Lots of product managers have never studied product development. You'll find philosophers, designers, physicists, even musicians in the role. Many have great people skills, but little understanding of customer service, building products, or scaling a business. And funnily enough, those are all real careers and degrees.
The result, which you often see in companies with 300+ employees, is that engineers have far more experience building products than their PMs, what engineers usually lack is knowledge of the customer and their pain points, and a roadmap that leads to successful outcomes. In other words: a real product manager.
It's not enough for PMs to throw around cliches like "I represent the customer" or "the product has to be built around customer needs" if they don't understand how to actually build and ship software.
Last year I dug into this and found it's not unusual. Many software companies hire smart people as CPO, Product Director, or Head of Product because they have leadership skills, people skills, and some knowledge of the industry. But most have little to no background in business, marketing, economics, or product development. Some companies go even further and promote an engineer with project management experience to Head of Product. And, of course, people in those roles tend to hire others who look like them, with similar experience. One day their CEO realiseS their product isn't selling, customers aren't happy, or engineers are left to figure out what to build.
To put it in perspective, imagine a company making a lawyer their Engineering Manager and asking them to build an engineering team. What are the chances they'd do better than a computer scientist or an actual engineer? Pretty slim. Sure, there are exceptions, but what usually happens is their engineers aren't motivated and complain about the lack of coaching, vision, purpose, and the poor quality of their tools, processes, code, and work environment.
Bottom line: companies need to audit product leadership roles as a priority and figure out who's really in charge of the product. Run an internal survey to check whether your CPO, Director, Head of Product, and Product Managers have studied business or have actual expertise in it. If not, you're in trouble.