Leadership definitely drives a lot, but even with bad leadership a PM can and should do a lot to help here. I spent 5 of my years of PMing with an operations org that drove every big decision and I still did everything I could to protect my devs. I ended up in major burn out from it multiple times, but I don’t regret it.

Alerts that are waking devs up in the middle of the night have a user impact too, and a PM can and should communicate that impact and risk to the business side as part of why it needs to be prioritized. Alternatively, there might be a reason that the UI change is ultimately more valuable, and it’s the PM’s job to communicate why that is the priority to their devs. If developers with a Product team ever truly believe the reason they’re building something is just “because [insert team here] is excited about it,” then the PM failed at a critical responsibility.

“that’s not good, but we’ll have to fix the underlying issue after we finish implementing the new UI the design team is excited about”

If this is happening, sounds like you have a shit-ass Product Manager (or no PM).

Signed, not a shit-ass Product Manager

I was going to call it a “small” city but Google told me that 300k is mid-size so I went with that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The city is ~350 sq km and our tiny downtown area is probably about 1 sq km, so the entire city is kinda like a suburb. Heck, I’m from Houston which is known for its urban sprawl, and yet there’s lower population density where I live now.

I’ll just use the same criteria you gave as an example.

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.5mi (2.6km)
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.8mi (2.9km)
• To the bus stop: 0.5mi (800m)
• To the nearest park: 0.3mi (480m) - I’m lucky to have several parks in my neighborhood
• To the nearest big supermarket: 2.1mi (3.4km)
• To the nearest library: 2.2mi (3.5km)
• To the nearest train station: 5.1mi (8.2km)

Edit: I live in a mid-size city (300k) on the east coast.

That’s a good one. A few others that help with my executive dysfunction are:

• “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” (It’s better to do something than to obsess over trying for the impossible goal of ‘perfection’.)
• “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” (This one helps especially with art and things I enjoy but struggle to do if I’m not instantly great at them.)
• “Laziness does not exist.” (This was inspired by a Medium article I read years ago which explained there is always an underlying cause of procrastination. Mental or physical ill health issues, uncertainty about the task, fear of failure, etc. When I am struggling to move forward, I now look for that reason and can begin to remove the barrier.)

HR response isn’t the only thing though. A number of years ago, my (F) partner (M) was sexually harassed by his female boss. He didn’t report it to HR, but he did sometimes bring it up around his friends. He had multiple people who base a lot of their identity on their feminism/acceptance/equality views tell him it wasn’t possible for him to be a victim of sexual harassment.

And then if he brought it up around more normie people, especially guys, the most frequent first question was, “Is she hot?”

The responses he got from so many people were part of why he never took it to HR. The other part was that she was smart enough to never do it in writing, so it would have been he-said-she-said. It was just easier to get a new job.

I want to know this answer too…

To clarify for anyone else who might be unaware: It’s not a toilet; it’s a bidet. It’s like a wash station for your underside, so you still do your business in the toilet but then come over here to wash. So, much like there’s no flush in a sink, there’s no flush on this.