Is it too late to go back to school and study engineering?

Every product I've worked on has had the product quality called into question by the customer. It's the worst question to get asked as the product manager. And sitting on the other side of the world from R&D, without know every quirk and twist of touching and using the product, all I can go on is the knowledge and history of the process (which has holes that I have to ignore), aided by the encouragement/hypnosis/打氣 from the boss which can sometimes veer into BS territory. He takes the time to get to know more of the details than most bosses, but still he sees things easier as they are because he is a boss.

The customer interaction is the most challenging part of the job because I have to talk about things I don't know for sure, but pretend I do know. And when I read customer reports issues with seemingly basic functions, I really struggle. I really do. The boss has set things up so that I should not have to answer technical queries, but sometimes like today, I have to respond to the customer directly because it affects sales or business, and I don't want to take the easy way out and let it go till night time for my HK colleagues to respond.

Every time this issue comes up, I wish I had the technical expertise to say, this product is wrong. Actually, I can probably figure out how to set up the product, if I decide it is priority enough. When would that be?

Trying to be under the radar

For the most part, I think I am getting along with the bosses. One way I know is I keep getting more work, which I believe for at least one of them is an acknowledgment that I'm not screwing up what I've been doing. The other way I know is one boss crashed a weekly conference call I have with my coworkers and told them I'm doing a good job. Which - thanks and all, but dude, now I might have to deal with the "teacher's pet" syndrome. And I'm just fumbling through everything like my coworkers are, I'm just the one making the requests so it's easier to measure when my coworkers fail vs. when I fail. And I'm the loser with no family or social life to speak of, so I can spend every waking moment working or thinking of work. Don't keep enabling my bad behavior, boss!

I was also a loser when I was a kid, reading books when my siblings were watching TV or having fun, and I also got pointed out and praised which made me 莫名其妙. I'm just reading cause I don't have enough dexterity to play whatever games the older kids were playing! or cause they didn't invite me! Then the praise made them doubly sure to never invite me. So there's some personal overreaction here but I'm really wishing I could ditch the spotlight part of the job cause everything else is pretty fun. I am getting that sinking feeling again of not getting enough done, and the boss told me "don't send me any more emails complaining about job priorities" as he fixed things last time and I think I only get to play that card once a fiscal quarter... or fiscal year... T_T

Source: Discover Education 

PM reporting to Sales

I found out this week that my company posted a job for director of product marketing for another business unit. The thing is, it reports to Sales, not product management! This company direction worries me. I (mostly) like the sales team and they're critical to success. But Sales and PM often have a conflict of interest, and that check and balance is really needed to keep ourselves honest that we're building a product to address a market problem, instead of always chasing that elusive "killer product" that Sales is always pushing for.

I guess I have a slight case of fear of abandonment from some personal and previous work experience, and as I am just getting to enjoy my job, I hope this is not a sign that my boss is going to throw me over the fence to Sales boss!

From the 2010 Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey:
Reporting to Department

• 29% directly to CEO or COO
• 31% in Product Management
• 20% in Marketing
• 14% in Development or Engineering
• 7% in Sales

And here's why PM should not report to Sales:
"Very few product managers find themselves in a Sales (or Sales & Marketing) department. It seems clear product managers in Sales will spend all of their time supporting sales people with demos and presentations. The product managers become the sales engineers. In effect, subordinating product management relegates it to a support role for the primary goal of the department." (Source: Where does PM belong?)

And I think actually I wouldn't mind trying that, it's just I like to continue in my current role a bit longer as there is still a lot to learn here.