Product Managers Struggle with Workflow

“Sure I can even agree with that point of LLMs not being able to create anything new. But if we’re being honest, most PMs aren’t creating anything new. [re: Company is all-in on LLMs, and now I finally see where the worry is coming from]”

“I'm curious how you concluded the shortcomings are around PM speak, language, frameworks or even being a PM as an identity? Are you sure this is the reason or are you assuming and letting this impact your confidence? Honestly the job market is very tough right now. Even as someone in a niche specialization and going to the final round in most interviews it took me 6 months and many many interviews. So I'd encourage you to not let your interview experiences discourage you. I had been laid”

“It's the same here. Can't really offer you any advice just make sure you track decisions and who made them. [re: How PMs work? What's your day look like]”

So many good responses here. Basically what you described is more or less how PMs operate. And there is nothing right or wrong here. It's like gymnastics, the more you practice the…

“Haha, this is exactly the cycle I'm trying to understand how experienced PMs navigate. Do you eventually find ways to break it, or is managing this repetition what the job fundamentally comes down to? But looking at these Linkedin and Twitter posts feels like I'm missing big time in the role. Makes me question my work. Managing it by uninstalling Linkedin and twitter from Mobile 🤪 [re: How PMs work? What's your day look like]”

“PMs don’t make decisions. They spend their life researching and coming up with a position only for the Eng Dir or Dir of Product to override the PM based on reading 1-2 sentences. [re: The problem with 2026 product management...]”

“Agreed. Hope not! [re: PMs with a tool budget: how much, and what did you last spend it on?]”

“I've been there, and so have a lot of the other PMs I've coached over the years. What you are describing is not uncommon, and a lot of it has to do with factors outside of your control. I constantly tell people that PM is the most dysfunctional job in tech right now. Sadly, after having spent 10+ years in this domain, I feel like PM is no longer a job where you can survive simply by being a good "coordinator" or "orchestrator". You need to find something else that mak”

“What you’re describing is not normal IMO. Most PMs feel lost, struggle, get assigned work faster than they can do it, etc. But feeling so lost that you wonder if you’re stupid, especially as a PM with 7 years of experience, means there’s a huge mismatch somewhere (company, team, industry, or maybe role).”

“This seems like you're reading different semantics than what I am reading from the comment. In this context, I inferred that the OC is talking about generalist PMs as in PMs that don't have domain experience, but rather experience in general PM duties, and specialists as in people with specific/special domain experience. Also, when you talk about having depth in one or two areas, I think it's reasonable to think of that as another way of having specialist background/skillset. Semanti”

“Another approach is to read books about specific businesses as case studies. https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/ LinkyHighlights http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/2020-06-09-ChinWhyTacitKnowledgeIsMoreImportantThanDeliberatePractice https://commoncog.com/business-expertise-series/ LinkyHighlights http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/2023-06-06-ChinTheBusinessExpertiseSeries http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/NaturalisticDecisionMaking http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/CognitiveFlexibi”

“the process I've pieced together has been inspired mainly by * [[Martin Cagan]]: posts on top-down pre-requisites ([[Agility, Context, and Team Agency]]); sources of failure [[(2015-06-05) Cagan Product Fail]] * [[Ron Jeffries]]: esp *[[Nature Of Software Development]]* and [[(2019-09-16) Jeffries Twelve Talk]] * [[Clarke Ching]] (scope-splitting on [[bottleneck]], see *[[Rolling Rocks Downhill]]*) * [[Teresa Torres]]: [[Opportunity Solution Tree]], [[Continuous Discovery]] * [[John Cutler]]”

Why? This will help you understand the product better, but to what end?

“I do but only after doing a later-in-life masters which opened my eyes to all the amazing research being done in the area I was focusing on. Especially in my sector, many larger companies publish their r&d outcomes in papers and so now I regularly read through 10 papers a month.”

“It’s better to read actual technical whitepapers related to your product and tech stack rather than “PM papers”.”

“Are you me? I’m so stressed at the end of every day and my brain is in a pretzel….and I feel like I don’t accomplish anything because im constantly context switching and wearing all of the hats that were needed that day.”

“True but I think PMs also need ammunition from outside of the office to slap down on a desk and say, this is what’s happening. You want me to fix it now, don’t you?”

