I started working as a PM around 9 months ago at a very large multinational company. Think over 50k employees worldwide. We work with a lot of different products and industries but my product is a legacy HRM/HCM product that has been an afterthought and actively failing for years.

Of course I had no idea about this when I started. But we’ve lost 75-80% of our customers in the last decade, and in the last 7 years we have only gained a single new customers, which isn’t even technically new, they are coming back to our product.

I was hired to lead a modernization effort for this product. To summarize to those who are technical PMs, I was hired to bring the product into the 21st century by building new integration methods like APIs and leading an automation effort. Our existing integrations are almost all file-based and most of our product requires specialists to sit and manually do stuff in the user interface.

We have a huge amount of major challenges with my product, which is making my job very difficult as a PM:

• Tech stack is ancient, so hiring new developers is difficult. It’s mainly PowerBuilder, SQL Stored Procedures, and COBOL.
• Most people on the team have worked here for decades and are used to old ways of work, so leading a modernization effort is extremely difficult. For example, we are trying to build modern APIs with literally 0 API developers and without a software architect on the team.
• Since most of the team is close to retirement, they couldn’t care less about the future of the product. They know this is their last job and they’re riding it out until they retire.
• Product is built on decades of legacy and customer specific business logic almost everywhere. There are so many identical ways of doing pretty much the same thing which were built years or decades ago and we need to live with now.
• Doing almost anything takes at least an order of magnitude longer than what I’m used to at any other company I’ve worked at.
• Hiring just isn’t possible since we can’t sell the product. Leadership doesn’t want to hire people to modernize the product, but they still want the product modernized with the existing staff.
• Leadership couldn’t care less when I bring up these challenges. I get the usual “let’s do the best we can with the resources we have” or “just use AI”. They are somehow okay with things that should take a junior developer a week at most taking 6-7 months for 2 senior developers to ship.

To be completely honest, I’ve never in my 10 year career seen anything like this, nor have I received any kind of training in how to lead a modernization effort given these kinds of major challenges. I honestly feel like I’ve been set up to fail from the start.

I’m trying my best to get the hell out of here if I can, but it’s extremely difficult to find work in Sweden right now given how high unemployment is here currently, and the fact that Sweden is in a recession isn’t helping either. Finding any job is extremely competitive. So I might need to try and survive and manage this situation for a year or two before I can find something else. I just hope the stress and anxiety don’t kill me before I find something else.

To those who have been in such a situation where you need to work as a PM on a product that has been actively failing for years, do you have some tips for how to survive and manage the situation?

I’m a PM for Machine Learning and Data Analytics in a technical software app that has been around for a while so we are well established. I am one of the few at my company trying to stay ahead of the latest developments and news in AI which makes it harder to convince others that there are risks and issues

A couple weeks ago ArtCraft launched vibe coded “replicas” of Adobe Products and MS Office Apps. I have also noticed the rise in people vibe coding on LinkedIn which replicates some of our workflows but they are no where near the level of polish and depth of an established product. However, i feel it’s just a matter of time until a capable and credible clone comes out.

I want to ask how are other software PMs dealing with the fact that their area/software could be replicated in the next several months. Are there ways to pivot your product or change the moat that makes it more difficult?

The last product manager was really hands on and there are really high expectations here. How do I place myself for success? It has been 4 days after joining and the expectation is that I will start leading the roadmap and the execution but my confidence shatters everyday

(written myself, refined with AI)

Context:

I moved from a late-stage AI startup to a Big Tech company ~10 months ago (working as a PM on internal AI agent tools). Before this, I was building AI agents directly. Right now, I’m feeling lost and underutilized. Looking for perspective on how to navigate this.

Key Issues:

1. Friction with Design:
   I spend significant time researching and prototyping directly using Claude. Design essentially just applies brand guidelines to my prototypes. I raised concerns about our operating model, but no real change occurred (partially because Design is remote from our users).
   
2. Friction with Engineering:
   We clash on execution speed. Recently, I shipped a feature to production myself in a fraction of the time Engineering originally quoted.
   
3. Boredom & Lack of Scope:
   I have way too much downtime and feel under-challenged. I’ve repeatedly asked my manager for more scope. They acknowledge I can handle it, but never officially assign new work.
   
4. Uncredited Side Work:
   I’m stepping up to cover open headcounts across other workstreams in my manager’s org. However, this work is completely uncredited—even my skip-level manager is unaware of my contributions here.

Questions for the Sub:

1. Stay & Fix vs. Transfer/Leave: Should I keep trying to fix these team dynamics internally, look for an internal transfer, or start prepping for a job change?
   
2. Escalating to Skip-Level: Is it safe to bring these issues (and a request for a scope/team change) directly to my skip-level? Or will this be seen as bypassing/backstabbing my manager and harm my reputation?
   
3. General Advice: How would you approach navigating this situation?