Warning signs that your new Product Management job is going to suck

Hey congrats! You landed a new product management job!

But before you accept it, consider whether you really WANT this position. Here are some tell-tale warning signs that this new product management job is gonna suck.

Warning Signs

1. Product managers are not allowed to talk directly to customers.

2. Sales people are always hovering around the Engineering staff, asking them to quickly add this new feature or fix that.

3. The product managers don't know off the top of their heads, their products' revenue from last quarter and last year. (Perhaps this is because Finance won't share the info with them, but it is never a good sign.)

4. The product managers don't know off the top of their heads who the major competitors are, their approximate sales, and their approximate growth.

5. There are more product managers than QA engineers.

6. The product documentation group has more headcount that Product Management and QA combined.

7. There are no user experience designers.

8. The are no sales engineers (otherwise known as pre-sales consultants).

9. Long-term product investment decisions are predominately based on forecasts from Sales -- the one group at the company that is paid to focus almost exclusively on the short-term.

10. The company needlessly changes names, brands, messaging, product names, logos, etc, constantly. For no apparent reason other than resume-enhancement for the marketing people, but costing the company millions each time