Camille Fournier
Author & Technology Executive at Former CTO Rent the Runway / Goldman Sachs / JP Morgan / Two Sigma
Author of The Manager's Path, the definitive guide for tech career navigation; former CTO of Rent the Runway, VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs, Global Head of Engineering at JP Morgan Chase, Head of Platform Engineering at Two Sigma; new book on Platform Engineering.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Camille Fournier, author of The Manager's Path and a technology executive across Rent the Runway, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Two Sigma, provides invaluable insights on the PM-engineer relationship. She identifies credit hoarding, ignoring technical details, and gatekeeping ideas as the top PM anti-patterns, and argues that the best PMs share credit generously, respect engineering complexity, and welcome ideas from everyone on the team.
Leadership Principles
- → The best PMs talk the least and encourage others to do the presenting — hoarding credit is the number one thing that annoys engineers about PMs
- → Don't underestimate engineers' desire to understand the business and customer problem — the best PMs aren't threatened by others having ideas
- → When PMs don't understand technical details and act like they don't matter, it shows a lack of empathy for engineering work and is deeply off-putting
Notable Quotes
"PMs tend to be the front-facing person for initiative. Engineers sometimes think they don't get the credit for their work because the PM takes all the glory and all the credit for the project that they really worked very hard on."
— On the number one thing that annoys engineers about PMs
"When they just don't understand the details and act like they don't matter, it shows a real lack of empathy for the work that engineers are doing and I think it really can be very off-putting."
— On PM behaviors that damage the PM-engineering relationship
"Don't underestimate the ability for your engineers to want to understand the business problem, want to understand the customer problem. The product managers that have done the best, they're not threatened by other people having ideas."
— On what motivates engineers and what makes great PMs
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