Respect the PM! — A Perspective of Resolving Tech Company Overtime Working

It is 6 pm. It is in Nanshan District of Shenzhen, where corporations like Tencent and Huawei are located. The streets are quiet. There are pedestrians, but it is just like any other street in Shenzhen. It is 10 pm. Large crowds of people rush out of the buildings. Open the taxi app Didi, and you will find more than 100 people waiting for cabs in one block. Yes, it is in People’ Republic of China, a country founded by farmers and workers 72 years ago. Today, 996 has become a norm for tech companies in China. This term means working from 9 am to 9 pm for 6 days a week. It first appeared in a movement called “996 ICU” where programmers posted their companies name to GitHub, an open-source website for coders to post their work and edit others’, if their employees force them to work overtime. In the project’s description, the editor wrote:” work 996, live ICU. No regulated work, family all tears”. Today, the project has over 250,000 starts on GitHub, with over 100 discussions under it. “Developers’ lives matter”, the official website of 996ICU wrote.

Engineers and developers working overtime does not take place in China unilaterally. As Labor Studies Journal pointed out in its research in Silicon Valley, California and Bangalore, known as the Silicon Valley of India, as the industry is rapidly blooming, “ICT (Information Communication Technology) production has not yet drawn the same kind of public concern about labor standards as the garment or footwear industries despite many parallels.” While efforts to raise labors’ treatment like unionization and government oversees are gradually taking place, there is another way tech corporates can adopt to reduce pressures from developers — pay more attention to the product managers. A more oriented PM can narrow functions of apps and websites to the essential ones, and eliminated redundant works for workers.

Overall, the ICT industry is experiencing huge economic boom since it emerged. Yet, due to its youth and success incompatible to its age, this field lacks experience of management. Without the sufficient number of successful precedents for tech companies to examine a right path of organizing human resources and creating desirable products, creating large projects and assigning massive work to labors become a probable solution. As a result, being given works more than one should have has turned to a norm for ICT employees. Reported by Information and Software Technology in May 2020, “Large project overruns and overtime work have been reported in the software industry, resulting in additional expense for companies and personal issues for developers.” As this journal pointed out, the overtime working is not only costing workers’ energy and devasting innovation, but also increasing extra fees for companies. Admittedly, these extra costs for companies may be nothing compared to the additional income they earn for exploiting workers. However, it is still a sign that companies need changes just as much as labors, and steps and reformations need to take place to make a difference.

How can qualified Product Manager help reduce work pressure? Against intuition that PM should be focusing on adding work, they job is to plan the design of products and make request for developers to achieve them. Like it was previously mentioned, this industry does not have a clear agreement on what is the best product style. As a result, many companies choose to win in quantity. They choose to add as many features as they can think of on their products, and provide as many options for users as possible. However, a real PM should do the opposite. They should only come out with features that users really need, and provide only one best option for users. It is like Steve Jobs’ philosophy: users do not know what they want until you show them. In that way, the unimportant functions get to be cut off, and there will be few works for developers to do.

Chinese app market provides a great example for over-assignment and poor PM skills. If I open Zhihu, an app similar to Quora and Reddit, I first see a section like Quora where there are questions and answers. Then if I tap another section, it will show an online shop for novels, podcasts, and lectures. If I continue to another section it will show a forum for different topics like Reddit. If I open Taobao, the online shop app, I will first see the front page for all the activities and recommendations. Then if I clicked right, I would see a forum page for shops to post their new products like Tweeters. There is also a Live page for celebrities and shops to do Live. These apps demonstrate what’s wrong with ICT companies nowadays: they focus too much on the technology, and as a result all these features work fine, but they don’t know what to focus mainly, so they add as many features as possible.

Despite the importance mentioned above of product managers, it is sad to admit that product managers are not treated well in ICT industry around the world. Tech companies often treasure technologies and geeks, so they would spare no expenses hiring good engineers and scientists. However, when it comes to product managers, they are not that generous. It is observed world-wide that although many PMs have more average salaries than developers, the money cannot compete with what top developers and tech leaders earn. What’s more, misunderstanding between PMs and developers as well as pressure from the above has brought this position pain and misery. Tensions between PMs and engineers happens on a daily basis, resulted from difference of knowledge and lack of communication. In 2018, a video of a product manager fighting with a developer went viral on the Chinese Internet. The event was occurred when that PM made a request to adjust the app’s color based on the color of the shell of mobile phones. Anyone with basic tech knowledge would know that it was impossible to achieve. Still, miscommunication and misunderstanding led two workers to a violence. The job as a PM is not easy. One must suffer from pressure given by the capitalists, the drain of creative ideas, and eye-rolling from developers. As such, it is crucial for tech industry to pay more attention to them. Companies can offer more benefits to attract talented people to work as product managers, they can also start serious of activities to increase connection between PM and developers or provide them with software development courses for them to make more accurate requests.

Undoubtfully, these renovations would meet with resistance. Given the uniqueness of the tech companies, opposers might argue that what is the most important is technology. Many people would believe that what drives the industry is innovation, so they should save those expenses at hiring better PM and use them to attract more geeks and researchers. On theory, more of these people would not only increase the atmosphere of creativity and innovation at the company, but also look good when going through IPO or attract more people to buy their stocks. Admittedly, technology is crucial to ICT industry. However, we should not therefore ignore the Product Manager’s role in managing human resource. With the right PM, people like developers and researchers can focus on their specific task and finish it steps by steps. As Silicon Valley north pointed out, “The best way for a product manager to achieve some kind of team harmony is to have detailed product management plans for each of the products being managed.” Hiring right PMs can achieve high productivity and efficiency, and therefore increase production and utilize workers. As such, it is safe to conclude that product managers are no less important than developers. Another argument against this thesis would be government regulation on overtime working is far more effective than focusing on product managers. Partly, they are corrected. In the short term, the effect of hiring better product managers could be little to be observed. That’s because when new managers are on, they first have to fight against old norms and cultures in order to make a difference. When we are looking at government overseeing, it seems to be a quicker and more powerful move. However, it is not a long-term solution. Although government overseeing seemingly is effective, it cannot solve the issue of heavy assignment and massive projects. In the long-term, either the companies will find a way to get away with those supervision, or they wouldn’t mind paying fees for overtime working because it simply costs too much to hire more workers than force current employees to work more. Focusing on PM is not a quick solution, but it will be the most effective one.

What can workers and companies get from better product managers? The decrease or elimination of 996 is a start. With more detailed assignment and oriented purpose, engineers will have less but more accurate work to accomplish. What’s next? With less tedious work to do, tech workers can focus more on learning and working on their own projects. It can lead to more innovations among the industry. They can also spend more time with their family and themselves, which is way more humane than getting stuck in their desks and do redundant works. For companies, given there are less time workers spend in the office, companies will gain some lose from fees created by overtime working like electricity. The innovative atmosphere can incent companies to make more exciting products and scientific accomplishments. The products designed by those PMs will be more attractive on the market. As a result, everyone wins.

In summary, the most effective solution to overtime working in tech industry to pay more attention to the product managers, as they are the key in designing products and distribute work. The current resistance in practicing this policy is in the management level, since many believes that tech industry is all about technology. Given many founders of tech companies are originated as tech geeks, it is fair for them to think that. However, in the long term, PM is the only viable option to solve overtime working issue permanently.