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Are Product Managers the CEO of their Product or Not?
The Great Debate
In 1998 Ben Horowitz, of Opsware and Andreessen Horowitz fame, penned a piece entitled “Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager” where he asserted:
“A good product manager is the CEO of the product. A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. They are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails. A good product manager knows the context going in (the company, our revenue funding, competition, etc.), and they take responsibility for devising and executing a winning plan (no excuses).”
To a certain extent, Horowitz’s words have become a mantra amongst product managers and purveyors of product management methodologies, training, and certification.
In 2017 Martin Eriksson wrote a retort to this piece entitled “Product Managers — You Are Not the CEO of Anything.” Eriksson asserted:
“Where the two roles differ completely is in authority. Product managers simply don’t have any direct authority over most of the things needed to make their products successful — from user and data research through design and development to marketing, sales, and support. Even today’s most senior product leaders only have hiring and firing control over their direct…
