A technical Product Manager would be a Product Engineer but the inverse might not be true. In my mind a good Product Manager is also responsible for guiding the product roadmap in the direction that addresses user's wants rather than features that are cool to implement but don't really address a user's wants or needs.
Yep, definitely. As a really bad analogy, if you are in the ice cream business and ask a customer, they will recommend you changes in flavors, but if there was, say, a huge chance in a new kind of popsicle, they'd never tell you about that. There's also a dichotomy between the things they'll ask for and what you need to get them to stay with you, or get other users sold. You can make an existing user really really happy (which I approve of), but in doing so, you might not be expanding market. Just trying to retain them is not a good solution, but there's a balance there.
But yeah, the customer is not usually going to tell you the world takeover strategy.
Your article is spot on. I agreed with all the different product management strategies. I was going to make the argument that building what the users tell you they love is great when that thing is making you money. However you made the point much more eloquently in your article. That's a nice read. Thanks for the link.
