PMing through and through

I’ve been insufferable at work since 2-3 months now. Total time at my company- 6mo 21 days. Profile - Product Management My engineering team seems to be taking no ownership and always have their brahmastra ready that it didn’t come from product’s side. QA again is so great that I have to sit and thoroughly test each release end to end. My manager- he’s quite interested in taking my career fwd as a project manager. (I am not) He’s a total asshole and is quite concerned with start dates and end dates of tasks ( mind you, I am not the one actually writing the code but somehow the dates are my responsibility). He totally micromanages and somehow keeps blaming me for each small thing. Examples: - My engg team isn’t taking ownership: “you aren’t keeping them motivated enough” - This isn’t a last minute change : “Do you attend standups? You aren’t communicating well” - The QA tested and approved it, hence we released it. : “But did you test it? “ - Here are the release notes. : “This looks too jazzy, did you copy from GPT” - Here are the release notes. : “This looks too basic, did you not copy from GPT” I could go on forever. Gust: I am quite unhappy and is causing me unnecessary stress everyday. Also I don’t feel there’s a solution possible

I'm wondering if there are actually any freelance or part-time opportunities for product managers. I have only seen PMs work in full-time positions. Is PM by design a full time function? Fellow PMs do share your 2 cents on this! 🙌

Worst part of being an APM is to get a bad PM as a manager who only does project management and doesn't take or care about your inputs. The project managers who dont understand anything about product management and clear interviews based on their sheer blabbering skills, jargon and experience but think they are the be all and end all of everything.

What are the unique problems that you faced working as a PM in a startup at various stages vs the ones in corporate?

I'm a product manager myself and I've been noticing this mentality. Founders of pre-PMF stage companies, having raised tons of money in the bull market in a last couple of years, have hired tons of resources with no clarity and vision whatsoever. They continue to ignore they're building a product nobody wants. They barely talk to users. On top of it, they hire Product Managers thinking it's a silver bullet and will solve PMF issues. It's founders responsibility to figure out PMF and not anybody's else. You need to get in the weeds and not throw money at problems. It just doesn't end there. These companies with average talent pool and the kind of culture that sets it top-down because of these average founders, expect PMs to own everything and fix everything. Everybody from Tech to Marketing shrugs off from the responsibility expect PMs to tell what needs to be done. This chutiya mindset of 'sit and wait' until a PM tells let breeds more inefficiency as output becomes slower as nobody is incentivised to think and take decisions. Also, everybody enjoys doing what are being told because no consequences if things blow up. Hire competent people across functions and get involved in product building. It's already too late to fix it if this resonates with you.

1. High pressure on timelines- business and top management shits on you if you don’t deliver on time 2. No power to control the outcome- engineers don’t listen to you neither does the design or analytics team, you end up begging for resources 3. Too much politics- business or a senior PM can steal your bandwidth anytime 4. Lack of recognition- if it succeeds business did it, if it fails it is product teams fault (engg never gets blamed for shit)