In my eyes, a product manager’s role in the company is to glue everything together. For example, in a tech company, a product manager is responsible for bringing the designers, marketing, sales and engineers to an agreement, where they can make sure that the product vision aligns with the needs of consumers and business strategies. They are responsible for creating roadmap and strategies, and figuring out which features should be prioritized based on the needs of the company. In addition, as mentioned in the article, product managers are responsible for doing the “dirty work” and do the job that is not assigned to anyone, and make sure that all the work is complete with good quality. They have to roll up their sleeves and hold other people accountable to complete their side of the job.
However, something that I do not agree with from this article is that product managers are completely responsible if something goes wrong. Even though product managers are the planner and drivers of teams and projects, at the end of the day a product is the the entire team’s responsibility. The goal of product managers is to help drive a project, not babysit their team members when thing inevitably go awry. In addition, they are not CEOs, and even though they connect with management, they are just people that are trying to prevent a product from derailing. Therefore, my question for the author is why are they implying that product managers have to complete the planning, driving, and often the dirty work as well without getting any of the recognition?
