Absolutely 100% agreed!

- Product Manager

- Product Marketing Manager

- UX ... Researcher.

So, am I a manager or an individual contributor?

On paper, I'm an individual contributor, and it looks as though it's possible to do my job with minimal training and just a year or two's experience. So why are you paying me more than most companies pay their senior managers?

Are you absolutely stupid, or just enjoy throwing money around for no reason?

Or am I actually a manager?

That certainly tracks, given the business-critical responsibility we hold to find out what customers actually need in a product (if you get that wrong, your whole strategy and, eventually, your whole company tanks).

It's certainly commeasurate with my formal qualifications and decade-and-a-half's experience, which would make me a true peer of any decent Product Manager.

So, which is it?

As a Customer Insights Manager, I worked with individual teams on projects, often flagship ones, with budgets of tens of thousands for each project, often coordinating multiple agencies worldwide.

Now, as a UX Researcher, I'm doing much of the same work that the Director of Research two levels above me did at my last job.

So, which is it?