Why is Product Manager becoming dream career for many?
its advertised as minj CEO role but what is the reality?
After working with lot of Product Managers as an engineer, I find the Product Management talent in India very mediocre
It's fancy by the name of it. Everyone wants to own end-end work right?
However, working real time with some of them, it feels that they are out of substance, and critically lack the feasibility and what to expect point of view. Now I feel, it's not such a great position after looking at these examples. Maybe a best product manager breed would be an experienced tech professional transgressing into the field. I am yet to find such examples. Else, PMs are neither business nor tech gurus. They only have influence and attitude to show
Yeah as a PM I have found lot of engineering talents really mediocre too .
PM as some kind of a specialised designation must be scrapped. Same thing with design 'specialists'. Techies must grow to the role of PM at mid senior to senior levels. Junior PMs with no tech experience are opinionated with no knowledge or just function as yes minister for engineers. God knows why these Indian start ups blindly copy things from the US.
Cause they don't have to do shit and get paid handsomely. Disguised employment is always popular.
To flaunt on LinkedIn
In the hiring and growth craziness post Covid, most companies needed people to just get projects out of the door. With good PMs and even any experienced PMs hard to come by, these companies dived in to hire freshers from engg colleges with 0 business experience, engineering experience, customer understanding and any other experience.
With no proper grooming into product, most of these PMs are actually just doing project management and drafting requirements from the top management blindly into technical PRDs. If you have not seen your peers counter the management and say NO or work to figure out the nuances of customer behaviour etc., you are less likely to do so yourself and are more likely to just be content being a feature factory.
Just posting a synopsis of Nir Eyal's book on Linkedin (and him actively seeking such posts and thanking the author :) do not make a PM.
Note: Outliers and exceptions are always there. Do not take the generalizations above to heart.