It is easy to make fun of PMs in big companies who are just launching features and are focused on “outputs over outcomes”, but also understand that some environments are so messed up that a launch (really any launch) is by itself a huge achievement requiring superhuman effort.

A lot of times, these PMs know that this is not ideal. They should be doing things differently. But the mess around them is just overwhelming. It would be impossible for anyone at the IC / first-level manager level to fix the mess. You might think you can fix it, but you can’t.

Less often, it is actually just fine to focus on outputs. This is when your product has already succeeded, you are benefitting immensely from Legacy Momentum. With the success came the mess. So this now means that the locally optimal solution as an ambitious IC is to just launch.

Ultimately, the onus of fixing the mess is on the leaders (usually Directors & above). They *can* actually fix it. But some think this total mess is a necessary part of their scale (wrong). Some are fine because it benefits them (bad). Others don’t know how to fix (very common).