The PM Prestige Trap: Why Product Management Is Not Your Escape From Engineering

Key Takeaways

• This piece focuses on product management realities in India, not outlier narratives.
• Compensation numbers should be interpreted with role scope, market cycle, and switching friction.
• Use decision frameworks and evidence checks before acting on title or salary headlines.

On This Page

• The Expectation
• The Reality
• Salary and Growth Reality
• Where Most People Get Stuck
• Who Should Avoid This Path
• Decision Framework
• Originality Lens
• Final Verdict

The Expectation

• Lead without managing people
• More money than engineering
• Strategic, high-level work
• Escape from coding

What PM Courses Sell: Be the CEO of the product. Make the big decisions. Engineers build what you envision.

The Reality

PM is 50-60% Meetings. If you hate meetings, you will hate PM.

The "CEO of the Product" Myth:

PM has RESPONSIBILITY without AUTHORITY. You are accountable for outcomes you cannot directly control.

The Coordination Tax:

An engineer writes code that works or does not work. Clear feedback.

A PM coordinates between:

• Engineering (want specs, got vague ideas)
• Design (want time, got deadline pressure)
• Marketing (want features, got technical constraints)
• Sales (want promises, got reality)
• Leadership (want metrics, got learning)

Every stakeholder is partially unhappy. That is the job.

Case Study - The Engineering Refugee:

Karthik, 5 years engineering, switched to PM to "escape coding":

• Month 1: Excited, lots of strategy discussions
• Month 3: Realized "strategy" is 5% of time
• Month 6: 8+ meetings per day, no time to think
• Year 1: Misses the clarity of code
• Year 2: Considering going back to engineering

What he should have done: 6-month internal PM rotation before committing.

Related context: Salary Reality Check, CTC Decoder, more in Product Management.

Salary and Growth Reality

Cross-check your take-home with the CTC Decoder and compare ranges in Salary Reality.

Where Most People Get Stuck

The Identity Crisis: You were a good engineer. You switched. Now you are a mediocre PM. You cannot go back because "that is going backward." You are stuck in a role you do not love.

The Responsibility-Authority Gap: Failure lands on you. Success is shared. You are responsible for what engineers build, but you cannot write code yourself. You depend on others for your outcomes.

The Politics Surprise: You thought engineering had politics? PM is PURE politics. Roadmap debates. Resource negotiations. Credit distribution. Priority battles. Every day.

The Technical Erosion: After 2-3 years of PM, your coding skills rust. Now you CANNOT go back to engineering easily. The trap is set.

Before You Switch - The Honest Checklist:

If this matches your current situation, run the Resignation Risk Analyzer before making your next move.

Who Should Avoid This Path

Decision Framework

Use this quick framework before changing role, company, or specialization.

• If your output is execution-only for multiple quarters, prioritize exposure to discovery and strategy work.
• If portfolio quality is improving but compensation is frozen, reprice in market every 12 months.
• If expectations are senior-level but authority is junior-level, document scope mismatch and renegotiate.

Common Mistakes Checklist

• Treating outlier salaries as planning baselines.
• Using title changes as a substitute for capability changes.
• Delaying market benchmarking until after compensation stagnates.
• Confusing feature shipping speed with product impact.

Real Scenario Snapshot

A product manager ships high ticket volume but weak business outcomes. Career growth stalls until metric ownership is documented and tied to decision quality.

Originality Lens

Contrarian thesis: Feature velocity without metric ownership weakens long-term career leverage.

Non-obvious signal: PM profiles with high ticket closure and low business impact evidence plateau fastest.

Evidence By Section