Technical incompetence has always existed. Leadership incompetence has always existed. People at the wrong places and positions at the wrong times – has always contributed to the deaths of the companies, and getting clueless people for the technical roles almost always resulted in disasters.
NVTP stands for a Not Very Technical Person. This acronym I have been using for at least since 2018 to describe incompetent people who are pushed by themselves and others to pretend to be a competent technical ones.
For those who might pay attention, the word TECHNICAL in the acronym is not a technicality.
This post is not about a concrete person. This post is about technical incompetence, that not just seem to be rapidly growing but is being widely promoted for the personal benefit.
NVTP is a kind of an NPC(Non Playable Character) that is convinced by themselves and by the “Leadership “Team”” that they are able to execute technical tasks without deep understanding of the task itself. As long as they clearly articulate what they mean and repeat what was told to them – they are “good as gold”.
Important disclaimer: in my personal experience, there are many people that right in the beginning of the interaction declare themselves as not being techie or technology savvy. When they really mean it and act on it, then in my view, rather frequently they should not and cannot be classified as a NVTPs. It’s the post about those who think that they can, pretend they can, act like they can, but actually – they can NOT. Worse than that – it looks like there is nothing that can convince them otherwise. NVTP label is of course, can not be applied to the junior people, who are entering the market.
There is a huge myth in the technical world – that the NVTP are very good in any role they take, as long as they can do other parts of their role. They can write clearly (things that make no technical sense in the real world), they can comment eloquently and elaborately (“could you specify precisely on what 1+1 exactly is processed”), they argue through magnificent gaslighting – but they are hollow as it gets.
Nassim Taleb has mentioned such people in his “Skin in the Game” book, by showing how they occupy an empty space by pretending to escape. In a way, they are very much a part of the ‘IYI‘.
You think this is wrong ? Am I passionately exaggerating ?
Well, then:
– get yourself a car designed by a Product Team that does not drive, nor does have an idea how car operates.
– take an intercontinental flight on the plane that was designed by the people who would not fly it.
– grab some food cooked by a “professional leader in a non-food related industry” who has never cooked and has no skills for it.
One interesting key component of the NVTP’s existence is the fact that they really believe to be competent. They present great arguments about their technical knowledge, or ability to catch up really fast, but give or do not give them time, the technical knowledge won’t appear – no matter how many arguments or reasons are presented.
NVTP Product Manager might know what “their” feature does, but even after a decade on the product team still can not figure exactly what the product does or why customer use it.
Collecting the data pain points does not make you understand them, even if you are talking to the right people.
Writing a great essay with all the clarity and no real and future problem solving and with no real technical vision is utterly meaningless in the competitive TECHNICAL world.
Climbing up the corporate ladder does not make you competent. It makes you a competent corporate climber, but not a competent person nor a competent leader.
I have known a good number of leaders (good example would be some amazing GMs) of the SQL Server to be an extremely technical people – since 2012 I have had the privilege to talk to some of them (first as an MVP, then as a colleague). A good example was precisely in 2012 when over a dinner I have had a rather deep technical discussion with someone who, by their seniority, should have been far above those technical details, and who has been running around multiple events since 8 AM.
Yes, you do NOT HAVE to be very technical in order to become a leader of a technical product, but in order to become a GOOD technology leader, you have to be very technical (besides all other qualities that a product leader requires).
Is NVTP’s existence their own fault? Not entirely. Whoever gives NVTPs the platform and promotes NVTPs actions, while benefitting from their own competence, has an equal or even bigger part of the fault. Why it persists ? Remembering Steve Jobs classical definition “”A” players hire “A” players, and “B” players hire “C” players””. Hiring NVTP’s also ensures one’s existence, as they will seem to be competent, by the virtue of even having a tiny little T (technology knowledge).
With the appearance of AI, Product Manager role will shift gears into needing more and more technical aspects, because if you are asking an LLM something that you do not clearly understand, then you WILL get the result that will ultimately fail. As the Product Manager role shifts continuously more into the technical space, it might evolve in the space between Product Managers and Engineers. I might even risk to say that there will be more mergers, where Product Marketing, basic Design – all of the skills that a Product Manager is able to execute, they will start merging rather aggressively into fewer roles with more requirements. At least in the big companies.
But back to the technical competence and the vision – whatever Gemini/Claude/Codex/etc generate, if you have no vision – you are just catching up (and the gap will tend to grow since it is so easy to be productive), if you can’t evaluate the result – it does not matter if you try. Your dashboard won’t signal that the plane has no more fuel, your car brakes will be removed as the driving experience get “optimized”, or your database will have great monitoring and no real-world functionalities. Even if you get a “great” recommendation from the modern LLMs, you quite probably will be catching up and leading is quite different.
For quite some time it has been very clear to me that Product Managers will merge with Engineers and Project Managers, and this merger will be a significant disruption for NVTPs.
A final note: I have written this post so long ago, I can’t even remember a date. What triggered me to finally publish this post is that today I just saw a video with Satya Nadella talking about LinkedIn merging of Product Managers, Designers, Frontend engineers & Backend engineers into a single role – full-stack builders (https://x.com/realbigbrainai/status/2038217170996629731?s=48).
Yeah – that is the beginning of the great integration.