Summary: A few weeks ago, a sales engineer was being disruptive in our iteration demo meeting. I sent a (non appropriate) message to my scrum master to get this individual to stop trying to turn it into a design review. The message was mistakenly displayed on the main screen (I may have used the acronym STFU for shut the F__k up).
I blogged about it. About the proper purpose for the meeting, the type of feedback that was appropriate, and outside members are in “listen only” mode.
The SE whose feeling were hurt found the blog, and I was told to remove it.
Now I am sad. My blog was where I shared some of the inside story on my life as a product manager. 14 years and you build a thick skin, a set of rules that work, and a string of successes. I enjoyed sharing them. Now. They are gone.
Product Management is not a career that is great. It is a thankless job. It is the bucket that all the other groups dump the shitty tasks that they would prefer to not do. You are part customer support. Part sales engineer. Part sales manager. Part senior leader. Part marketing. I am envious of all the people who stand there and say that they live the Pragmatic Marketing system. Or the Blackblot system. I call bullshit. I have been at many different places, and product management is always a messed up, ill defined, master of all trades role.
I am tired of it. I hate it. I want off the rollercoaster. This is not fun anymore. Sadly, I happen to be good at product management, so I will probably continue to gravitate to it. I just want it to end.
I sit here typing this as I await my 8:45PM update call with our India team.
