As a product manager who is a woman, we don’t talk enough about how sometimes our male engineers don’t listen to our judgement calls or how hard it is to draw the line in the sand sometimes. These are grown men easily ten years my senior, it gets uncomfortable. Has anyone here overcome this?

Call it out in a professional manner first. Say, “please let me finish” or remind them that you already addressed the issue or warned everyone that it would be a potential problem, etc. Be consistent and confident. They will learn how to treat you. Lastly, if the there is a misalignment of values with your current employer, it may be time to move on. Best of luck!

My best advice is literally to start acting like they do. These men only respond to the attitudes they themselves have. Go into every meeting with the expectation that everyone will listen to you and take your ideas seriously, and professionally call them out if they refuse. Get better at crafting sentences or statements that don't allow for random undermining or arguments, and don't be afraid to remind them you're the PM and if they have an issue they can schedule a 1-1 with you to discuss it at a later date. Take no crap!

I’ve faced this issue and what I did was to 1. Make sure I was very sure about what I was saying and 2. Always show up with my receipts.

There’s always that push back initially, but over time (after about 3 months) they got to see I was right about a lot of things and the things I suggested simplified their work and just helped things improve generally in the team. It was a lot easier to get my thoughts and ideas through after then.

It wasn’t smooth sailing the rest of the time, but anyone who wanted to take me on knew they had to “come correctly”.

I’ll also say I never ever ever say “I want it this way” or “it needs to be done this way”. Every ask I make of my engineers is couched in customer perspective or pain. It’s not ME asking for X, it’s the customer’s pain and here is a quote or example to elucidate that, and here is the proof we did prototyping/testing with the customer. How can anyone argue with that?

Product is responsible for synthesizing customer needs into a clear vision that is feasible and aligns with business goals, so every request you make of the team will simply be a synthesis of the needs of internal or external customers that ties to that vision. It should be inherently compelling.

Speak confidently and articulately, really know your customer and your vision. If they are resisting it’s possible you’ve not communicated your vision and proofs in a compelling way. I’m 33F co-founder and have male developers twice my age working happily for me. Take the time to really understand and empathize with them on a human level - have they been burned in the past? Perhaps they feel you have unreasonable expectations? Perhaps your stories are over-ACed, which cuts them out of the problem solving and brain storming? Engineers can be incredibly creative and a collaborative approach will empower them and make the product better.

If you’re 1000 percent confident you’ve done all those things correctly and there are still issues, it may be you’re working with a particularly crotchety individual or individuals and you need to shift your approach to keep the work moving forward - maybe take them out for a drink or lunch.

I like to communicate openly so if I feel like there’s an issue I’ll just call it out, e.g “I’m sensing resistance. What could be the reason for that? Would you help me get to the bottom of this?”. Usually it helps to bring issues to the surface rather than to hold resentment or criticism in. I have yet to have a bad outcome from this approach, people seem to like it when you level with them and don’t beat around the bush. You might be surprised by what you learn. Good luck!

I’ve faced this issue too and it helps when my manager steps in to remind an engineer I’m leading on a project. If the engineer is being dismissive during a meeting, like in the above comment, I’ve had to just interject to keep us on track

In general, we don’t listen to engineers enough. I’m wondering if you’re listening and being collaborative or if you’re trying to strong arm them into accepting a sub-par solution. One thing I’ve noticed here is that PMs think they should make all the calls. That’s not always best for the customer or the product.

It all boils down to confidence — if you’re not confident in yourself it will reflect in whatever you’re trying to communicate.

And if you’re struggling to find that confidence, fake it till you make it

**Long post but read to the bottom to see the most recent example of BS behavior from engineers**

I’m sure many of you can relate, but I’ve had multiple engineers straight up yell at me in the middle of a group (a call, dinner, the office) for stuff that was either unrelated to the conversation or had nothing to do with me.

It honestly doesn’t even phase me anymore, but no lie, every single time, the engineer will blame their outburst on the fact that they’re “working on improving their EQ”. I mean, maybe just be a nice human — shouldn’t be that hard?

Story time! So right now we have a lot of engineers in town from Europe for group working sessions, and last week I volunteered to coordinate some fun outings, including team dinners (huge mistake lol).

Last week we had a call to review the final agenda, and I shared that I included one person from company leadership on each reservation, since it was a great opp for the engineers to network and get some visibility.

Well apparently one engineer on the call didn’t like that idea, despite the fact that he expressed his excitement for this exact thing a week prior, but this time he FREAKED out saying it was w terrible idea and that we should absolutely not be doing that.

It was so bad that a principal engineer called him afterwards and told him to apologize — andddd like clockwork, he brought up good ole EQ while apologizing.

I experienced the same, my manager told me it was linked to confidence but I hardly believe it ( maybe in some cases) but tbh I’ve seen this behavior in previous roles as well. At some point we need to acknowledge that it’s unfortunately straight up linked to unconscious misogynistic biased.
And believe me, I consult my engineers constantly about wether things can be done technically or not. 🥹