Platform Product Managers: The Inglorious Bastards

Being a Platform as a Service Product Manager is a tough gig. Really tough! Why? Because we are the “Inglorious Bastards” of the Product Management world!

We don’t drive flashy things. People don’t actually buy our product. If our product is working and we have done our jobs, then nobody should ever know we are there. While other Product Managers drive highly visible things that clients love and increase revenue, we keep the lights on.

Often, we celebrate the heroics — meeting the client deadline, releasing that new flashy feature or swooping in to save the day. As a PaaS PM, if I am ever in the situation where I have to be the hero, I have utterly failed in my role. It means we suffered downtime or had a security breach which I take very, very personally.

The role reminds me of what the U.S. Navy trained me to do — operate the nuclear reactor aboard a fast attack submarine. In that role, the direction of the boat, the engagement with the enemy or anything not in my engine room is not my concern.

Consider this. If in a fire fight with the enemy the reactor overloads, everybody dies. If the boat is sitting of the coast of Hawaii and sailors are skinny dipping off the conning tower and the reactor overloads, everybody still dies! Day or night, Monday or Friday, the reactor cannot fail. The cost can be everything in both war and peace.

Being a Platform as a Service PM takes sacrifice but is fulfilling for anyone like me with a deep technical background and a strong sense of accountability. It takes real ownership of things to be successful but don’t expect to be recognized for it in the way other Product Managers do,

We are the “Inglorious Bastards” and we love it!

#paas #platformasaservice #productmanagement #cloud