Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that a PM who simply play the role of a telephone between design, engineering and marketing is indeed useless...though i disagree that PM in general add no value building product, even in a team of A players. You work at google, and google is a place full of A players. It also happens to have hundreds if not thousands of product managers. Surely they are not there to just look pretty. I can't speak for you, b…
Most product managers, in my experience, greatly overestimate their own level of knowledge. Your whole post smacks of this too, and when you say you "get into the weeds" on technical tradeoffs, it's quite likely that you're wasting the engineers' time trying to debate things that are either utterly inconsequential or are obviously wrong to anyone with a basic grasp of the technology. Also when you refer to engineers…
I think you're reading too much into a common shorthand for "engineers who I work with".
People also say "my friends", "my family", "my workmates", "my boss", "my bus driver", "my doctor" and so on without implying subordination.