Hire the Pragmatist

Hire Product People Who Aren’t in Love with the Product

Wait, what? Let’s think this through.

A product manager who’s deeply passionate about the product seems like a no-brainer hire—especially if the product is designed for zealous, niche users. Their enthusiasm can drive innovation, ideation, and engagement with a particular group of users who live and breathe the space.

But what if your goal is to attract a wide audience?

Here’s the risk: a product manager too in love with the product may start designing for themselves—or the super-users—pushing the boundaries of the space and making decisions that feel cutting-edge or exciting within that niche. What the majority of users often want, however, is something that’s simple, functional, and just works.

The result? You could wind up with Homer Simpson’s infamous everyman car, The Homer: a product that’s over-designed, over-complicated, and misaligned with your audience.

A Lesson From Art

I once attended a famous art show in New York with an artist friend. As we walked through the displays, sometimes my friend lingered on a piece, but other times he breezed by. At the end, he asked me what I thought.

I told him, “It felt like eavesdropping on a conversation that’s been going on forever—self-referential, esoteric, and so far along that I had no idea what was being said anymore. Like when an old married couple argues and no one outside the relationship knows what’s going on.”

To my surprise, my friend said it was an apt description. He explained that many artists are indeed having a self-referential conversation, building on decades of context and nuance. For someone outside that world, it’s incredibly easy to get lost.

This is what can happen when product managers are too in love with their product: they start designing for the conversation rather than for the audience. The product becomes something that appeals to insiders while alienating everyone else.

Engineers, Take Note: Over-Engineering

This phenomenon isn’t unique to product managers. Engineers often fall into a similar trap with what’s commonly called “over-engineering.”

An engineer deeply invested in abstraction and code purity might design a system so complex, so layered with abstractions, that it becomes nearly impossible to work with, reason about, or maintain. They focus on creating a technically “perfect” solution, losing sight of the fact that most users don’t care about the elegance of the code—they care about whether the product solves their problem.

Sometimes, you need such an engineer to tackle a rare project that genuinely benefits from complexity and abstraction. But more often than not, what’s needed is pragmatism: simple, effective solutions that prioritize maintainability and usability over perfection.

Just as engineers shouldn’t always chase architectural purity, product managers shouldn’t always chase the cutting edge. Both roles benefit from balancing passion with practicality.

Focus on Metrics and Behavior

A product manager who’s a bit indifferent to the product—yet driven to excel at their job—takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on what’s exciting or boundary-pushing, they focus on metrics, engagement, and user feedback.

They’re not interested in pushing the product toward the bleeding edge for its own sake. Instead, they ask:

• What resonates with users?
• What behaviors are we seeing?
• How can we make this product intuitive and functional for the broadest audience?

Their decisions are grounded in what works, not what’s artistically or technically ambitious.

When to Choose Passionate vs. Pragmatic

This isn’t to say passionate product managers or engineers don’t have their place. If your product’s success depends on capturing a specific niche or leading the charge in an emerging space, a passionate, opinionated approach can be invaluable.

But if your goal is to create something broadly accessible and user-friendly, consider a product manager—or an engineer—who’s a little more objective. Someone who focuses on what users actually want rather than what the product could be.

In other words: hire the pragmatist.