VP of Product Management or VP of Engineering? Reporting structure

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I always get asked whether the Director of Engineering should report to the Vice President of Product Management or if the Director of Product Management should report to the Vice President of Engineering. There is a third option which is more prevalent in the Silicon Valley:  Product Management and Engineering has its own parallel organization. I have personally struggled with this question a lot as I have navigated through my career.

Product Management is all about the WHAT of the product whereas Engineering is about the HOW. Product management is responsible for defining the product both in terms of its form and its function. Form is fundamentally user interaction design and visual design whereas function is a prioritized feature list which delivers the necessary value to end user. Another way to put it is that Product Management is central for defining a valuable, usable and feasible product. Engineering, on the other hand, is responsible for creating architecture and building/developing the product. It requires an ability to figure out the implementation of the architecture on the product and have the operational excellence to deliver a quality product on time with the given resources. You could say that Product Management is more strategic while Engineering is more operational, however both involve creativity.

A VP of Engineering will not have appreciation for the product management functions and will reduce them to requirement managers, if product managers report to them. Similarly, a VP of Product Management might over-emphasize the product definition aspects, focusing mainly on customer features while ignoring the engineering, technical debt/architecture challenges. Also a VP of Product Management will rarely command the respect of engineers - especially in Silicon Valley.

I think there is no one right answer, but I strongly believe that there is a need for an alternative option:  a new position called VP of Product or VP of Product Development. I would advocate for both the Director of Engineering and the Director of Product Management to report to the VP of Products. The requirements of an applicant to fill this position could come from an engineering or product management background, but I highly suspect that someone who has never delved in engineering could ever be successful in this role. The ideal applicant for this role would be someone who has experience in the engineering field and then later migrated to product management. I think that at least 5 years in engineering and an equal number of years in product management would allow a person in this position to have the technical depth to lead an engineering team while also have the necessary training to think strategically about market positioning. The VP of Products would allow for a middle ground that could command the respect of both the functions and would result in delivering a better product.

I have started seeing this role being defined as above in various technology/internet companies in the last year. I am hoping this trend will catch on and will lead to better products. I will write more about this in future blog posts.