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Who becomes a PM
Suppose the skill of product management is spread normally across the population. The people who actually become product managers come from the far right-hand side of that curve, and keeping only that side turns the shape into a power distribution. In any power distribution the median sits far below the average, with most people on the left side.
Why great ones leave
Two forces tilt it further. In the low-interest-rate era the job became the most lucrative career in tech for non-technical people, paid as if it sat on a technical ladder, and its fuzzy definition gives anyone inside a strong reason to hold on. Meanwhile the skills of a product leader suit executive roles or founding a company almost perfectly, so the great ones exit the system.
Who complains
Great engineers rarely complain about product managers. They know how to bend a PM to their will and they refuse to work with bad ones. Really bad engineers rarely complain either, since they can hide behind a PM's decisions. The complaints come from the engineers in the middle.
Why does the median sit below the average?
In a right-skewed distribution, a small number of very large values pull the average upward while the median stays at the middle of the ranked list. Household income is the standard example. The United States Census Bureau reports a median household income that is lower than the mean. The longer the tail on the high side, the bigger the gap.
How did low interest rates reshape tech careers?
When borrowing is cheap, investors send more money toward risky bets, and venture funding and tech hiring expand. The United States Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate near zero from 2008 to 2015 and again in 2020 and 2021. It began raising rates in March 2022. Many large tech companies announced layoffs across 2022 and 2023.
Where did product management start?
The usual origin story is a 1931 memo by Neil McElroy, a young advertising manager at Procter and Gamble. He proposed that each soap brand get its own dedicated manager, starting with Camay, so brands inside the company would compete with each other. The system became known as brand management. It spread to other consumer goods companies and later to technology firms, which adapted it as product management.
More from Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
