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A review by btwalsh
Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products by Chris Jones, Marty Cagan
3.0
Kind of mediocre, despite the hype in product/engineering circles.
This book gets a ton of attention, and it escapes me as to why. It’s massively longer than it needs to be, has a rather preachy writing tone, and doesn’t actually go deep in anything despite the length. It also seems more primarily as an on-ramp / advertisement for “hey please read my other book and buy consulting hours from SVPG to fix your broken outdated company”.
If you’ve worked in product or any kind of software creation role (dev, design, etc.) for 5 or so years, nothing in here will be new to you.
This book could be a good reference to very early career product managers trying to understand some of the basic concepts like OKRs and understanding customer problems rather than their imagined solutions, but it is targeted toward product leadership, who should know this stuff backwards and forwards.
One additional nit beyond the writing voice: early on, Prof Galloway is cited as a reference, which is a bad sign for anyone who pays attention to the industry. I’ve got the top Goodreads review on his book, “The Four”. Go check it out to find why I’m immediately suspect of anyone who finds him to be a valid voice in the tech industry.
This book gets a ton of attention, and it escapes me as to why. It’s massively longer than it needs to be, has a rather preachy writing tone, and doesn’t actually go deep in anything despite the length. It also seems more primarily as an on-ramp / advertisement for “hey please read my other book and buy consulting hours from SVPG to fix your broken outdated company”.
If you’ve worked in product or any kind of software creation role (dev, design, etc.) for 5 or so years, nothing in here will be new to you.
This book could be a good reference to very early career product managers trying to understand some of the basic concepts like OKRs and understanding customer problems rather than their imagined solutions, but it is targeted toward product leadership, who should know this stuff backwards and forwards.
One additional nit beyond the writing voice: early on, Prof Galloway is cited as a reference, which is a bad sign for anyone who pays attention to the industry. I’ve got the top Goodreads review on his book, “The Four”. Go check it out to find why I’m immediately suspect of anyone who finds him to be a valid voice in the tech industry.