The peculiar predicament of PMs

27 Aug, 2025

At my last company, as I suspect at many tech companies, the creature often driving certain core business decisions is the product manager.

I no longer work with the company, but I noticed a new feature recently which looked odd to me, and I shared that with the current product head. He said the PM who worked on the feature “worked directly with the founder on this, and the conversion rate on that screen had increased.”

This was the predicament that I found most PMs whom I encountered lately. As long as it is “founder-approved and the data is positive”, they relegate their own point of view and taste to the dustbin.

I have wondered how to characterise this, perhaps “data zombies” is one moniker.

I always loved this image from the book Physical Computing, a book that encourages full-body input to the computer (think stuff like the Kinect), that the computer only sees the human not as a full human but a creature with a finger and an eye. There is a similar sketch to be made for a PM, who is only moving forward based on what the powers-that-be tell them and then what gets validated by the data.