
Ask HN: Leave Product Management? - randomacct3847
After 2+ years in product management, I feel it isn’t the right career path for me. In general, it’s a nebulous career option that is very different across companies and there’s an inherent political game you must play given the cross functional nature of the role that I just am not very good at playing. Anyone else have a similar story? What did you after?
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keithchambers
What drew you to become a PM initially?

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keithchambers
Where I was going with this is PM is a hard job and not for everyone.

I know people who became a PM assuming the PM has the power to make the
decisions. BUT you need to work with the CTO to create the vision, validate
demand, get you idea, work with marketing to announce it, identify design
partner customers, work with designers and work with Engineers to agree on the
MVP, oversee delivery, get the docs written, get support trained, run the
early access program, enable the field, and finally work with marketing to the
release your product. AND - by the way - none of these people report to you.
How do you do it? Politics are unavoidable.

And let’s say you do all these things exceptionally well — guess what? Nobody
will ever be satisfied with the decisions and tradeoffs you made. When things
go wrong you will get blamed, and when things go well sales makes the bonus
and Engineers are praised. There will be long stretches where you wonder if
it’s all worth it.

BUT there is nothing like delivering something customers love and it makes it
all seem worth it. Hang in there. :-)

