Leadership is a real job
I got into product management in the mid-2010s because I wanted to make better software. I had taste, and I was tired of clunky user experiences. At the time, individual contributors could have massive impact just by building more thoughtful, usable things.
But the internet matured. Craft became normalized. Today, many PMs, designers, and engineers are very good at their jobs, and most digital products are fine.
The bottleneck moved upstream: what started weakening wasn’t execution, it was leadership. Leadership demands its own craft and discipline, but there’s rarely a shared rubric for success.
ICs are laddered, tracked, reviewed, and evaluated. Leaders, in many organizations, are not. This isn’t a fairness issue, it creates real consequences.
Sometimes, leaders can’t even describe their own role. (I once asked a VP what their job was. They said they’d have to get back to me.) When leadership isn’t clearly defined, it becomes whatever someone wants it to be.
Often, it stays in the comfort zone of execution: joining calls your ICs could handle, defining projects yourself, or mediating disagreements between adults.
It’s easy to mistake quantity of contribution for value. But leadership isn’t about doing more work, it’s about doing different work:
Create clarity and direction
Build trust and emotional alignment across functions
Drive consistent, high-quality execution
When that work isn’t happening, the effects aren’t always loud, but they become visible. Execution looks busy but feels directionless as priorities shift constantly and strategy gets sidelined. When outcomes eventually falter, the diagnosis usually lands on process or delivery, not on leadership.
The current power structure doesn’t allow ICs to hold leadership accountable. If you speak up, you risk being labeled difficult or quietly managed out. So the pressure keeps flowing downward, not because ICs are the problem, but because they’re the only ones it’s safe to pressure. That’s not dysfunction, it’s the system working exactly as designed.
This isn’t about blaming individuals, though it will take individuals to change it. If you are in a leadership role, this is work you can take seriously. Some places to start:
Try writing down what your job actually is. Would your team agree with it? Would you be proud to show it to them?
Talk about your role often. Make it easy for your team to understand what you’re focused on, and how it helps them do great work.
Be clear about what “doing well” means for you. Share how you think about impact and make it visible so that anyone can look it up async.
If something feels off, don’t just look at the roadmap. Look at the structure above it. Sometimes the problem isn’t what’s getting built, it’s that you also have to build the job of leadership itself.