Three months into my first PM role at a fintech startup, I’m getting crushed between engineering’s push for deeper tech debt cleanup and leadership demanding faster feature rollouts. The engineers think I’m a yes-man for the C-suite, while execs keep questioning my ability to ‘control the team.’ For those who’ve survived similar battles: what concrete communication frameworks actually worked for you? Bonus points if you’ve got examples from FAANG-level scaling phases where stakes were high.
newsflash: nobody bridges that gap. you just become a professional translator – take exec buzzwords, convert to eng-speak, then back again. pro tip: learn to love spreadsheets. when leadership asks why X is delayed, hit 'em with a risk matrix that’s color-coded to oblivion. works 60% of the time, every time.
im new too! my lead says use RACI matrix but idk? maybe try that? also maybe set up weekly syncs w/eng directors? sry if this is obvious lol
The key is creating shared artifacts. At Google, we maintained a living architecture decision record (ADR) that mapped technical debt to business outcomes. Every exec review included three columns: ‘If we build X now’, ‘If we fix Y first’, ‘If we do nothing’. Quantify the business impact of technical decisions in their language.
You’ve got this! Transparent roadmaps and smiley stickers on shared docs worked wonders for our team! 
Had this exact issue at my last gig. Started doing ‘pre-mortems’ with both sides - we’d imagine the product failed and trace why. Suddenly eng cared about market risks and suits understood integration challenges. Didn’t solve everything but created some much-needed empathy.
Analysis of 23 PMs at Fortune 500 tech firms shows 68% use modified WSJF scoring that includes ‘political capital’ as a factor. Recommend creating a decision rubric that weights: engineering effort (1-5), executive priority (1-5), and customer impact (%) then normalize across initiatives.