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Because I see this sentiment (PMs have easy jobs and don't really do anything) a lot on HN, I want to offer an anecdotal counterpoint: I am a PM in San Francisc
by cmuguythrow 8y ago
Because I see this sentiment (PMs have easy jobs and don't really do anything) a lot on HN, I want to offer an anecdotal counterpoint: I am a PM in San Francisco and most of the PMs I know personally work extremely hard and add a good deal of value to their companies. I realize that as a PM I am biased towards thinking I provide value/work hard, but I can safely say I have never heard of anyone working in a PM role as easy/useless as the one you describe.
- opportune 8y agoI don't think all PMs have easy jobs or are useless, and I even know PMs who I think have kind of easy/unimportant jobs (not that I would ever tell them that about their job) who still take a lot of pride in their work and do work hard anyway. But I do think there are lots of PMs out there who essentially fill the role of "business analyst" who end up doing low-skill things that fall outside of easily-defined role-buckets. That's not the employee's fault so much as the organization's.
- chrisweekly 8y agoSeconding this. It's also worth noting that the salary ceiling for PMs is often higher than for developers.
- heurist 8y agoAs a small team's CTO doing both product management and engineering, I'd say product management is the more difficult role. Might be because I'm not as experienced, but despite having a natural aptitude for it and even after having gone through training and spent a lot of time doing it, I find the job damn hard. You're the broker for a lot of unstructured information and have to fend off all kinds of disruptive influences to land even close to where you're trying to go. I have immense respect for product leaders at innovative organizations.
- pts_ 8y agoThat sentiment comes from the culture of shitting on everyone other than managers, when anyone is capable of working hard or not.