> unlike software engineers that typically have a 4 year degree, 2 year degree...
they do NOW. Back when a lot of us started getting involved with this, most 'engineers' had physics, engineering, mathematics, and other various backgrounds because software engineering degrees were too freaking new.
In the near-future (10 5? years? possibly sooner?) kids are gonna graduate with specialized PM degrees having gone to highschool thinking about being "product manager" when they grow up. When I was in highscool i wanted to be a Webmaster! now a webmaster is 15 people between desiginers, PMs, backend, frontend, QA, testers, blah blah blha