These would make awesome posters!

I think this is an overly simplistic dichotomy. There are definitely people who are "technical" who wouldn't be the ideal person to build out a big data startup's software (for example). As a founder, they might be more useful in shaping product vision, defining marketing strategy, doing business development etc, but not necessarily actually doing the hands on coding. Is this person technical? Certainly. Is this person building the product? No.

I second the need for a blog post on this!

Just bought the screencasts! Very excited :D

Same here. Looking forward to watching and learning a ton!

This is awesome! Thanks for providing such a valuable resources to Rails newbies!

Does anyone else see Notes as an Evernote killer?

In no particular order:

* Boomerang by Michael Lewis

* Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

* The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

* The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk

I absolutely love this idea - a very Silicon Valley way to deal with the shortage of quality developers!

This misses the point of what a product manager actually does, though. A PM isn't there to criticize your work or even to manage developers - that's more the project manager's job (or perhaps a lead developer's).

PM's at most companies translate customer feedback into concrete specs that devs can execute on. PMs usually do not have any authority over developers, but instead try to work alongside them.

I really don't understand why devs hate on PMs - they exist to let devs focus on code. PMs create customer personas, user stories, UI/UX specs, and business reports, which are all things that the majority of devs don't want to have to deal with.

> I really don't understand why devs hate on PMs - they exist to let devs focus on code. PMs create customer personas, user stories, UI/UX specs, and business reports, which are all things that the majority of devs don't want to have to deal with.

My issue with this is that most PMs do an exceptionally bad job of this.

Understanding the user is a task as complex as developing the application, and it's something that is best suited to a dialog between an actual UX designer and the software engineers.

Blindly implementing what the PM tells you to implement is an awful position to be in, and results in terrible UX and bored/annoyed engineers.

The engineers and UX designers should be driving the product boat. The PM (if there is one) should be relaying business priorities, and relaying back the technical/design context necessary to choose those business priorities.

If given the choice, I'd ditch a product manager every single time and replace them with:

* A UX/UI designer.

* Engineers interested in user experience

* Lead engineering architects

* A project manager to keep tabs on priorities and scheduling.

The UX designer is supposed to lead the drive towards superior user understanding, empathy in design through features that respect users.

The developer is responsible for defining what is technically possible.

The PM has to analyze the tradeoffs and negotiate a compromise that best suits the product, time available, and company objectives.

When the three collaborate, you have ONE product team. No party is superior or can stand alone effectively.

Then who talks to the users and analyzes their feedback? Who determines the direction of your product, manages the executive team's expectations (plays politics) and makes the tough go/no go decisions on features or entire products? That's part of what a product person does.

This article makes me happy to be a techy!