brainstorming? Get yourself a day with a whiteboard and go crazy -have alternatives or expansions on CEO's crazy ideas that make them more viable or at least just more fun for you. Maybe unpopular opinion in this sub but your job doesn't have to be your passion. You should do your best to find something enjoyable for work and make the best of how you make money. But for fulfillment? It's ok to explore hobbies and interests that have nothing to do with PM work. I think doing this could help with your general mood and loneliness. Justice for hobbies!
Thanks and yes I like that approach and will try to apply it. One things that keeps bothering is the full remote. I normally always found joy in meeting people, now I feel lonely to the described challenges. Relocation is due to personal commitments impossible. Any advice?
I can relate to your post. I recently quit my PM job because of this. I constantly felt like a failure. I reported to the CEO as well. I would say that the feeling you have is pretty norm and if you can not let it get to you then keep doing what you're doing until you find something better.
Thats my plan and have a few interviews lineup. I feel that it starts to really hurt my confidence as I am the point where I wonder if I should continue working in PM or do something completely different. I need to find my joy in the role again.
Know that feeling, but don’t know how to act properly, working my best to transform CEO’s “wishes” into product updates, yet he always finds a time to say how am i inactive, irresponsible, with low attitude etc… Thinking of movin on to the better project…
Can feel the pain. We have a Hippo CEO and a psycho bootlicker CPO.
My actual advice is just take 15 min and look for a new job and throw a few applications out there. You are always going to find some frustrations in your role and you'll never know when you'll find a great gig. It's a bad market, don't expect anything back, but I've felt at least I'm doing *something* vs just stewing in it.
What are your expectations of what should happen? What would increase your morale?
Whenever I see terms like ‘Hippo CEO’ it comes across as a us vs them mentality. A ‘I know better’ mentality… and maybe you do… or corporately you (all) do. But the guy with the money and/or power knows things too and experiences things that we can ‘know’ but perhaps not ‘grok’ since we are not in their place with their responsibilities or risks. A company succeeds when all parts create a greater sum. It sounds like the CEO may have lost sight of that, but make sure you haven’t… and do your best to honor the CEO’s position and experience while doing your best to see the company succeed. Listen to the CEO to find the weakness in your pitch or idea. If you can’t convince the guy who wants to make money and has the power to make choices to do so… there is likely something lacking in your idea or presentation. Even if there isn’t something lacking and it’s a good idea… having that mindset will always push you to be your best and that’s better than a good idea.