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by robertlagrant 1209 days ago
> As soon as an article states you can use “product manager” and “project manager” interchangeably

This is quite common. Lots of ex-project managers are now called product managers or scrum masters. But they're actually project managers.
2 comments
propogandist 1209 days ago
That would fall into the realm of product owner, who are meant to keep things in-line with committed timelines and keep teams working on outputs, different from product managers as they have significantly less headache and scope of responsibility.
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llamaLord 1209 days ago
Yeah but the fact that OP buys into the trope that they're the same thing kinda speaks to the point that they have no idea what a PM actually does.
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robertlagrant 1209 days ago
If you go by volume, you may well find that the theoretical definition you're referring to is outnumbered by the practical reality. I definitely wouldn't assume that reality matches theory.
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llamaLord 1208 days ago
I'm going by my personal experience as a PM. To be fair, whenever I talk on a PM panel I tend to be the odd one out.

For example, I tend to be the guy on the panel all the other PM's hate because I taught myself to code so that I could have deeper empathy for how my engineering teams work and now I advocate for all PM's needing to be at least moderately technical.

Rocking the boat certainly doesn't make you popular haha

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robertlagrant 1208 days ago
Yes - totally agree. It's a tricky job, and there are real product people, of course, but I think there has been a bit of a migration away from the slightly unfashionable "project manager" into roles such as this one, flooding it.

Also, Product has in some places gone from a valued member of the team to a ruling class, with all the faux problems that generates.

It's a funny one!

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