“Do other PMs feel like working in product has made them sound like a complainer in everyday life? I’ve noticed that I get really irritated when something feels way harder than it needs to be. Not even necessarily “bad UX” every time, just things that feel unnecessarily complicated or not intuitive. A recent example was trying to install games on my Xbox for the first time (had a diff console before). I literally just wanted to install the game and play multiplayer, and somehow I ended up having”

“Yep interpersonal skills are one of the core skills for PMs so you can’t be exceptional if that is a factor.”

“I can’t speak to if it’s helpful or not. However, I don’t think the purpose of a portfolio (at least in a PMs case) should be to get noticed. You should either build projects to continue to learn and skill up or actually do it because you find interest in it. And the projects are genuinely meaningful to you. It’s pretty easy nowadays to slap something together. What will make you stand out is the thought you put into it. As I type this I remembered I most recently had the chance to speak to my p”

“What does having a site do for you ? What are you trying to demonstrate? Just because other PMs have it ?”

“You need to find a way to speed the velocity of your rock writing by 20% this quarter. Oh and sales told Grom that you could make your blood green next time, so start eating a lot of green stuff maybe.”

“Any tips on how to learn to disassociate or how you worked on this personally?”

“If you want real input, share a sanitized example of your communication and the feedback you got.”

“I'll also add I'm a Product coach and transformation lead, so I also have to be a little text book-ish when working with new PMs. Though, I deviate off script after a couple months. Most Transformations can only go so far.”

Do you work for my company?

“BOHICA I’ve seen new PMs take a year to start getting up to speed, so don’t feel bad you think you are underwater already. But seriously, build your own personal resilience. Identify who has the purse strings over your role and make sure you are listening to them and how they need to to work to succeed and you should come out of the year secondment ready for more.”

Fair enough, I just wanted to hear other people's perspective :)

“The important thing to remember is: PMOs act the way they do because of the company’s executive leadership. Have a lot of nit-noid processes? It’s (usually) because the PMO was directed to do it, or because the PMO lead was raked over the coals multiple times for small mistakes. Have a weak, almost non-existent PMO? That tells me the org doesn’t really believe project management has anything valuable to offer. Of course this depends a lot on what industry you’re in. In some there may well be aud”

“Had a previous role where they introduced this process for PMs to maintain a single source of truth in Confluence. Turns out it was just a a lot of overhead that no one ever used or read.”

“As someone who works in a PMO, the services they provide are so different between teams and organisations. What a good PMO should do is to help you pitch your reporting and documentation at the right level, and take the guesswork or ambiguity out of navigating processes and the organisation. They should also be connecting the dots between project delivery and strategy, including guiding prioritisation. As someone who works in an organisation that has a lot of compliance requirements, the PMO sho”

“I am sorry to hear that, that must feel quite annoying. It does sound like a mismatch, that has been known to happen”

“I was wondering what it is like for others working with a PMO. Do they support you with your work? Have you ever had any negative interactions? I'm curious to know :) submitted by /u/McHastings [link] [comments]”

“Hi all, I am starting a master in PM next week and it’s a 2 year course. There is a capstone at the end and I would like to scout for some ideas and inspiration. Asking all the PMs in here, what would be an interesting area to look at when writing a capstone? This will be my first capstone so I’m very nervous Thank you all submitted by /u/Turbulent_Squirrel66 [link] [comments]”

“Who can you reach out to at the PMO for support? Have they offered any formal training and coaching for you in their methodology?”

“This is a great comment. Thing with PMs is being aggressive/dominant looks like a strong tool when reality is holding people accountable is more about data and speaking it as fact. PMs don’t need to have the “Get this **** done or you’re fired!” approach- it’s honestly more effective to have data that can’t be argued with saying “Daves team is 22 days behind schedule with task 123”.”

“Product isn't typically a college course kinda thing you do. I don't think I know a single person who's gone from school to being a PM, typically the route is experience based and transitioning from other lines of business. Most of my the people I've worked with have been developers, analysts, designers or had experience in some other line of business and a specialty that translated into the product that they managed. Maybe this has changed in recent years but you're going to”

“It seems you're in an environment that doesn't support you to do an honest and recognized PM job (notice I didn't say "your best work", I'm not that delusional). Even though some directors see it similarly, their range of action is also limited and what matters is how it lands for you. You're exhausted and you're questioning yourself as a PM and your career. You don't have to change career, just jobs.”

