Product Managers

My uncle told me an interesting thing about how Bill Gates built his software company:

Such big corporation as Microsoft has a lot of secrets. To protect the business, Bill Gates built the company in a way that not a single employee knows everything about how its products work. How?

Every engineer is given one specific part of product to work on. The employee’s job is to develop certain small part of software. And he doesnt know how other parts of product work.

This way, even if this employee leaves to work for Microsoft’s competitor or leaves to open his own company, he will not be able to compete against Microsoft because this employee simply doesnt have enough knowledge.

Now, the interesting part is that some employees know more than others. For example: Product Managers. The job of a Product Manager is to lead a team of engineers, give each of them certain tasks individually, and build an entire product. Obviously, they know more than any single engineer because he builds “puzzle” from various parts to build a wholesome product.

This is why, product manager has to be somebody trustworthy, somebody of good character, proper reputation, and just a good person. Even if he doesnt have enough technical knowledge [hard skills], his character, leadership and people skills [soft skills] is far more important.