Hacker News Reader

Not necessarily. A PM should understand the sorts of things that SEs could do, but there are several PMs who can't code themselves, but could say what are important features that the product should have.

People who can’t code don’t get promoted to PMs or any sort of engineering manager because it’s too easy to lie

Eventually they all forget how to to (I did too) so that’s why it’s important to stay hands-on

With luck they were devs before but it's all but a given.