> engineering has to get involved in some level of detail to understand what has to be built anyway Of course, that's a big part of the role for a senior engin

> engineering has to get involved in some level of detail to understand what has to be built anyway Of course, that's a big part of the role for a senior engineer. But if you're building a real product, and not just a collection of random one-off features that customers ask for explicitly, then there's a whole set of work that needs to be done to enable good decision-making. It starts with defining who your customers are and what are the problems you're trying to solve for them. It goes all the way through gathering feedback from customers in a meaningful way. > I would rather encourage engineers to get involved and understand the domain and the project than rely on this role. The fact that you use the word "project" is interesting. If someone comes to you and says "here's a project I need you to build for me" (could be custom development for an external customer, could be an internal stakeholder who gets to dictate custom development) then the role of product manager doesn't make sense. If, instead, you're building something based on a need that you believe the market isn't meeting, then the role of product manager makes a lot more sense. The product manager IS the stakeholder in this case. They are the one identifying unmet needs in the market, possible customers, business problems to solve, etc. For a team trying to build something new that is expected to be sold to lots of customers, just the part of defining the market is hugely valuable, because it gives the team a starting point to evaluate any solutions they come up with.