I'm not sure how many of you have been following this trend, but there has been a surge in highly technical and exceptionally skilled product managers resigning over the past few years. This seems to be driven by the appointment of opportunistic unprofessional leadership figures who are pushing these valuable team members away. I wonder if NetApp has taken note of this
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I don't believe a "surge" happening "over the past few years" is a surge. And you claim they have resigned, so maybe you meant to post this at theresign.com?
I took a job as product manager years ago in a post 2008 restructuring. I was told we want to keep you, but, your old job is gone and I would get first dibs on any job I was remotely qualified for. I saw a product manager roll, I know the product, how hard could it be. PM is a horrible job, at least for me. There is always an emergency and 90% of it is out of your control. Oh services or support or a vendor is raising prices, how does that impact our pricing strategy, how does that impact deals in flight. I was on with a prospective customer 30-60 minutes a day talking about futures. If we lost the deal it was always all my fault and I would have numerous sales leaders calling telling me how cr-p the PMs were nevermind the fact we lost the deal because the sales rep promised something not even technically possible, if we won the deal it was always the glorious sales team. You're always arbitrating fights between groups. The losing group always got pissy and tried to slow everything down. Granted I have a sample size of 1, but the breadth of knowledge you need to be a good PM, finance, sales, strategic planning, analytics, negotiation, international commerce law, domestic laws.
Just wait until the layoff next month. Let’s see how many they keep this time.
so, what exactly are these valuable skills that product managers possess, as compared, to say the barista at the cafe?
Good for them!
Yaaaaawwnnn
yawn