The dark side of product management no one discusses.
I have over 200 PM conversations; I'm breaking the silence.
The mental health cost of being "the person who owns everything but controls nothing."
5. You become the company's emotional dumping ground. The engineer is frustrated with deadlines, blames you, and the CEO is upset about slow growth. Blame the PM.
4. Success belongs to the team. Failure belongs to you. This is so true; any manager can relate to this thing.
3. You're expected to predict the unpredictable.
→ When exactly will this ship?
→ Why didn't we foresee this edge case?
→ What's the ROI of this feature?
2. I will tell you one thing: without authority, you have to create and build the impact, which is genuinely hard.
1. Work-life balance becomes a myth when everything is treated as ‘urgent.’ Many companies expect results overnight, almost like magic.
VP Product & Engineering • Observability & AI/ML • Software Platforms • Semiconductors & Systems • Built & Scaled Global Tech Organizations • 0→1→Scale • $50M+ ARR
1 month ago
True. But there’s a way out, of course — and that is to align everyone one outcomes and make tradeoffs transparent to everyone. Bring the data to the table, and your problems are solved.