Are Senior PMs busier than Junior PMs?
Many professionals place great importance on titles, especially when they include terms like “strategic.”
However, what is often overlooked is that having a strategy role is about genuinely having a plan and understanding how to align the pieces effectively to maintain control.
In my daily interactions, particularly with Product Managers, I’ve noticed a telling difference in how junior and senior professionals manage their time and priorities:
- Junior PMs: You’ll often hear them say, “I am busy, my agenda is a mess, I have back-to-back meetings, let’s schedule something later.”
- Senior PMs are more likely to decide, “This is important, and I am available to discuss and implement this right away.”
This simple distinction reveals a lot about professional maturity. While many are concerned with titles. Seniority and Strategic impact it’s not about being perpetually busy; it’s about having a plan, prioritizing effectively, and making time for what truly matters.
Having a “relaxed day” rather than a “stressful, back-to-back meeting day” isn’t a sign of laziness—it’s a sign of being in control.
So, ask yourself: Are you managing your schedule, or is it managing you?
My name is Salva, I am a product exec and Senior Partner at Reasonable Product, a boutique Product Advisory Firm.
I write about product pricing, e-commerce/marketplaces, subscription models, and modern product organizations. I mainly engage and work in tech products, including SaaS, Marketplaces, and IoT (Hardware + Software).
My superpower is to move between ambiguity (as in creativity, innovation, opportunity, and ‘thinking out of the box’) and structure (as in ‘getting things done’ and getting real impact).
I am firmly convinced that you can help others only if you have lived the same challenges: I have been lucky enough to practice product leadership in companies of different sizes and with different product maturity. Doing product right is hard: I felt the pain myself and developed my methods to get to efficient product teams that produce meaningful work.