[bobwaycott]

I find it pretty odd that you'd take a PM role that required you to write code and have a CS degree. It's definitely good if PMs understand the technologies they're working with, but requiring they know how to code, and actually code, as well as have a CS degree seems like an employer who is actually looking to hire a developer and get a PM for free. Or vice versa.

[nomansland]

Specifically, regarding the PM role, I took a TPM role. I like it much more than devops/sre(no pages) or test engineering(not as tedious). To be sure, there is also a non-technical PM on my team, as well as devs who do the product coding. While the role could be abused in the way you are talking about, I suspect that's company dependant, in much the same way the devops role can be abused.

The coding work I'd put in the "internal tools/analysis" category, such as writing some scripts which makes sense of the non-technical PMs' spreadsheets, browser plugins which deal with a favorite but slightly broken tool, log analysis, writing dashboards, or lightweight ETL.

The "knowing how to code" comes in use since a fair amount of the work depends on being able to understand what the devs have actually submitted and if they are flat out BSing or not on status, if a particular pattern/integration/library/tool would be a good fit, or having meaningful conversations about testing, scope, and technical roadblocks. The CS degree is useful for having credibility with the devs(shared culture goes a long way in getting work out of people who don't report to you) and not just being another PM having sprints and scrums and pigs and chickens and swimlanes (oh my!)