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It is a job where your goal is to try disappoint people most slowly. You are pretty much rigged to disappoint everyone. Gotta spread that around though. Marketi

It is a job where your goal is to try disappoint people most slowly. You are pretty much rigged to disappoint everyone. Gotta spread that around though. Marketing, sales, and the business end all have expectation of perfect execution, on-time delivery, bug free, and the development, testing, support teams all just want realistic requirements and timelines. Somewhere in the middle is the island of slight disappointment that makes everyone only slightly sad. I enjoy the challenge, but it is not for everyone.

samstave 8y ago
This was very well put. And one of the hardest topics to navigate in an interview process: "how would you handle a case when peron X is failing to meet requirement Y or delivery date Z? I freaking hate this question as there is no magic answer aside from "whatever it takes to minimize the overall negative impact of the outcome for the company/project/product"
- x220 8y ago
  That's a lot like asking "how would you turn water into wine?" Manage expectations and deal with angry people (aside from, in your example, mitigating those failures in the future).
  - pm90 8y ago
    That’s the joke
capkutay 8y ago
Its also basically impossible to avoid office politics as a PM. Suddenly you're in a role where you have to make decisions that come down to opinions. And you know what they say about opinions. You can justify and be as transparent about the process as you possibly can be, but you'll still have people in other parts of the business that have their own assumptions and disagree...and suddenly there's stress and friction in the job.