Spotify, Airbnb, and Zappos organize their product teams in vastly different ways. The people who decide what gets built are the product owner within each squad, the CEO, and the circles, respectively. The product manager sits inside the squad (reporting to the tribe lead), in a combined product management and marketing function, and nowhere (there is no PM, only roles within circles), respectively. The PM’s authority over what gets built is moderate (the PM sets priorities, but engineers report to Chapter Leads outside the squad), low (a central team makes the decisions), and not applicable (authority sits in circle roles rather than with a PM), respectively. I would choose to work at Airbnb because I work best in a clear hierarchy, and Airbnb has the clearest of the three companies. Some may critique the Airbnb model because the PM has less authority, but I believe that tradeoff is justified. When the pandemic wiped out 80% of Airbnb’s business, a single decision-maker was able to cut 80% of the roadmap and take ownership of one central plan, a decision that would have been nearly impossible with authority spread across many teams. Unlike at Spotify, where no one was clearly responsible when a squad failed, I will always choose to know who is accountable and why a decision is being made over having nominal ownership of what gets built.
(Submitted on time via Canvas, attaching link to blog post)
