Alex Stein, Product Manager @ Facebook

Some engineers have told Alex that they’re meant to be coding all the time. They’ve said they’re “wasting their time if not building.”

Alex disagrees. He thinks that full product team — with PMs, designers, and engineers — will benefit if they all work on a strategy together before starting to build. “I respect them too much to tell them to do work that I’m not sure will be useful.” He’d rather they all work on the strategy first and then build with confidence. When he and his team follow this model, everyone is more bought in.

What if an engineer objects? Alex is happy to just give them a project. He’ll always give a caveat though: “We’ll probably want [insert project] done. We won’t know fully until we spec it out further, but if you’re looking for something to start on now, this feels like a good place to start.”

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