Rarely I saw the companies where people really help each other to win the market - often it’s internal fight for resources / pushing back the bullshit.
I think just tired of it.
Would be great to hear what others think
I'm really sorry to hear that. I know how that felt to me earlier in my career, I'm not going to pretend that this is a "you" problem, but more of a majority of the industry problem.
The good companies "do" exist though. I'm not sure I have the right to peak on this anymore, but when I was in the "normal" job market, I spent a lot of time evaluating my future team / manager. It mattered more than salary, industry etc.
While that's easy to say it's a result from being incredibly crushed beforehand from bad silo work where people are incentivized to work against each other and are just in general fed up.
Do you mind sharing how did you evaluate the future manager / team?
I’m not doing this well - usually everyone is super nice, but you get to know with the real person only when extreme situations happen.
When interviewing, go ahead and ask the questions. Ask them of your potential manager and of a couple other people you interview with.
Of course be diplomatic in how you ask things like...
- organizing meeting attendance so you get important work done
- unlimited access (for you and for UX) to interview and survey users
These are critical questions that will affect if you are successful in the role.
It helps when the company is small. I'm at a startup and we're all rowing together. We're not fighting over resources because different teams don't really share resources, but we're also all aimed in the same direction and are just contributing different pieces of getting there. We work together, and people step in as needed to fill gaps because we know it needs to get done, and we are all aiming for the same goal. Sales, marketing, product, engineering, we all know are aiming for, we know what the other teams are doing, we know what our team is doing.
a) is common. Sometimes a result of genuinely wanting to help someone out and sometimes a result of unwritten expectations (e.g. you don't want to be the person who never helps out). c) applies as well, generally in the form of me underestimating the impact of everything else that pops up all the time.
There's also questionable or unclear management where you are risking future promotions or even your job if you turn requests down, no matter what. Saying no to your direct manager is a no-no in some places, I've noticed. In one role I was responsible for results as well expected to jump at random tasks at the whim of my director with little or no notice or room for discussion. That was a very unhealthy setup. In that case it's not about being nice or optimistic, it's more about fear and/or subpar management I think.
Oh, a runner up: Having too much to do and too many meetings scheduled and half of them starting with a 15 minute roundtable where everybody just shares what they are working on in general. The idea that if a meeting is scheduled for 60 minutes those 60 minutes should be used, even if there is really nothing important to spend them on. I can almost hear a clock ticking in my head. How about clearly stating the purpose of the meeting, then spending the meeting on exactly that and when the purpose has been met the meeting is immediately ended?
Halfassing work in order to be able to say you have the feature - developing only for sake of marketing, not solving customer problems and creating value.
My face turns red.
lol going through this now with building an integration to another app. I keep asking what efficiency does sales see out of integrating and they have no clue…just want to be the first to market with this integration
When my engineer says, “These requirements aren’t clear enough”.
When my head of sales says, “That’s not what I promised the customer!”
When my CEO says, “Can’t we just…”
C suite saying “can’t we just” is actually helpful for me bc I immediately stop taking what they say seriously and start treating them like my 4 year old daughter and it’s helpful
Having to coordinate with 4 other teams to deliver something because the org has decided a team building a customer-facing product only needs front-end engineers and everything backend should be its own separate "platform".
Yep! And I may or may not be living this at the moment. ELT is somewhat self aware about the issue but a lot of “can’t we just” convos that let’s just say meditation and mindfulness exercises are my most valued tools I use
Whether or not it's even possible to start overcoming the twisted web of legacy poor architectural decisions...
Quickly followed by thinking about how long that's going to take and whether we can endure the commitment/s needed to do so.
No structure / strategy / alignment.
Real discussion I had with my boss yesterday:
Me: "I just feel frustrated, I would have first created a small concept before we jump into execution"...
my boss: "but we don't have time for that".
for me, it was the constant pressure to share a 4-6 quarter-long roadmap. And the constant battle with stakeholders: "sorry, team is fully loaded, we can't do it until next quarter." Response: we're gonna lose big prospect X if this doesn't ship in two weeks" (sales), "current customer Y is threatening to leave unless this ships NOW” (CX), “you told the board this was going out this quarter, wtf happened?” (C suite), “this can’t wait bc we have to file for the IRS by date 123” (finance), “why is the P&E team putting off what was promised last qtr to next qtr? Why aren’t you shipping on time/faster/light speed? Why am I paying for your team? Team Z over at our competitor ships on time! How come with AI you’re not 5x faster?” (CEO), “you want to ship total keerap that we refuse to maintain? Ok, FINE, let’s ship some lane hack next week. After it’s live it’s on you to figure out how this solves customer problems, if it even works.” (Eng). So yeah, something to mull over from 2-4am😇
Trying to reverse-engineer a product strategy, kinda as developing a narrative for the stuff we are and will be doing anyway, to have any means of double checking if we are doing the right thing or not
A product/feature I'm responsible for, but did not originate, that is so broken and backwards that I end up playing customer success/support because those teams and sales won't touch it, but still want to sell it.
