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As others have mentioned, this is because unlike developers few companies hire PMs straight out of college. As a current PM, I'm actually fairly bearish about t
by dawhizkid 8y ago
As others have mentioned, this is because unlike developers few companies hire PMs straight out of college. As a current PM, I'm actually fairly bearish about the sustainability of this role as far as a long-term career outlook goes. It's an extremely nebulous role, hard to prove your value, wildly differs from company to company, and most of your time will probably not look anything like what is considered textbook "product management."
- luckydata 8y agoI'm exactly in the same boat. I love the job when I actually get to do what the ideal product manager job should be. It's very stressful, not very rewarding and it's very unstable work because EVERY fuckup down the chain will just be absorbed by the PM. We're always the first in line to be fired if someone else decided not to do their job (can be Eng, marketing, sales... doesn't matter).
- dawhizkid 8y agoYeah...I'm looking into sales engineering
- L_Rahman 8y agoThis seems to be the most common outcome amongst product people looking for an out. Sales Engineering has that "talk about the business," "talk about the tech," "talk about the people" flavor but with directly measurable outcomes, high transferability across jobs, and depending on commission structure and company - 2x-3x pay.
- ryandrake 8y agoYea one of the major up/downsides of being the PM is the buck usually stops at you. Priduct couldn’t deliver on its promises? PM is accountable. Product couldn’t sell? PM. Product getting bad press? PM. Product succeeds wildly? PM.
- luckydata 8y agoI would add "engineering lying to my face about the status of a highly visible product and then telling me we have 3 months worth of work left one week before launch". It really happened.
- BlackJack 8y agoI'm sorry to hear that, but something is wrong if the PM is that unaware of the state of the product.
- mud_dauber 8y agoExactly true. You have no idea what a great PM looks like until you work with one.
- Stryder 8y agoThe "wildly differs from company to company" hits home hard. It's like organizational schizophrenia and existential crisis had a child that got named "Product Management".