We all know how to be great PMs, don't we. The hard thing is to be a bad PM. There aren't many of those, so in an effort to even out the distribution, I thought I'd give some pointers on sucking as a PM.

Lack of Empathy

Show little concern for customer needs or team dynamics. When people disagree with you, for instance, don't ask about their thinking or worry about their feelings. Just get really passive-aggressive or mean. If you can get away with it, shout.

Micro-Management

Constantly micromanage your team's every move and decision. You're a better engineer than any of your engineers, anyway. After all, you took that class on Python a few years ago.

Arrogance

Act condescendingly towards others and believe your ideas are always superior. You're the PM, after all.

Lack of Transparency

Keep crucial information to yourself and avoid sharing updates with stakeholders. The best job security is having lots of little secret stashes of knowledge that only you know about. Those stashes make you very good to work with and very hard to replace.

Ignoring Feedback

Brush off feedback from customers, teams, or colleagues without considering their perspectives. Best never to acknowledge that you got it. Especially high-paying clients like to be ignored. And if you're B2C, all the better. Eff the customers. They're all dumb consumers anyway, right?

Overpromising

Make unrealistic promises to customers without consulting with the development team. Overpromising is important because otherwise it's very hard to underdeliver.

Negativity

Continually criticize team members and focus on failures rather than praising achievements. Because morale is overvalued in most corporate culture.

Blame Game

Shift blame for mistakes or missed deadlines onto others rather than taking responsibility. Another key part of job security is keeping a steady supply of goats to skape and and teammates to throw under buses. People love that shit.

Poor Communication

Fail to communicate clearly or effectively with team members and stakeholders. Especially when the status of a release changes from green to yellow. That's small news and you can probably fix it before it goes from yellow to red, anyway. Also, when clients have been waiting for months or years for a feature, they don't really care.

Unresponsiveness

Be inaccessible, unresponsive, and fail to address urgent issues. It's best to avoid Slack and email. Setting up customer forums and then ignoring them is a great gag.


With a little help and some good mentorship, I'm sure some of us will manage to end up as totally sucky, douchey, useless product managers. Good luck, team! You can do it!