[kiawe_fire]

It is due to a problem space that’s poorly defined, but that’s not always indicative of ticket padding or a useless product.

I’ve dealt many times with real people, who present me with a real problem, but no single concrete solution.

If the PM doesn’t take the proper time to understand the problem (and try to find the real, underlying problem that often exists) — Or rushes into a solution without proper evaluation — Or just generally wants to quickly churn user asks into tickets — then the result is the same.

I generally agree that, in my experience, a good senior software engineer is well suited to teasing out “the real problem” and getting to a properly detailed solution even without a PM.

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s potential value in a PM that can set a broader vision of the product and help prioritize tasks. But the good ones do so by working with and deferring often to his or her software dev team, and NOT by working “top down”.