[_betty_]

While I'd never recommend staying a career that you hate, I'm not sure switching to a position you think is cruisy is a great idea either. That's a recipe for under performance and bad management.

It does sound like you've never worked with a good PM, I'm not sure if I have either as I do struggle a lot with what value they actually add to projects.

99% of the time its better for people to speak directly and not relay information through other (probably non technical) people.

Of course you do need to limit distractions but I think you can set expectations with people about what distractions do and how often they should distract you.

Also find that a lot of PMs try play power games, I really think they need a new job title like Project Coordinator or something that sounds a little less in charge.

Interesting to see this thread has a very mixed idea of what a PM is, a number of people mention things I'd expect as part of a sales or BA role. I wonder if this is part of the reason people find PMs useless is that no one really knows what they should be doing.