With apologies to my many talented friends whose title is "product manager" ... I used to have the title myself.
I guess you could classify this as a pet peeve. Maybe it's because I'm picky about words ... before I went into software I was an English major and wanted to be a writer. But, at least in the software business we work in, I just hate the title Product Manager. Can we just kill it?
Here's my beef: for people outside the engineering group, the title Product Manager evokes the idea of a responsible adult (Manager) who will make sure the product aligns with business goals and then can explain the product to the outside world. It also usually means someone with an MBA who also knows something about software engineering.
But the Manager title is usually bogus. Product Managers are most often individual contributors ... at least they're not typically managing engineers or product schedules (and therefore the actual product development). If anything they're just managing other product managers.
As it exists in most organizations, it would be more correct to call this person an Analyst. Depending on their focus, they might be a Product Analyst, a Market Analyst or an Industry Analyst. In a few cases (not many) the person might actually be a Product Designer. But any of these terms is better in my book than Product Manager. Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal, and maybe it isn't. But in my view it would help avoid some of the unrealistic expectations and internal power struggles or conflicts that often go with the role -- management has unrealistic expectations about what the Product Manager can and will do, the Product Manager has inflated opinions about their own authority, and strong-minded engineers bristle at outsiders with the title Manager who claim to know what's right but don't always understand the technical details.
In my company we're living without the title and the ship isn't sinking. Feel free to tell my why I'm wrong.
