That sounds like a bad product owner, not that product owners are bad. In every discipline there are people who are bad at their job and bring negative value.

I worked at a place with no product owner and I would literally have to task switch from writing code to talking to an irate customer on the phone because we only had basic tier 1 support. I would also have to fly out to the customer’s actual site to live debug while they stood over me mad. I’d have to also gather requirements and ideas from them. All while also needing to do a full-time software engineering job.

I would have killed for a Product Owner to shield me from that!

I am totally with you on product hallucinations being a big problem. For me the sweet spot is a product manager who grounds needs in user research that is then shared with the team, so we could get a real sense of who we were building for and why what we did mattered. And who then follows up after we put something out there to see if it's really working for the users, so that we can iterate until it's right.

It is a big jump to go from saying you don't want a bad product owner to saying you don't want a product owner at all. If you have a customer facing product, being a good product owner should be a full time job. You can't do that and be an engineer at the same time.

I would say that you don't want a bad product owner between you and the customer. Having a great one can build an amazing experience for both the customer and the devs. But you are correct that a bad one will traumatize you.

What would you say... ya do here?

That's not at all my experience, the best PO I had were not technical at all, but laser focused on the users. They do need to be reasonably smart, and trust your technical expertise, however

I think it depends, a product owner needs to inject subject matter expertise. It can be that they know how to program, but it also could be that they deeply understand customers.

In digital health setting I’ve met a few drs-turn-pms who were excellent because they could translate between what drs wanted and what engineering was thinking in a way that swe-turn-pm would struggle. Of course, the best dr pm I know also learned how to program in python because he enjoyed it (and he even shipped some small self-contained projects!).

The least effective pm I met was a non-dr non-swe who didn’t have deep understanding of either side and essentially tried to apply general pm-principles-from-a-book. But even they were positive value after a quarter of finding their place.

I don't think the PO needs to program, it might help, but its not a necessity.

they do need to know the product inside out, and who the customers are, and why the product evolved like it did. They need to be able to advocate for the customer.