Reading Matt Leave’s Product Management in Practice Preface and Chapter 1 really added to my understanding of what product managers do. In a previous engineering internship I had had, the PM was much more of a ‘Project Owner’ (the first definition, not the second one in Chapter 1) and so I had a very different perspective of what the job entailed. What struck me most was the story from LeMay’s first day, when his boss told him, “You’re smart. Figure it out.” That anecdote and the other examples really captures the ambiguity that is at the heart of the role. In theory, PMs manage roadmaps and deliver “products people love,” but in practice they live in that middle ground battle where they are clarifying vague goals, aligning misaligned teams, and nudging progress through everyday conversations rather than perfect frameworks and must-dos.
Personally, I understood the job as being less about being a “mini-CEO” and more about being a connector and enabler. LeMay emphasises that PMs are judged not on the code they ship or designs they produce, but on whether their team succeeds together. I actually find this point to be very interesting because it reframes leadership as influence without “authority”: helping people do their best work, even when you can’t directly control the outcome.
The main takeaways from the reading that I got were the ““lots of responsibility but little authority” ethos and how PMs are accountable for product success but rely on others’ trust to buy in and to “avoid the insecurity traps” which I believe can be applied to any role or team, but especially that of a PM.
- The questions I would have for the author are:
If a PMs role is to be a connector, how does this work when there are multiple PMs in a team or when there is an intern? What role do they have then? - How can newcomer PMs thrive in ambiguity and not get frustrated with the lack of ambiguity?
- With the increase in vibe-coding and other tools, do you think that there are going to be less SWEs and more PMs? Has the PM role become more important than the engineering one?
- Do you believe that a PM’s role should be ‘invisible’ for them to be successful in that role?
- Where do you see the future of the PM role? Will AI make it even more necessary? Will it be, like most jobs, somewhat replaced or simplified?
