6 years of TPM'ing in BigTech. I'm looking to come "back" to Software Engineering where I could do more of the "real TPM" work than in my current Senior TPM position.

I'm finding that this role is being diluted by Program Managers with very little if any technical background. (Sometimes they learn enough of basic scripting, and suddenly get the T). But this is not the same as an engineer that had built stuff for years.

These people are indispensable in handling the organizatioal chaos, but are less efficient in preventing it, and driving the overall vision, especially if a problem being solved is deeply technical and strategy and tech issues are intertwined (they always are in e.g. scalable infrastructure).

I'm finding that deep technical and strategic organizational vision increasingly belongs to just very senior Software Engineers, who may stop coding, start working more with people, but actually never convert to TPM.