While I too doubt that unions would be a net negative and I might even suspect interference by paid malicious actors to discourage people to unionize and thus never have power, I can't agree with your skepticism that PMs cannot be replaced by LLMs.
Most PMs I've ever met had zero clue what they are doing. And no it's not only N=1 sample, same anecdote is heard from many, many other people.
But sadly enough, undeniable human incompetence there is not even the biggest problem. The "we will never make more reasonable deadline" is.
Most managers, not just PMs, are an objective net negative. As any ruling class always does, they get complacent and think that just putting their foot down is going to magically change reality.
Highly irrelevant. Not my role as an individual contributor to hone and fine-tune their job description.
Fact on the ground is that they usually optimize the entirely wrong indicators and never ever optimize for avoiding future problems.
In my consulting and contracting stints I made it a habit to write down what crisis is looming on the horizon and making bets with my wife which one is going to arrive first. A fun little game.
Watching train wrecks in slow motion stopped being fun with time.
What PM's job is is above my pay grade. I want them to enable me and the team, not be a mouth piece of people with zero understanding of product _and_ of engineering. They are just there to ask you how is stuff going.
> Fact on the ground is that they usually optimize the entirely wrong indicators and never ever optimize for avoiding future problems.
Fact on the ground is they don't optimize for _your_ indicators and have to compromise on what problems can be addressed now or later. They only appear to be optimizing to the wrong indicators because you don't have all the information.
> have to compromise on what problems can be addressed now or later.
9/10 PM's work is literally avoiding any decisions and responsibilities whatsoever.
Concerned dev/ops/po: Dear PM, feature FOO-123 will not be merged before we start activities for Gate 5.2. FOO-123 is required for Gate 6.0 and if we start with Gate 5.2 activities without it, Gate 6.0 will be delayed by at least 5 weeks. Team FOO is projecting verification of FOO-123 being done by the end of week, which would delay Gate 5.2 by a week. Shall we delay our activities until FOO-123 is merged or start regardless?
PM: Gate 5.2 is extremely important for the project timeline and no delays are acceptable.
<- few moments later ->
PM: I was informed by Compliance that FOO-123 is mandatory, does that affect timelines for Gate 6.0?
Disgruntled employee: Either we start over Gate 5.2 activities with FOO-123 included, which would delay Gate 6.0 by at least 9 weeks, or you get team FOO to backport FOO-123.
<- few moments later ->
PM: gets promoted for successful handling of stressful situation with FOO-123, limiting project delay to 15 weeks and only overrunning projected costs of Gate 6.0 by 30%.
I'm waiting for the disruptive startup that revolutionizes corporate heirarchy by getting rid of PMs since they're so useless.
Since successful businesses continue to employ them, I'm going to err on the side of they do serve a function I don't always understand rather than they must be stupid.
Let me introduce you to the glory of Valve and Lord Gaben.
On a less snarky note: Depending on organization type PMs might do a ton of paperwork on behalf of the teams and act as some sort of central point for business-product communication, however that has exactly nothing with management in any typical definition.
I so wish I would agree with you, if my career has not been a string of them _never_ compromising on anything and only pulling the blanket to their side of the bed.
Your balanced take is nice and I wish I inhabited that reality. So far I have not. Maybe it's the region market or maybe my marketing sucked.
The reality in most businesses is constant roll from fighting one immediate crisis to another and handwaving future risks on "business environment may change" and "not important right now". The more crises one "mitigates", the more competent they are seen, even if they have directly caused the crisis in question.
If you talk about an upcoming shitshow you are generally seen as not entrepreneurial, if you mitigate a risk before it becomes a crisis that crisis is not viewed as crisis. However, if you let a crisis happen and "successfully" manage it you are seen as a hero.
Most PMs I've ever met had zero clue what they are doing. And no it's not only N=1 sample, same anecdote is heard from many, many other people.
But sadly enough, undeniable human incompetence there is not even the biggest problem. The "we will never make more reasonable deadline" is.
Most managers, not just PMs, are an objective net negative. As any ruling class always does, they get complacent and think that just putting their foot down is going to magically change reality.