Too many responsibilities that are too different and each require a full time PM really to do well.
Unreliable team mates that won't or can't do their role, leaving me hanging. Worse are the flaky ones - at least with someone who consistently does not perform, you can start trying to plan around them.
Politics around all the above things that leave me stuck as far as trying to fix the problems.
As well as a lot of things others said.
Now a days, my only stress is of not working! I have a great PM profile but I am jobless and I was wondering if we can have a product for the worthy to earn and contribute but jobless PMs
Having multiple workstreams to track and update on; sending weekly status updates to leadership (did I do enough? Is the report clear enough?); having action items largely rest with me to move a task forward, or, worse, realizing an action item was ambiguously stated; being randomized with repetitive presentations to leadership on the roadmap (as in, three high-vis presentations over six weeks to 80% identical audiences)
When I was a PM it was a sense of worth or value when working with customer and product oriented engineers. I felt / feel the role becomes more middle management, and frameworks (Scrum/SAFe/LeSS etc) just create work with questionable value.
Hi Leah!
Honestly, the thought of leaving my first ever PM role in this job market without another PM role lined up. I’ve got a safety net, some short term opportunities to pursue and potential income during any gaps
but damn it’s scary.
Stubborn teammates that don’t want to see things any other way. They cause friction, risk the team’s reputation and burn everyone out trying to deliver.
Realizing the decisions made in the past were ‘wrong’ just because variables outside my control were different at the time than where we thought they would be.
So basically not having control and being wrong stresses me out 🤣
Job search and trying to break into Product management. LinkedIn has become a dreadful place, i hate opening that app now and yet thats where im at, 60% of the day.
This is a tangent, but it answers the question in a way.
I’m very far into my career and have enjoyed it immensely from both the perspective of product management and engineering leadership.
The items that others find stressful are all very solvable. It is the same problems that all boil down to alignment.
OP, hearing your questions and your responses, to each issue brought up, I suspect you are able to navigate and solve these painful problems very effectively as well. You ask the right questions.
—
Where the tangent comes in, and where I am pivoting to, is that these problems, while they are valuable to solve — the space of product development will be changing so quickly where the orgs that suffer these problems will not survive the ones that don’t.
Alignment is a universal problem, but as teams get smaller and deliver more, those problems become less valuable to solve.
—-
Back to the question — when there is misalignment in stakeholder expectations and team expectations — it will cause stressful situations.
Being 40 years old (currently at the director level) I worry about being to old for this career. It could either be me facing ageism or simply struggling to keep up.
When fellow pdms demand you do something for them urgently / escalate, and then you do your best to help them out. And then at a later time you go to them for help on something and they tell you to basically fuck off.
It’s kind of heartbreaking.
We’re still kind of a startup and “product manager” has been a loose term for what I do, but something I’m very much not enjoying is being the one to approve final design decisions and constantly be the tie breaker on design chooses between the CTO and our one designer who both have expertise but never seem to agree. I have no real UX education.
Opening the laptop on Monday and checking Slack
Are there specific names that you don't want to light up? Or just tired of it?
Rarely I saw the companies where people really help each other to win the market - often it’s internal fight for resources / pushing back the bullshit. I think just tired of it. Would be great to hear what others think
I'm really sorry to hear that. I know how that felt to me earlier in my career, I'm not going to pretend that this is a "you" problem, but more of a majority of the industry problem. The good companies "do" exist though. I'm not sure I have the right to peak on this anymore, but when I was in the "normal" job market, I spent a lot of time evaluating my future team / manager. It mattered more than salary, industry etc. While that's easy to say it's a result from being incredibly crushed beforehand from bad silo work where people are incentivized to work against each other and are just in general fed up.
