Are product managers an expensive luxury now?

So-called "product managers" are a perversion of Agile. Instead of having a business person who is accountable for the product being fit for purpose, you get yester-year's business analyst who thinks he knows what needs to be built. That's a recipe for disaster.

I don't believe the post is saying product managers are a waste of space. They definitely are an integral part of the product development lifecycle. However I have experienced the situation where we had an army of product managers chiefs and not enough engineering soldiers to build anything.

Very curious on the choice of photo for this article

First of all, I am a product manager myself and I find this post very insightful. At first, I wanted to reply to some of the very interesting comments individually but then it became a fun read overall.

Before I put my 2 cents into this brilliant thread, I would like to point out, companies pay Product Managers/or any other job vertical professionals basis the value they can bring to the organization. This statement is true for engineers as well as for any other roles for that matter.

Over my entire career, I have come across engineers who are pioneers of innovation. Who bring about really amazing ideas. Unfortunately, out of experience, the end product although is catering to various geographies, end up failing because sometimes the demographics adheres to a more comfortable way of work. The customers are perfectly comfortable with something outdates. That's where we product managers comes in.

Our goal is not to take credit of someone else's work but to identify the value behind an innovation suggestion, measure it against what the customers really want, find the best user experience. The most difficult part of a product manager's role is to interact with all these cross functional teams and bargain a way forward to achieve what's best for the customers.

Someone in the comments wrote that they would rather go for a good product manager than a medicore engineer. This statement is true vice versa, that one would rather prefer a good engineer than a mediocre product manager. The key here is not a product or engineering person, but it is the the word "good". A good someone is always preferred over a mediocre someone.

No matter what we do, we should always remember and work towards the positive impact that we can bring with our contributions to any organization. Whether it is the customers, our team or ourselves.

A good PM goes a long way. I'd vote to keep a good PM and fire a mediocre engineer. A good PM helps speed up the process. It is a luxury yes but it is a necessary luxury. No regulation requires to have a PM in place so it is not a necessity of course. I've worked with a few and they usually are very good at understanding concepts and connecting dots for both engineers and quants. And connecting dots is never really that easy , isnt it?