As an Engineering Manager, here are the top three ways to annoy a product manager.

1. Overusing “Technical Debt” and “Refactor”: This is the engineering manager’s equivalent of “pearl clutching”. It’s the privilege of obsessing over the perfect engineering process when everyone around you is worried about existential issues.

Executives are losing their minds over slipping schedules; customers are frustrated by bugs and missing features; the sales team is anxious about declining sales. If you’re invited to an urgent prioritization meeting and you think it’s a good time to raise issues related to technical debt and refactoring as your top concerns—congratulations! You’ve successfully managed to annoy your Product Manager.

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑃𝑀𝑠: This does not apply to security, privacy and unsupported version related updates.

2. Going Around Your PM for Pet Features: It’s particularly annoying when an Engineering Manager bypasses the PM to get a VIP in the company “excited” about their pet feature. Especially, the one you already pitched your PM multiple times and they spent significant time explaining why your “instagram for regular expressions” while “super cool” is not the next billion dollar idea you think it is.

Remember, even a casual mention in a 1:1 can sometimes get execs excited, leading to days of redundant discussions and meetings for the PM. Next time you see a precipitous increase in P1s after your elevator banter with a VP, it is probably because your PM got a slack message from their manager saying “Just heard from our VP and they are super excited about this idea. Please add it to the agenda for our 1:1 later today”

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑃𝑀𝑠: Don’t treat changes to the product roadmap like a constitutional amendment. It shouldn’t require a three-fourths majority and ratification from every department before considering a feature not in the roadmap.

3. Preventing PMs from Talking Directly to Engineers: Selling their vision and storytelling are important parts of a PM’s job, and direct conversations offer many advantages over group settings. Even the most trusting PMs need to gather feedback from various stakeholders in the engineering team other than the manager.

If an engineer uses their direct relationship with a PM to make your job hard, by challenging your decisions for example, then you need to work on your relationship with that person. Team dynamics are very fickle and can subtly change without you realizing it. PMs are perfectly situated to function as an early warning mechanism, so you can address issues proactively rather than hearing about them through your manager or employee surveys.

𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑃𝑀𝑠: Occasionally, you’ll learn something that contradicts what you heard from an Engineering Manager. Resist acting on this information unilaterally. Encourage the engineer to speak with their manager, or inform them that you will be doing so. Keeping the engineering manager in the loop promotes trust and transparency