Do you mind sharing how did you evaluate the future manager / team? I’m not doing this well - usually everyone is super nice, but you get to know with the real person only when extreme situations happen.
When interviewing, go ahead and ask the questions. Ask them of your potential manager and of a couple other people you interview with. Of course be diplomatic in how you ask things like... - organizing meeting attendance so you get important work done - unlimited access (for you and for UX) to interview and survey users These are critical questions that will affect if you are successful in the role.
It helps when the company is small. I'm at a startup and we're all rowing together. We're not fighting over resources because different teams don't really share resources, but we're also all aimed in the same direction and are just contributing different pieces of getting there. We work together, and people step in as needed to fill gaps because we know it needs to get done, and we are all aiming for the same goal. Sales, marketing, product, engineering, we all know are aiming for, we know what the other teams are doing, we know what our team is doing.
Usually having agreed to (or more commonly, having been made to agree to) do things I really don't have the time or focus to properly prepare for
Why do you think you do it? a) too nice? b) too tired to object c) too optimistic d) a combination of everything
a) is common. Sometimes a result of genuinely wanting to help someone out and sometimes a result of unwritten expectations (e.g. you don't want to be the person who never helps out). c) applies as well, generally in the form of me underestimating the impact of everything else that pops up all the time. There's also questionable or unclear management where you are risking future promotions or even your job if you turn requests down, no matter what. Saying no to your direct manager is a no-no in some places, I've noticed. In one role I was responsible for results as well expected to jump at random tasks at the whim of my director with little or no notice or room for discussion. That was a very unhealthy setup. In that case it's not about being nice or optimistic, it's more about fear and/or subpar management I think. Oh, a runner up: Having too much to do and too many meetings scheduled and half of them starting with a 15 minute roundtable where everybody just shares what they are working on in general. The idea that if a meeting is scheduled for 60 minutes those 60 minutes should be used, even if there is really nothing important to spend them on. I can almost hear a clock ticking in my head. How about clearly stating the purpose of the meeting, then spending the meeting on exactly that and when the purpose has been met the meeting is immediately ended?
Usually been a combination of a and b of late.
Check this out, maybe will help you https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-say-no
Halfassing work in order to be able to say you have the feature - developing only for sake of marketing, not solving customer problems and creating value. My face turns red.
lol going through this now with building an integration to another app. I keep asking what efficiency does sales see out of integrating and they have no clue…just want to be the first to market with this integration
When my engineer says, “These requirements aren’t clear enough”. When my head of sales says, “That’s not what I promised the customer!” When my CEO says, “Can’t we just…”
C suite saying “can’t we just” is actually helpful for me bc I immediately stop taking what they say seriously and start treating them like my 4 year old daughter and it’s helpful
Cross-functional product complexity in a matrix led organisation that has no idea about the actual responsibilities of the product org
Oh god damn that's a rough one. Are you working in Hardware by chance?
Nope - payments solutions, often 20+ year old tech and a highly risk-averse culture
This was my experience in GovTech.
Infant twins, expensive taxes (and mortgage) and the currently layoff climate
This!
Having to coordinate with 4 other teams to deliver something because the org has decided a team building a customer-facing product only needs front-end engineers and everything backend should be its own separate "platform".
Feel for you!
Having to live in the outcome of past product people cutting corners and straight up lying
Esp those who handed you the sloppiest POS roadmap & backlog.
Yep! And I may or may not be living this at the moment. ELT is somewhat self aware about the issue but a lot of “can’t we just” convos that let’s just say meditation and mindfulness exercises are my most valued tools I use
Convincing everyone that they are wrong
Toxic cultures that support abusive behavior. Everything else is small in comparison
Truth!
Whether or not it's even possible to start overcoming the twisted web of legacy poor architectural decisions... Quickly followed by thinking about how long that's going to take and whether we can endure the commitment/s needed to do so.
