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> 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.



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.


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.


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.


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


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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