I believe Product Management is a really toxic role
- High pressure on timelines- business and top management shits on you if you don’t deliver on time
- 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
- Too much politics- business or a senior PM can steal your bandwidth anytime
- Lack of recognition- if it succeeds business did it, if it fails it is product teams fault (engg never gets blamed for shit)
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Worst part is Entry level professionals who are lazy to learn to code, or develop any other hard technical skill(marketing, tech know how, or even writing) + with zero professional experience think that Product Management is the option to get high bucks in the inflated salary market.
The best product managers amongst the experienced folks are ones that have transitioned from some hard skill based role. Product management is never meant to be a role for freshers unless the person has achieved something(can even be winning b plan competitions) or has had enough exposure to do a PM role.
Most new PMs these days quote Steve jobs, reid Hoffman and think reading books can land them a PM role. Dude you need to understand how a BUSINESS works and how it can be ENABLED via TECHNOLOGY. Jira par task toh koi bhi move karlega.
True.
Nobody tells engineers anything because they are so precious.
Product managers are tossed like a ball everywhere. First to be blamed. Timeline adherence is only pm's job, not engineer's apparently
Agreed. It's so tough to be in a situation where the devs give reasons why something can't be done within the deadline and you need to tell the management about this while having 0 control over this situation. Worse so when the engineering manager doesn't interfere with this and provide clarity on this.
And also, you are not the just the news-breaker. You are the punching bag. Like it's your fault that engineer can't finish the work within the deadline.
Engineering doesn’t get blamed ? Quite untrue. Only if expected outcome of that spec didn’t turn out then it’s product’s fault. Else it’s all on engg for delays, missed feature and what not.
Haven't seen this tbh. They are not blamed. There's a difference. It's just floated like oh this couldn't be done. But PMs are asked pointed questions that why didn't you make sure that it got completed. Huge difference.
Making sure it gets completed would work only if everything is technically possible and that is what was foretold before by tech to PM. Now when technical challenges arise and it can’t be done then engg. takes the blame. Any unexpected downtime also comes to engg. For PM it’s easy to say we already discussed this but the time when something was discussed, if engg. didn’t have enough clarity then we’re the ones with problems
The company culture would play a huge role here. There might be orgs where the product team has more authority given more resources. That being said, I've faced the same issues, mostly 2. & 3.
agree! and most of the companies in india have a business first mindset, incl many of the saas firms
As already pointed out by some other folks in this thread, most of the points you mentioned are symptomatic of cultural/leadership issues.
- This is true for most business functions in a high pressure start up environment. Have worked in a unicorn last few years, there's pressure on all teams (product, engineering, design, QA, program, marketing). Pressure on product is generally a bit higher because PM is ultimately responsible for the success of your BU/product.
- This is tough, but again part and parcel of the PM job. Other functions don't listen to you because they don't report to you, they work with you on the product. As such it falls on you to figure out the ways to get things done. This requires leading by influence which further requires you to invest time and energy in building these relationships and for them to have trust in your judgement. They will not do something just because you ask them to do it. You need to bring in a lot of logic and reasoning and data in your discussions and do these in a wider forum where you get them to align on things in front of other stakeholders.
- This is unfortunate. But think of this way, any corporate work environment will have some level of politics. You have to learn to play the game if you want to grow in that field. You need to figure out who are the influencers and muscle movers in your verticals and other verticals and look for ways to build relationships with them in work. Also if the senior PM who is looking for your bandwidth is not your reporting manager, you need to raise this with your reporting manager as to how this is reducing your bandwidth and how that is impact the currently aligned deliverables. Pressure will come from all sides, but it's your job to align the expectations whenever bandwidth is required.
- This is a cultural issue. Your leadership needs to do a better job in recognition of contribution.
But as a PM, i would advise you on something which I learnt quite late. It's very important to communicate your teams successes to the broader forum (CXOs, other BUs etc) via emails / slack updates etc. If you don't highlight these in broader forums, you are doing yourselves a disservice.
Al this being said, PM is a very glorified role in the last few years. Every tom dick and harry wants to be a PM because it's a cool title.
The day to day responsibilities of PM jobs are a tough grind. You need hard skills to do justice to the job but you also need a lot of soft skills to excel in this job and it's not everyone's cup of tea. Many folks realise this later and then either feel bitter or just feel disillusioned.
Unless you really enjoy building things, understanding and solving user problems in a way which makes the business successful, you will have a tough time in a PM role.
If you feel that way then you are not working in the right product company.
Try a startup and your views will change.
Most people look at PMs and think that their job is just to "tell" what feature to build. And the PMs on LinkedIn keep posting "inspiring" posts in the name of personal brand. All this creates a bubble that PM is a very sexy role. The day a PM fucks up n loses credibility, all the unsexy things start happening in his role which no one talks about.