This right here. I have worked with a dozen PMs in 30 years, only two were any damn good. One managed an IT team, and she didn't know tech worth squat, but God damn, did she keep the flow going and know how to get shit done without being an ass about it.

On the other hand, I faught with a PM once because he didn't understand the concept of priorities or how to manage a crisis. "You want me to fix the outage or attend a meeting about it?" "Both." "Pick one. You have a choice. I can fix the issue in the data center, or join a blame session in the meeting room. Which one?" "BOTH!" I got to the meeting room, and he demanded we put down our laptops and pay attention. He invited EVERYBODY regardless of whether they were needed or not. Twenty seven people all bitching about the outage and not a single person fixing it. No meeting moderation. Just chaos until he had a panic attack. Just useless.

I got a project now that doesn't have one and you can definitely see it. Stuff is being missed left and right. All the different companies aren't talking together. A few months back I just straight up recommended that they bring a PM to the lead scientist and they weren't interested. So far I would say they have made a total of 90k mistakes on a 850k project.

Completely agreed that the role is vital. For me, my PM is a life saver as my workload is simply too much to also handle PM duties.

That’s said, I also agree that there are many useless PMs. But a good one is worth their weight in gold.