Another place that engineers can over-rely on PM is in project management. Because PMs are most active at the start and end of projects - handing the steering wheel to engineers to execute and picking it back up when code is complete to deliver downstream - there can often be blurriness about how much PMs should be project managing in the middle. The TLDR here is that PMs should not be running all project meetings. Engineering managers, IC project leads, or tech leads need to be managing engineering execution, not PMs.

Strong disagree. This drive by style of product manager is so disconnected from the delivery of the team, that the relationship borders on useless. I know product managers are adverse to doing what they see as project management but this particular style of product management leans too far into abstracting the product manager from the product that they are responsible for.

The best, most productive PMs I’ve worked with are part of the team delivering the software.