[moandcompany]

And ironically it seem like the things you'd positively attribute here to a product manager used to be/are actually part of the scope of what was traditionally a "project manager" or "program manager."

For example, look at the scope and definition of a "program manager" from Microsoft or the US DoD in the 1980s, 1990s+, as well as literature describing the role of a program manager and the discipline from that time.

[lukevp]

Why’s that ironic? There didn’t used to be frontend / backend / full stack devs either. As software engineering has matured and grown in scale, more subdivision of responsibilities is a natural outcome of that. We’re not all just directly writing code on mainframes and our customers aren’t just < 1k of users who directly call us on the phone if something goes wrong anymore, it’s millions of people using services 24x7 now. MS wasn’t making real-time collaboration systems and cloud sync in the 80s and 90s. They were making a stand-alone offline machine that barely could install device drivers and didn’t know what the internet was. Completely different products, and much simpler.

[pseudalopex]

What subdivision of responsibilities? Clients and servers were divided for as long as clients and servers existed. Full stack is aggregation of responsibilities. DevOps too. Dedicated QA is rare now.

Most companies with product managers have fewer customers and less complex products than 1990s Microsoft.