Why Top Product Managers Are Leaving: Melissa Perri Highlights the ‘Product Operations Gap’

In a recent LinkedIn post, Melissa Perri discusses a critical reason why many talented product managers are burning out and leaving their roles: they are being forced to handle product operations tasks alongside their core responsibilities. Perri, author of the book ‘Product Operations,’ argues that this organizational gap-filling is a costly mistake that leads to decreased morale and talent attrition.

The Hidden Workload of Product Managers

Perri highlights that companies often underestimate the operational demands placed on product managers. When a dedicated Product Operations function is absent, the numerous tasks associated with it inevitably fall onto the product managers themselves. This dilutes their focus and prevents them from engaging in the strategic work they were hired for.

She elaborates on this point, stating:

“You’re asking PMs to be data-driven while building their own analytics dashboards. To prioritize excellently while creating their own frameworks from scratch. To collaborate cross-functionally while also playing product marketing, data analyst, and strategy facilitator.”

This multifaceted burden, as Perri points out, transforms the role from strategic product leadership into organizational infrastructure support.

The Cost of Neglecting Product Operations

According to Melissa Perri, the consequences of this operational overload are significant. When product managers spend valuable time on tasks like building stakeholder alignment templates or manually pulling data for executive reports, instead of analyzing user behavior or driving product strategy, companies are essentially paying premium talent to solve setup problems.

Perri emphasizes this financial and motivational drain:

“When your PM spends three hours building a stakeholder alignment template instead of analyzing user behavior, you’re paying premium talent to solve infrastructure problems. When they’re manually pulling data for executive reports instead of driving product strategy, you’re burning money and morale.”

This situation, Perri argues, is a clear indicator that a company has not established a proper Product Operations function to support its product managers.

The Role of Product Operations

Melissa Perri advocates for the establishment of a dedicated Product Operations team as the solution to these challenges. She explains that Product Operations exists to create the necessary infrastructure, frameworks, and processes that enable product managers to concentrate on their primary objectives: driving business growth and delivering customer value.

In Perri’s view:

“Product Operations exists to handle exactly these challenges. It creates the infrastructure, frameworks, and processes that let PMs focus on what you actually hired them for: driving business growth and customer value.”

By offloading these operational burdens, companies can retain their best product talent. Perri concludes that organizations that recognize and address this distinction between strategy and setup are more successful in keeping their high-performing product managers, while those that don’t risk losing them to more supportive environments.

Perri prompts readers to consider their own organizational practices, asking, “What operational tasks are your PMs doing that pull them away from strategic work?” This question encourages reflection on how companies can better support their product management teams.