“Pretty sure that number is sample biased and the real number is much higher. A lot of PMs who are responsible for a "metric", can measure it, but can't even action on it independently. They are assigned a KR that their teams cannot move on their own. It's just stuff that happens, regardless of what you do, especially in B2B. Good orgs stop assigning people individual metrics and make sure there is cross-functional alignment around a small set of key north-stars.”

“Some people aren’t actually pms but have the title. They either are aware or not aware of this. Some people are responsible for metrics abstractly, but aren’t held to a firm account. This could be a leader in a larger organization or conversely, a PM at a startup that is still seeking product market fit. As other as others have mentioned, a proxy for this might just be revenue. But I think it’s more qualitative specially if your building durable products patterns with much longer longer-term pay”

“Thank you so much for the insights! This is super interesting! Of all those metrics which ones change what you do? and is there a bottleneck anywhere? also, how do you figure out right features at the right time? is it a combination of all the "signals" you get from customer conversations, attach rate, etc?”

“I've been told by women who know me that I have a project manager voice, but that it's lower and more confident than my normal speech. Probably more detailed too but it seems the be the lower pitch and confidence they notice.”

“Copying and pasting from above For PMs and Product orgs, there are a lot of problems to solve (here are a few): Burnout/Leave: PMs burnout/leave at a higher rate than almost any other function. Can majorly impact company ops and speed. A major part is the amount of work and pace. That's only gotten worse with AI. The 80% of features rarely or never being used (pendo): This was before AI, but with PMs. It's very hard to do this job (as you know). Lack of functionality is the #1 reason top”

“A lot of us PMs turn out to be neuro-spicy in some way. The work just calls to us 😅”

I have been a PM for about 7 years now with vastly different organizations, and I really enjoy the mission of my current org. While the maturity of our PMO is low,…

“This really resonates. I like that being wrong is okay with you because being wrong gives you something to work with... you can learn, adjust, and move forward. And staying stuck because everyone is afraid of making the wrong call is much harder to recover from. Also I believe that, that willingness to make the call is probably an underrated part of ownership.💯”

https://giphy.com/gifs/AJXcQO4xjb8FW

“You talked about it being overrated and having no value, I was digging to see the bias of that opinion”

“I will answer your questions first. Is the PMP proof that someone is a good PM? Absolutely not. It demonstrates someone was able to gain enough of an understanding of the PMBOK tools and processes to pass the exam. Translating that into using it appropriately with teams is an entirely different matter. Is the PMP overrated? For the people who think that as soon as they get a PMP, recruiters are going to be begging them to come work for their company, yes it is. For people who think that it can s”

“PMP is way overrated. Not only that but it totally ignores what I consider to be one of the most critical skills a PM needs: soft skills.”

“I have a friend who literally doesn't have any PM certificates but always gets hired because she has a lot of experience.”

“key word is should Do other PMs not participate in the design process at all?”

“I went from dev to PM back to dev. Insane levels of rust that I had to shake off. But I’m back now. You’ll get there”

“I struggle with this every now and then too. What often helped me is admitting (mainly to myself) that I don't know. The easiest and most obvious next step is to "know". Have conversations with your engineers. They're sweeter than you think, and are often keen to get you up to speed (since it really helps with their work too). Leverage your AI tools to shamelessly ask al those questions you feel difficult to ask otherwise. Really push it to challenge your thinking and help you”

Robotics pm here. Only been doing it for around 6 months though

“Yeah PMs, of all people shouldn’t care where good ideas, thoughts, or insight come from (even if it’s an LLM). Our job is curation, taste, and judgement of those ideas.”

Yup, I’m a Technical Product Manager in MedTech

“I agree 100% with (1) and (3). (1) is probably the difference between good PMs and struggling ones. However I support the opposite of (2). I believe Product Management is a mindset, not a knowledgebase. On one side, because AI speeds up how fast you gain context in a new field 10x. On the other, because unless you go to be the first PM hire of a startup, or directly the Head of Product, you probably have a product leader you report to who is supposed to be alreayd an expert in this industry. It”

“None of the PMs I know have formal education, including me. I became a PM by joining a project as a subject matter expert, suggesting a solution to leadership, it got approved and I was given 3 engineers to build it. That was 8 yrs ago, I'm still at the same company but working on different products. I have adhd and know many PMs who have it, I think there's something about the PM space that tickles adhd brains...problems to solve, urgency, novelty.”