This is a very real problem, and one I learned to deal with for the just under two years I was in evangelism. It was a big shift from 'doing the doing' to tryin

This is a very real problem, and one I learned to deal with for the just under two years I was in evangelism. It was a big shift from 'doing the doing' to trying to influence the doers (product, engineering) from the outside. What I learned though was that I had a unique perspective into customer's needs since I was a partner to them and not trying to sell them anything (thankfully the company backed up this philosophy). Once I learned how valuable that perspective was, I was able to use those learnings to get leverage with the product team to effect change. So while it was a few degrees away from writing the code to make a customer's life easier directly, ultimately I got the same satisfaction from being the customer's advocate. And it made it possible to transition to a PM role.