r/ProductManagement • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago
Weekly rant thread
Share your frustrations and get support/feedback. You are not alone!
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u/el-desdichado 5d ago
Latest broken thing dictates the highest priority, and working on the previous broken-and-highest-priority thing is a waste of time. Lovely, never a boring day.
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u/SafeAssignment8962 5d ago
Another interview where I was in the middle of interview loops and the role was put on hold/canceled. On top of the ghost job, this job market is atrocious.
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u/Joatha 5d ago
I work in an organization where there are 31 product managers - including me. There are 5 directors.
Personally, I co-product manage our platform through which we sell other products with another person. Currently, I have full responsibility for 3 of our top 10 initiatives. I am a major contributor on a 4th. The other co-product manger of the platform is my teammate. She has 2 top 10 projects and is a major contributor on a 3rd ( she is awesome BTW).
She and I are the highest of any the product managers in terms of our title but it disturbs me that she and I are - on our own - carrying 50% of the important product initiatives and the other 29 product managers have the other 5 and 2 of those are getting a lot of help from us.
Its a lot of pressure and stress. And its been this way for a few years. Fortunately, my reviews and pay raises have reflected it (raises have ranged between 5-10% every year the past 3). I'm pushing 60 and still going strong in the tech world. I just hope the stock market continues its run so I can retire in a few years.
Thanks for letting me vent a bit.
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u/plippityploppitypoop 5d ago
AI is a powerful tool but when I see AI writing in a doc I immediately take both the doc and the meat proxy who sent it less seriously.
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u/saintgaybriel 4d ago
2 rants
Rant 1: I have been in this weird PM limbo where I am a PM across two unrelated products. On one product there are 2 of us working on the same product goals with the same dev team. On the 2nd product I share a dev team with a related internal product. I am PM over the external facing product and I proudly got it from nothing to general availability in 9 months. However this internal product is always taking precedent. On Friday I was told by our GM that I have to assume 6 months of zero capacity because a very important prospect who hasn’t signed a contract yet wants to go in a different direction… None of the other PMs on my team would ever be told that their product wouldn’t get capacity for 6 months… I just want authority over one product with a dedicated dev team like the rest of them do.
Rent 2: one of the PMs on my team is constantly going out of their lane and taking over high value product enhancements from other PMs. They are stepping on everyone’s toes and not being the most gracious about it either. They are also pissing off dev teams causing issues for the rest of us.
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u/Sensitive_Election83 1d ago
I used to do somewhat strategic PM work. Now i'm basically setting up meetings for people and making sure people do next steps. I get ticket requests from various folks and add them to the backlog. I get feature demands from the customer team and we have to bend our backs to ship something. It takes 10 meetings to define requirements and basically our architect is in charge of that. I used to have a scrum master who ran standups and backlog refinement and sprint plan, but now I have to do that. Have a new manager (a data scientist) who is taking control of all the meetings and dictating next steps in the meetings. We are a back end data / ai team. Big enterprise - not a tech company. On one hand, big enterprise seems more stable and not bad to have brand name + AI on the resume. On the other hand, I literally hate my job and am not learning anything as I'm just a gopher now.
should i stay or should i go now...
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u/spacenglish 5d ago edited 5d ago
AI everywhere. Slack messages. JIRA. Presentation decks. Spread-ducking-sheets. More note-takers than humans. AI generated documentation. AI leaderboards.