Never really hear about this, maybe given the prestige of the role. But does anyone regret becoming a PM?
Lol prestige of the role?
I regretted it and that’s why I changed roles. As a PM, I incorrectly thought that the quality of ideas, specs, and the success of the product was how they judge you. While some of that is true, there was far more politics, show business, and self promotion involved than I was comfortable with. I believe the problem is mostly middle management who put their personal goals and perception of progress ahead of making what the company needs. That leads to you having to do an awkward dance that suits the career ambitions of the manager and leaving less time to focus on what matters. The dev team and I agreed on what we needed to do, but middle managers kept getting involved and making us do things that weren’t in the best interests of our users or the company frankly. If you ever want to be a PM, you better make sure your management chain shares your real goals, otherwise it’s hell.
What did you change to?
At Google I haven't seen PMs write even 1 pagers. Forget 6 pagers. You can claim anyone's impact as your own. At Google they get paid very well for the output they produce.
I guess there's a lot less politics at Google compared to Microsoft.
Prestige or the role? Lol what?
Every now and then I start to seriously think about going back to working as a developer. As PM I feel stressed all the time, and I'm not even getting paid more. I'm still a PM because I don't want to be a quitter. This would add more damage to my already slowed down career progression.
Lmao if a PM ever got paid more than developers we’d see developers changing careers in droves. Then who’d actually build the product ?
no, I'm not saying that PMs should get paid more than engineers. What I meant is that if I didn't shift career to become a PM, I could have got one more promotion by now, which would have increased my salary. (I already had 10 yoe as an engineer with good track record) When I shifted career to become a PM, I lost that momentum. I'm now doing more effort to be an average PM. Also, promotions now are harder to reach. Also the unspoken rules of the game are different, and it takes time to really capture all the tricks about PMing that I used to know about being an engineer. Also that was not a surprise. When I decided to shift career I wasn't looking for money. I was looking for more challenging job. Now after the novelty effect is gone, I feel that the whole "find a more challenging job" is bullshit.
Does anyone really regret getting paid to do nothing
Ouch. Them 6 pagers aren’t going to write themselves.
Pretty sure all 6 pagers are just copy pasted from other 6 pagers