[pxc]

My PM basically just helps my team to present our progress to higher management and outside teams. So she schedules meetings, solicits my input on status reports, asks for rough time estimates, checks in when she thinks I've forgotten to mark a task as completed or should split out a ticket, etc. She attends all of our stand-ups, so she always knows what I'm working on, and on my small team that means that we get to make very light use of Jira and communicate most day-to-day progress in threaded, private group chats. She's not technical in terms of training or background, but she often asks good questions to make sure she understands the technical basics of architectural and strategic decisions.

At my job, the PMs seem to do a lot of bookkeeping, cat herding, and politicking that are not generally easy or pleasant for me. I'm glad they're around to take care of that stuff.

I'll add as well that my engineering manager doesn't often have to 'call shots', either— thinking through a problem together, arguing, making requests of one another, etc., is usually enough to settle things.