Product manager is an unusual role. There are few positions, making it very competitive. It's also an expensive role to interview and hire for, and the conseque

Product manager is an unusual role. There are few positions, making it very competitive. It's also an expensive role to interview and hire for, and the consequences of a bad hire are high. The market dynamics are totally different from software engineering. PM positions come up infrequently and they're often looking for someone quite specific. Prestige also seems to factor into it a lot: I think every PM I've worked with has had a Stanford or Harvard MBA. My recent experience as a senior engineer was less gloomy than this. I applied to ~10 open positions whose needs matched my experience well, was offered an interview at 5, and did 2 full interviews which both resulted in decent offers. My comp decreased slightly (from FAANG-level) but was still reasonable. I also applied to ~5 companies that I knew were a long shot (i.e. no well-matched positions, or significantly more competitive than Google/Meta) and heard back from none of them.