This matches my experience over 15 years and four companies. This is not a scientific study but I can at least concur with your experience. There are clearly orgs that don’t work this way, but I find that it’s very common when chatting with my PM colleagues. The exceptional cases have been project managers for projects that involve wide scope, multiple products, or some other factor.

I’ve also found that in addition to the Project Manager turned Product Manager, there are plenty of Product Managers forced to be Project Managers and it goes poorly unless a Development Manager is willing to carry that.

The ultimate problem is that Project Management doesn’t go away just because a company eliminates the role. The same is true for Product Management. If you’re ok with your developers or someone else doing the work, and it is fruitful, great. For about a decade I tried as hard as I could to get one of the limited Product Managers for the products I worked on to very little avail. As a result I had to guess about price increases and other functions that I, someone with 70% of a CS degree and some extension courses in business topics, have to learn on the fly each time I face the challenge. I was successful but I am sure a real Product Manager would have done a better job.

The companies I’ve worked for typically have a cynical view of dedicated Project Managers but I appreciate that this is a specific skill for similar reasons to my Development Manager forced to be a Product Manager experience.

I have very rarely encountered a PM(any title) who lucidly communicated their value-add to the company. It is certain that, e.g., someone needs to assess the pricing of a product and how to position it in the market. But it's unclear that the vast majority of people I've worked with are performing that task - they are, to all appearances managing projects and doing secretarial coordination work (ticket munging), something experienced devs and managers can do straightforwardly up to a certain point.

I think its one of those roles that you don't need until product (project) scope is a certain point, but it's been glommed onto smaller companies as they mimic the big-corp designs. So it never quite works for those small shops. They really just need a Product Person, singular, who drives the thing forward, IMO.

As someone who has hired both, I really don’t see it that way. As another commenter mentioned, the difference is the capability for understanding the problem, being able to envision the right solution, and then manage all the moving pieces to make it a reality. The best ones are similar to startup founders.

> see problem

> envision right solution

> Manage all of the moving parts

Congrats you literally just described project management with extra steps.

Why not also be the developer if you can do that much already?

Because if you’re working on a project big enough, you don’t have the time to be a good dev or a good manager. As a developer I wanted time to think about how best to solve the problem I was facing, not writing documents, refining the big picture, get a buy in from the stakeholders, giving reports, making sure the other parts of the project kept getting along and so on. It was important for me to be kept in the loop, not doing it on top of my job. As a product manager, it’s the other way: I have a product that need to be there and so I’m trying to find a good compromise between the stakeholders idea, what would really work and what can be done with the ressources I have. That means sometimes I recommend to not start anything, but to buy a solution (then I need to validate that it will work as intended, that the budget and contract are ok and so on)

It’s another job altogether. That doesn’t mean I won’t follow the technological trends, educate myself or refuse to program anything. I wrote some postman script to validate what’s happening with our api, know the infra behind it, and can generally point people in the right direction. I have to know the product inside out to make educated answers when something goes wrong or if a decision is required.

It’s often a people job. And that’s something I try to share with the teams I work for.

We are not talking about a good manager here. We are talking about the one who can program manage to the level of lowest jira issues.

That’s not product management. That’s an under-qualified person misunderstanding their role. Product management is mostly a people job, understanding internal stakeholders, understanding customer, understanding the market, understanding the solution options, formulating and understanding strategy for the product, coordinating product marketing and documentation for the product.

If someone can do all that well, there’s simply no time to micro manage jira tickets

Even if they have the time, my rule is that nobody who does not understand the complexity of the solution (not the problem or the what) should be allowed anything more than watch rights in jira and standups. I would love to hear one non coding product manager who does not run jira in their org of more than 100 people.

The problem is that it is hard to be a product manger and own those tough customer metrics. It is easy to do jira and get credited for engineering work.

When I was a product manager for large computer systems back in the dark ages, I can pretty much guarantee you that none of the engineers wanted to spend probably the majority of their days on the phone with sales reps, in customer meetings, providing updates to management and other groups involved with product launches, writing technical sales docs, and reviewing marketing materials, etc. Many engineers liked sitting in on a customer meeting now and then as a change of pace but they (properly) wanted to spend the bulk of their time focused on actual engineering.

I had project were we hade not difference between po, pm and scrum master. No difference at all on what they did.

All those jobs do look the same because they are all bullshit jobs which infantile developers assuming they can't do and decide anything for themselves but write code on command.

Thank you

Project managers don't strategize or lead a vision of what the product should look like.

It sounds like your strength is more in project management than product management so perhaps that's why the organizations tend to place you in that role?

If it wasn't clear, i'm a product manager that started in project management.

The real problem is product management is hot, project management is old.

I've been around the block enough times at different companies to form that opinion and thats OK. Product management is consistently project management with extra steps. Those steps being business and market analysis to solve customer problems.

It seems businesses are starting to realize that.

What you're saying isn't new. It's part of the Product Manager job description. They have to organize their teams to achieve their vision. Even CEOs do project management if the company is small enough. Every founder does project management too. So do engineering managers and individual engineers.

You shared an interesting perspective, but ruined the delivery with the last line.

I think the problem with these two roles is actually the confusion about what each is. Usually the issue is a "product" manager not doing the ideating, not doing research, not enough advocating about what user needs or what the product should be. Instead they do too much "project" management which amounts to gantt charts, check-ins, and nagging about status.

I have seen that in all sizes and maturities of company that people view these roles as interchangeable and they are not.