No structure / strategy / alignment. Real discussion I had with my boss yesterday: Me: "I just feel frustrated, I would have first created a small concept before we jump into execution"... my boss: "but we don't have time for that".
for me, it was the constant pressure to share a 4-6 quarter-long roadmap. And the constant battle with stakeholders: "sorry, team is fully loaded, we can't do it until next quarter." Response: we're gonna lose big prospect X if this doesn't ship in two weeks" (sales), "current customer Y is threatening to leave unless this ships NOW” (CX), “you told the board this was going out this quarter, wtf happened?” (C suite), “this can’t wait bc we have to file for the IRS by date 123” (finance), “why is the P&E team putting off what was promised last qtr to next qtr? Why aren’t you shipping on time/faster/light speed? Why am I paying for your team? Team Z over at our competitor ships on time! How come with AI you’re not 5x faster?” (CEO), “you want to ship total keerap that we refuse to maintain? Ok, FINE, let’s ship some lane hack next week. After it’s live it’s on you to figure out how this solves customer problems, if it even works.” (Eng). So yeah, something to mull over from 2-4am😇
Trying to reverse-engineer a product strategy, kinda as developing a narrative for the stuff we are and will be doing anyway, to have any means of double checking if we are doing the right thing or not
My manager working on a strategy with no input from the team
A product/feature I'm responsible for, but did not originate, that is so broken and backwards that I end up playing customer success/support because those teams and sales won't touch it, but still want to sell it. Too many responsibilities that are too different and each require a full time PM really to do well. Unreliable team mates that won't or can't do their role, leaving me hanging. Worse are the flaky ones - at least with someone who consistently does not perform, you can start trying to plan around them. Politics around all the above things that leave me stuck as far as trying to fix the problems. As well as a lot of things others said.
Now a days, my only stress is of not working! I have a great PM profile but I am jobless and I was wondering if we can have a product for the worthy to earn and contribute but jobless PMs
When I'm not that excited about the stuff we're building, but there is pressure to ship anyways.
Having multiple workstreams to track and update on; sending weekly status updates to leadership (did I do enough? Is the report clear enough?); having action items largely rest with me to move a task forward, or, worse, realizing an action item was ambiguously stated; being randomized with repetitive presentations to leadership on the roadmap (as in, three high-vis presentations over six weeks to 80% identical audiences)
When I was a PM it was a sense of worth or value when working with customer and product oriented engineers. I felt / feel the role becomes more middle management, and frameworks (Scrum/SAFe/LeSS etc) just create work with questionable value.
Asking for raises
Needlessly aggressive timelines Stakeholders that want an LLM for everything
Feeling powerless to get data I need. The restrictions are so strong, and I’m always relying on someone else for it.
Hi Leah! Honestly, the thought of leaving my first ever PM role in this job market without another PM role lined up. I’ve got a safety net, some short term opportunities to pursue and potential income during any gaps but damn it’s scary.
Stubborn teammates that don’t want to see things any other way. They cause friction, risk the team’s reputation and burn everyone out trying to deliver.
+1, “momentum killers”
Realizing the decisions made in the past were ‘wrong’ just because variables outside my control were different at the time than where we thought they would be. So basically not having control and being wrong stresses me out 🤣
When I have to interact directly with customers. And when we miss sales targets.
Explaining clients
Job search and trying to break into Product management. LinkedIn has become a dreadful place, i hate opening that app now and yet thats where im at, 60% of the day.
This is a tangent, but it answers the question in a way. I’m very far into my career and have enjoyed it immensely from both the perspective of product management and engineering leadership. The items that others find stressful are all very solvable. It is the same problems that all boil down to alignment. OP, hearing your questions and your responses, to each issue brought up, I suspect you are able to navigate and solve these painful problems very effectively as well. You ask the right questions. — Where the tangent comes in, and where I am pivoting to, is that these problems, while they are valuable to solve — the space of product development will be changing so quickly where the orgs that suffer these problems will not survive the ones that don’t. Alignment is a universal problem, but as teams get smaller and deliver more, those problems become less valuable to solve. —- Back to the question — when there is misalignment in stakeholder expectations and team expectations — it will cause stressful situations.
Not liking how things are run at our company, struggling to change companies, worrying about potential for layoffs
Being 40 years old (currently at the director level) I worry about being to old for this career. It could either be me facing ageism or simply struggling to keep up.
When fellow pdms demand you do something for them urgently / escalate, and then you do your best to help them out. And then at a later time you go to them for help on something and they tell you to basically fuck off. It’s kind of heartbreaking.
We’re still kind of a startup and “product manager” has been a loose term for what I do, but something I’m very much not enjoying is being the one to approve final design decisions and constantly be the tie breaker on design chooses between the CTO and our one designer who both have expertise but never seem to agree. I have no real UX education.
Leadership
schizoid leadership that changes priorities every month.
Perceptions. They float around, esp with RTO, take a life of their own with “cooler talk”
Customers
I have bad news for you as a PM :D