Marty Cagan: recommendation

Transcript context

…There is no question that a lot of companies overhired during the pandemic. That was easy to see even while it was going on. And it's not just that they overhired, a lot of them lowered the bar. But at the same time, of course we have a change in the financial world that has really increased the cost of funds. And that's another thing going on simultaneously. And probably one of the biggest things of all, and this is the hardest because it's not happened yet, is the predicted impact of generative AI, right? I don't know if you saw, literally the CEO of NVIDIA the other day was saying don't learn programming. First of all, I'm not even sure that's good advice, but the fact that the CEO of one of the most amazing companies in the world is saying don't learn programming, that's disruptive. And so at a minimum it creates uncertainty among the leaders in the companies, at a minimum. But honestly, I think there's very real impact. I'm convinced of that. I just don't know the real time horizon. I've got a long history of being overly optimistic. I think things are going to happen sooner than they really do. So I don't know when they'll really happen, but that's a big one. Here's another one that I think is not talked nearly enough about, and that is in a lot of companies, especially outside of Silicon Valley, team size has just gotten out of hand. I go into some companies and honestly I can't believe all the ridiculous roles that they have. And I'll go into that more if you want later, but no question that people realize that smaller teams can often produce more and better results. How many of your guests have said as much? I've heard it from many of them. It's reducing the size of the organization ironically can get you a lot more in terms of results. So there's this general appreciation that maybe we overdid it here with all of these roles. And of course I'm talking about agile coaches and product owners and product ops and business analysts and all these assistant product manager types. So we'll go into that if you want, but it's gotten out of hand at a lot of companies. And then the one that I really probably shouldn't bring up just because it's become a religious topic almost. I know it's a super sensitive topic for people, but the reality is with remote employees, both velocity and innovation have taken a real hit. Now we can talk about, don't get me wrong, I don't think we're ever going to go back to the days of big companies having almost all co-located teams. But there is no question, I work with a lot of them, they are all struggling with innovation and velocity. Things go slower and they don't really do that level of innovation that they used to do. And these are big factors, these are macro factors that are going on. And then on top of that, if you get outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, it's even worse because they have been investing at these companies, especially the big companies in all these extra roles. n. And then on top of that, if you get outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, it's even worse because they have been investing at these companies, especially the big companies in all these extra roles. I mentioned agile coaches, but scrum masters and every flavor of project manager you could dream up, they're everywhere and every kind of assistant to product people. I think it's gotten crazy. In fact, I wrote an article a long time ago, something like a decade ago that was very popular at the time called Epic Waste, and I was pointing this out and saying this is crazy. The ironic thing is that the better companies do way more with a lot less. So anyway, the roles. And then what about all the years that have been going on where they think these big companies think the answer lies in processes, especially things like safe, which outside of the Silicon Valley world is depressingly popular? And even though scrum, a lot of people don't even understand simple processes like scrum and they miss the point. So what's going on in so much of the world is they have so little in the way of outcomes to show for all this cost. And we talked about the sheer number of people becomes a problem and the amount of that cost can be shocking and the amount of waste is basically embarrassing. So it is not a surprise to me that companies are reacting to that. The bigger surprise honestly is it's taken so long for so many companies to realize what is going on. And bottom line is today I think everybody, especially outside in those big process and role heavy companies, they need to take a hard look at how they build products and how they serve their customers. And they need to look harder at how the best companies do this with so much less proportional spend and so much more real return and really take a fresh look at how to best meet the needs of their customers. That's what transformation is about, is moving to work like that. And the ones that do that well I think are the ones with the best chance to survive. I think there's just this broader trend of people just really dislike PMs in a lot of places. There's this just trend of I don't want PMs at my company, I don't want PMs at my startup. For a long time, we're going to have no PMs. It's like this general idea, and I think you're saying a lot of this comes from many people who were hired as product managers that are not good at the job and people's experience with PMs is those sorts of people.…

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