Ask HN: Should I switch back from Product Management to engineering?
Full text: I am a software engineer by background, did some machine learning, but during my career I somehow switched to product management. In my first startup, I was in the CTO role, but effectively, I was doing a lot of product related things, so when the startup went bust I decided to proceed in that direction because somehow Product Management sounded more prestigious to me, and I felt like being able to make more high-level decisions will be a much better place for me to focus my time and effort on.
Now, almost a decade later, I have worked in many startups in product and product leadership roles, and I am currently in a product leadership position in a very successful company on a breakout trajectory.
At the same time, for the past year or so, I feel like I am in a fundamentally wrong role. I understand the value of product management, I can do a lot of product strategy, prioritization and user research activities pretty well, and I know how to coach product managers who work with me, but I feel like I am wasting my time, and I hate waking up for work. I am dreaming about coding, designing architectures, solving challenging tech problems, and spending less time on stakeholder meetings, planning meetings, strategy meetings and sync meetings.
Sometimes I am wondering if the problem is that I am just not doing product management right. Maybe in an ideal situation, in ideal company, with ideal product, the role can be much more engaging and satisfying.
But at the same time, I can't stop thinking that product manager in general is a very artificial role. In a good, empowered and autonomous team I don't see why team lead can't carry some PMs responsibilities, with some people from marketing (i.e. product marketing manager) carrying the other side of product manager's role.
Anyway, where I am right now is I am depressed, I don't like my job, but I feel scared to lose the credibility and status I have achieved in my current career direction, and go back to a lower level technical role. I know how to code, and I still code regularly for myself, but it is very different from what companies expect from tech leads or software architects who they hire, so probably I will need to start lower level. Or I just need to start a new startup and be the CTO again :)
There is another voice in my head that tells me that I am just lazy, trying to get into comfort zone as product management is not a comfort zone for me, and therefore I should continue fighting and suffering to get out of this stronger and successful on the other end. But I have seen too many people falling into the trap of suffering like this for no good reason, and I want to avoid this...