Lately I am seeing a lot more people talk about the fact that being a PM is a sub optimal strategy for an eventful career in Tech. However, let me remind you that people in tech tend to be predominantly engineers and they like the people skills needed to be good at making Products for actual humans.
I have personally witnessed PMs be great at talking to various teams in Engg, Design, Analystics and Operations. They are so good at talking that they forget that they actually need to work and not just speak all the time. I feel that PMs are all talk but now work and just chill around the foosball table all day. Once in a while they will go and flirt with that new chick that joined their team. In case the joke wasn't clear, "PMs are the cesspool of Tech". 😂
How many PMs does Snap have anyway? Is 20 significant?
As for if PMs are required - most PMs hired are already pretty sorted career wise in my experience (e.g. IIT IIM ISB, ex-Consultant, ex-IB, ex-Engg etc.). If their new roles were “made up” they’d have switched. Fact remains - PMs enjoy pretty high job fulfilment satisfaction vs other careers.
As for what runs on GV - as you said, most folks here are Engineers. the roles are such that there’s unavoidable friction so most opinions have anti-Product taste. If the democratic opinion on GV was correct a lot more of us would have been fired long time ago.
There are good PM job descriptions and bad JDs. Many startups dont define the role well which builds complacency and overlords of the PM role. PM is a on-ground CEO of product. He needs to own delivery, own collaboration and own planning timelines and get buy in from the engineers throughout all the process. Most PMs think their task is only fancy ideation and A/B testing- thats where the gap lies.
Ideally a PM should clearly analyse how much cost saving , time saving his role is causing the project.
PMs job main job is timely delivery and cost saving. Every pm should very clearly document it per project. That will give clarity of a PMs effectiveness.
Absence of above seems like pms do all talk.
The hate on PMs in GV just goes to show the engineers’ level of ignorance.
Maybe PMs at your company are shit.
I am reading very often that the craze around product management is too much and this career is not worth the hype. Adding on to that it has huge supply of PMs and many of PMs are underpaid. Is it true?
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