The Good
Let’s start with the positives, even though they are much better documented. It’s pretty easy to “fake it till you make it.” I am not alone in feeling the imposter syndrome. Yet, a huge part of being a PM is just asking good questions, learning, listening, and trying to be impartial. Coincidentally, that is exactly what you should do when you don’t know what you are doing—just try to learn.
And honestly, it’s really fun. People like to harp on the challenges and skills you need to be a PM, but I feel like no one talks about how enjoyable the job is. You’re in the middle of strategy, business, design, and customers. Every day is about solving problems. It is hectic, yes, but it is also very rewarding.
There’s another thing: people like you. It’s shallow to admit it, but the truth is, as a PM, you are delivering value to your company and stakeholders. People appreciate that.
The Bad
But let’s not sugarcoat it; it’s exhausting. Even if you’re an extrovert (which I am not), spending hours in meetings, collaborating, and navigating requirements is exhausting work. The pressure can be overwhelming.
When you do badly, it all goes badly. When things are in sync, being a PM feels almost easy. But when the wheels start to come off, it is brutal. Deadlines get missed, you screw up MVPs, you piss off stakeholders, and you feel backed into a corner. It really isn’t fun to let down other people, but it really sucks when you let yourself down. Since so much of the PM job is interacting with internal and external stakeholders, your successes often feel hidden while your failures feel public. A lot of times, it’s because of things outside of your control too.
And then there’s the hard part: saying no. You have to say no a lot as a PM. Often, it is to people that far outrank you, like your CEO. There are countless books written about this topic, but no one is open about the fact that saying no kind of sucks. It feels good to give people what they want. Even though saying no is the right thing to do, that doesn’t make it easy or fun.
Product Manager ❌ Product MisManager ✅
hello
The good: Not so much. You get to coordinate up and down the hierarchy. Learning is part of every job with some transferable skills and others not.
The bad: people hate you. Cos you would waddle your way into discussions seeming confident about things others know more. If you don’t, they don’t rather you seriously.
The truth: for early stage companies- you are the call guy for CEO to blame when things go wrong. A glorified translator who would expand on guides from the ceo. (If a CEO is not closely involved in product, it’s doomed anyway). Just that the role needs to be built up to be taken seriously,
For later stage companies, changes are too incremental to have a huge impact anyway. Some do, but mostly impact comes from scale.
Even for a company like meta, most impactful growth decisions came via the CEO.
Good: It is a great stepping stone for future entrepreneurs. Being in middle of all gives a unique perspective. You get to solve real problems and feel fulfilled.
Bad: it is a qualitative job so you many times may not know if you’re doing well or not. Best is to marry KPIs and metrics but still one loud unsatisfied voice can bring doubts. You need to know more than the CEO. Period. It will take time but you need to understand the customer, market and product better than the founders or execs in order to influence decisions. Also beware a lot of companies disguise project management under product management and that part sucks.
The imposter syndrome is real and especially when there isn’t a lot of credit for successful stuff.
One quote that I always keep on my mind is by Ronald Reagan - There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.
Product managers are a divisive bunch. Ask us what we do, and most of us puff our chests and babble about Steve Jobs, PMF and god-knows-what. The rest slouch and mumble something about writing JIRAs.
Curious about how non-PM folks view ...
Note - I am a product manager too
4 out of 5 product managers will act all high and mighty of themselves, bragging their way as if they run everything going on in the company, flaunting their business degrees and being utterly disresp...
As a PM I would say it is to delivery high quality product in less time. 🕰️
Here is an incident that happened to me at my old startup. This literally gave me a wake-up call that shattered my "PM is mini-CEO" idea that all my mentors had told me about.
During a heated product roadmap + prio meeting, the actua...
