How to be a program manager

What does a program manager do?

1. Design UIs
2. Write functional specs
3. Coordinate teams
4. Serve as the customer advocate, and
5. Wear Banana Republic chinos

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It is possible to be an effective program manager without being a coder, but the burden of earning the respect of the programming team will be higher.

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How do you learn to be a Program Manager?

Mostly, becoming a program manager is about learning: learning about technology, learning about people, and learning how to be effective in a political organization. A good program manager combines an engineer’s approach to designing technology with a politician’s ability to build consensus and bring people together. While you’re working on that, though, there are a few books you should read:

As far as I can tell, Scott Berkun’s book Making Things Happen is the only book that’s been written that pretty much covers exactly what a program manager has to do, so start with that. Scott was a program manager on the Internet Explorer team for many years.

Another big part of the program manager’s job is user interface design. Read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, then my own book User Interface Design for Programmers.

Finally, and I know it sounds cheesy, but Dale Carnegie’s 1937 book How to Win Friends & Influence People is actually a fantastic introduction to interpersonal skills. It’s the first book I make all the management trainees at Fog Creek read, before anything else, and they always snicker when I tell them to read it, and love it when they’re done.

Huh.

I’ve been having a big pity party over the past year and a half.

I’m too old.
I don’t have a degree.
I’ve got a crappy dead-end job.
I can’t get a real job without a degree.
I can’t afford to get a degree.

Anyway, what the hell could I do? In my 30 years of working for a living, I’ve not seen anything I really wanted to do. I’ve gotten involved in things like technical writing, involved to the point of forgetting to go home at the end of my work day — but I’d need a four-year degree to go anywhere with that. Back in college, I got involved like that with computer programming - but I’d need a four-year degree to go anywhere with that, too.

But that list — design UIs, write functional specs, coordinate teams, serve as a customer advocate - I could DO that! I could even wear Banana Republic chinos (although I usually buy Dockers).

I may look into becoming a software Program Manager. I’ve got “month-end” coming up next week at work, but after that, I’m going to pick up Scott Berkun’s book and see if being a Program Manager still seems like a good idea after reading that.

According to DailyKos commenter Ralphdog (a rural family-practice physician), those programs involve a LOT of paperwork for the doctor - so much so that some doctors won’t fill out that paperwork without charging the patient (who can’t afford their medications, remember) a paperwork fee. So the pharmaceutical companies don’t seem to be knocking themselves out to make these medicines available to low-income patients.

OTOH, people with reasonable insurance will probably hear those blurbs at the end of the commercials and think, “Well, that’s good. If the pharmaceutical companies are helping out, I guess I don’t need to be concerned.” This is straight out of psychological studies of “Social Proof.” Robert Cialdini writes about this in connection with the Kitty Genovese case, IIRC.

MSNBC’s Helen A.S. Popkin goes step-by-step through Facebook’s recently changed privacy setting, giving what I think is very useful information about the settings changes that need to be made. This is NOT the useless “Un-check the ‘Allow indexing’” advice that’s currently making the rounds of email and Facebook Status messages. Setting your Facebook privacy settings correctly takes more time than unchecking a single box - but Popkin’s advice can help.

With this routine, you’ll immediately follow intense iron work with explosive exercises like pushups and box jumps. By combining both in a back-to-back sequence, you’ll improve your overall athleticism, and speed the fat-burning process.

Weight work and plyometrics will build fast-twitch muscle, but they won’t burn fat. Slow-twitch muscles burn fat - fast-twitch muscles burn carbohydrates and creatine phosphate. The only way the above workout would enhance fat-burning is by raising the heart rate, like low-to-moderate intensity cardio exercise. Once the heart rate is back down to the resting level, metabolism drops as well.