From my experience interacting with several PMs, most of them are good at what they do. They understand the problem they are solving, the market, and the developer’s mindset working on the problem.
However, with growing interest in this domain, PM’s are hired to either perform project management or be a liaison between sales & engineering. In my opinion, a PM is more than a project manager or a liaison carrying feedback.
A PM should work with Design, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, be a friend of everyone, more closely with engineers. It might not matter much if the PM codes or not, but it does matters that the engineers believe in the vision/roadmap that a PM articulates.
Some vision/roadmap requires a PM to build a presentation or showcase integration with a platform, create a wireframe in Figma, or even develop an API spec. So, it is not just about coding!
All said and done, if you think that a CEO/Senior leader should only drive vision/roadmap, that is not always the case. Beyond a certain growth level for any company, the senior leadership will set a higher level goal to achieve, which further implemented it by team (Product Lead, Tech Lead, Team Lead).
If you are a developer and aspiring to be a Product Manager, I’d suggest you NOT think that a PM is someone who gets a team to build features they like 😅
