Pros:

  • "This is one of the most exciting things about being a product manager. Just like an architect helps build roads and buildings, I help in creating digital products from the beginning. A product manager is one of the key people involved from the beginning. So I get to hear ideas, brainstorm with other industry leaders and build something that can potentially be life-altering for people."
    - Shalvika Sood Quovantis Product Manager
  • "I like to say that, as a PM, I try to do as much as I can so that my teammates can focus on what they like doing. Some people call this “filling whitespace”. I describe it this way because “whitespace” isn’t the same for different projects or groups of people. Everyone likes doing different things and has different strengths, which means the “whitespace” for each project and group of people will be different."
    - Elynn Lee Quora Product Manager
  • "There is almost nothing more satisfying than that moment we are able to send out the public product launch announcement to signal the release of the version/product. The road to get there took months of development and testing, and the product likely went through many, probably contentious, rounds of design changes."
    - Grace Lee Camoglu, Google Product Manager
  • "Product management is arguably the most similar role to a CEO there is within a company. This makes it a good pathway for career progression, offering you the best training you could get for running a company."
    - Abby Clapson IM Marketing Publicity Coordinator
  • "The best thing about the job is the creativity required to keep ahead of competitors in terms of content and functionality."
    --Darren Cottingham, Product Manager, DT Driver Training

Cons:

  • " . . .[Y]ou often don’t have nearly as much decision-making ability as you might think. At most companies, where the product is core to the company, EVERYONE has an opinion on what the priorities, features, and user experience should be- sales, marketing, engineering, and often executives. Often times, a product manager ends up being more of an “order taker” from other stakeholders. Yet at the same time, the product manager is often held accountable for the success/failure of the product. Accountability without decision-making authority is incredibly frustrating. This definitely doesn’t happen at every company, but I’ve seen it plenty." Katie McCan, Byliner Product Leader
  • " . . .“[M]anual work” due to the use of “poor tools.” The most common responses in this category related to “tedious” tasks like “offer management,” “segmentation work,” “campaign configuration,” “in-game event scheduling,” “creative optimization” for offers and user acquisition (UA), and “test coordination.” According to many PMs, these are the biggest time sinks, with many reporting that, on average, their team spends at least one day per week manually working on recurring offers and campaigns -- time that should be spent on other, more important and financially fruitful tasks. One PM from a big publisher said that he had to literally manually copy and paste over 70 JSON files per week to support campaigns in different locations. Another PM said that she had to set her alarm clock for early hours every weekend to log in to their live-ops console and manually hit the start button for events and accompanying currency sales in different time zones."
    - Niklas Herriger 8 Bit Coaching Founder
  • "Your engineers and designers don’t report to you. They will report to their own respective engineering/design managers. Your position becomes tricky in such a case. Often getting your ad-hoc work done would require you to maintain good rapport and understanding with the team. Often you would need to get work done from other teams or need their support on several small things. "
    - Abhishek Bhardwaj, PayPal Product Manager 2
  • "As a PM doing anything of significance, you will encounter resistance. It’s your job to respond appropriately to that resistance. For example, maybe a co-worker in Korea tells you the translation of your feature name is locally offensive — you have you to deal with that. Or maybe an executive emails at the last minute and tells you she doesn’t like some aspect of the design everyone already approved — you have to deal with that. As a PM, sometimes you’ll feel like you’re pushing a heavy train up a hill, and people are coming from everywhere putting obstacles on the track.
    - Jake Hubert, former Google and Lyft Product Manager "
  • "The absence of focus is an evil that affects any company of any size today. With changes in consumer habits, digitalization and globalization we always have many more ideas than the ability to do them. In addition, there are continuous distractions from our competitors or by changes in our industry."
    - Gerard Chiva, Management Consultant

Ultimately, the career of product management is an exciting one where you play a key role in the creation and development of the product. But that power leads you at risk for taking the fall if things fail, and you are left to make decisions without crucial information people in other roles might be given. Here are some links for further reading:

Mind The Product: What is a Product Manager, really? Harvard Review: What Makes A Great Product Manager? Quora: What's not good about being a product manager?

What are your pros or cons about product management?