I think product manager is a very important role. But I'm yet to see a product manager that respects the craft/skill or even spends any effort to understand what's entailed. Most are shoot-an-email-assign-on-jira-and-call-it-a-day type. Nothing more depressing than getting a condescending "good job!" from an oily haired zoro for making a menu bigger and not getting any recognition for lowering server costs 50%. This is not an exaggeration, there are many many stories like that or even worse. I've heard developers described as plumbers even from people who work in highly respected and big companies. There's nothing wrong with plumbers, but it's just to show how they think about what we do.