Engineer motivation, accountability, and productivity is negatively impacted by PMs . Hard working engineers find it frustrating to write daily status reports for PMs and explain the reports to PMs during long meetings . PMs are often used by engineering leaders to pressure engineers into doing wasteful tasks and inflate estimates for new requirements. Excessive tracking of execution by PMs is leading to a culture of finger-pointing and ki-ling innovation in teams .
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Reply to "If PMs are so smart why they don't layoff designers and take their work and save qcom? :)"
Well, current Engineers at Qcom have illusion that they are as good as qualcomm engineers 20years back. That is a false pride, the fact is current engineers have below average technical skills. They got jobs due to village connections!!
PMs are at par and doing their jobs, engineers are sub par, they think they have talent like the founders while not realizing they are junk quality, graduating from 3rd grade college says it all.
Stop having fake pride you donot deserve it, most engineers in qualcomm got job via village connections or by cramming leetcode! no engineering skills, deserve to be laid off!!
If PMs are so smart why they don't layoff designers and take their work and save qcom? :)
Ha Ha, designers? who? 90% Qcom engineers have zero engineering skills so they don't design anything, only fix bugs and track project. They secretly do PM work while earning engineering salary. atleast PMs openly do PM job and get paid less.
If these were real engineers we all would have been in better situation
Most qcom engineers donot deserve to be called engineers, look at their credentials on Linkedin , BS from junk college and MS from 3rd grade some state university and get job via village connections. Bitter but truth
Communication, written, visibility, etc are secondary skills for an engineer. Engineers are made to design and deliver. Don't troll engineers for written/verbal skills, visibility etc and justify your existence in qcom. I consider PM just unnecessary heads. When RIF is happening who should be laid off - engineers who design and delivers or PMs who enter dates in excel sheet? Please ask yourself.
Based on these posts, i know why they need PMs... to translate all this poorly written text from all of you. Holey cr-p, do you all even proofread what you write? You might be smart but you can't communicate worth a damn.
Reduce PMs and VPs and SVPs should collect the status information themselves. Jobs foe VPs and SVPs are too easy at Qualcomm.
PMs are utter overhead on the company.
They don't do anything but put dates in excel sheets. And there are so many of them. They should work in finance and leave engineers on their own and see. There are many teams within qcom which don't have a single PM. @ to all PMs, ask such terms that why they don't have PM :)
Looks like you are one of the 'engineers' from cr-p indian engineering college that teach no skills, oh I missed, these colleges provide good skills to play politics...
Post from TheLayoff.com
I always joke that PM's wouldn't have a job if everyone else did their job perfectly. The fact that PM's thus still have their jobs should tell you something. It's not the PM's fault that engineers can't see beyond their cubicle wall.
Cannot stop laughing on this one :)
"if PMs are not there engineering will wonder off. while all PM are not great, many are better than engineers. Most PM have US degrees compared of most engineers who have cr-p degrees from random colleges in India, they claim to be engineers but they are worse than a US high schooler when it comes to technical skills!
90% engineers do not 'design' anything they are engaged in bugfixing/testering/release jobs"
if PMs are not there engineering will wonder off. while all PM are not great, many are better than engineers. Most PM have US degrees compared of most engineers who have cr-p degrees from random colleges in India, they claim to be engineers but they are worse than a US high schooler when it comes to technical skills!
90% engineers do not 'design' anything they are engaged in bugfixing/testering/release jobs
I agree. Fire all PMs. They are huge drag on productivity. They need to be explained technicals over and over again from project to project. Not sure what's wrong with them. I understand they don't do technical work but I believe most of them have bachelors degree.
OP probably not good enough for NVDA or AAPL.
PEs worse than PMs?
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PEs are drain on resources. We do not need PMs and PEs in same project.
In my more than a decades experince,most PEs are self-serving and care more about their own reputations than the success of their projects. They hold numerous meetings( status reviews,planning,deep-dives )to keep themselves updated at the expense of wasting the time of engineers who do real work. They always send out ThankQ messages and congratulations emails for every team achievement to take credit for their leadership despite actually not contributing in any meaningful manner. They constantly ask for tasks to be completed sooner than they can be reasonably completed,even if they never understand the tasks themselves. This can be extremely frustrating for team members who are trying to get their work done,as it can create a lot of unnecessary overhead.
It is impossible to get a PEs input on important decisions, as they often do not have a deep understanding of any technical aspects of the project and are indecisive. They will hold many more meetings in the hope that people will reach a decision by consensus,but they will not be able to make a decision themselves. They are also unable to motivate team members. Instead, they often threaten them with escalations to get work done. They are unable to plan and track the progress of the project,so they need program managers to do it for them.
PEs are a drain on resources and a detriment to the success of projects. They waste time, frustrate team members, and jeopardize the project's goals. We should remove the PE role. Layoff the worst PEs and the make the remaining PEs into more capable PMs then we have currently
Move all PMs and status collector jobs to India
And the people described in a previous comment
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A status collector is usually a senior staff or principal engineer /manager or director. They are generally out of touch with technical work as they spend most of their time collecting status of features / bugs from people who do the work and report it to their higher ups. Their primary goal is in being connected to other peer status collectors or being in a clique that will protect them during difficult times like now.
Most of them are really good at making architectural block diagrams littered with acronyms that junior engineers are not exposed to. They also act as the sole interface to peer teams and higher ups, there by ensuring their presence/importance is known while controlling the growth potential of junior engineers.
Just leave Qualcomm.