Something Always Goes Wrong (Maybe That’s the Job)
Something Always Goes Wrong
At some point, something will go wrong.
Not if, when.
Maybe it’s during the weekend when the API starts failing.
Maybe your QA is off on leave while a customer escalates a critical bug.
Or maybe your usually onsite dev team is scattered across Nigeria because it’s the holidays, and no one can push a hotfix because the only person with access is unreachable.
This isn’t an edge case. This is the job. This is real Product Management
This is when “Product Manager” stops being a role on paper and starts being the person who moves things forward, with duct tape, Notion templates, panic-patching, and a bit of begging.
We talk a lot about product strategy and quarterly roadmaps, but the truth is, those things are a nice-to-have when things aren’t on fire.. Reality doesn’t follow your Notion template. The product doesn’t care about your calendar. It will break when it wants to, and usually when everyone else is offline. And in that moment, your job isn’t to panic. It’s to unblock what’s blocked. You figure out what needs to be fixed right now, and what can wait. You run a test yourself. You find a workaround. You cut scope. You talk to support, or design, or engineering, or maybe none of them, because they’re all out, and you decide, right there, what the best move is.
And this is the part no one tells you: the product that users experience as “smooth” is often just a series of broken things held together convincingly. The quick patch. The temporary solution that became permanent. The late-night change. And it’s fine. That’s the job. The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is movement, ideally forward, or at least not backwards. You solve just enough problems, just in time, to make everything look intentional, like the Japanese Kintsugi.
So here’s the truth: if everything always worked, they wouldn’t need you or me. The chaos isn’t the exception; it is the role. That’s when the real product management work begins. When things fall apart and no one else is around, when you’re the last one online, chasing answers, solving just enough problems to keep it going, you become the team.
You make the call.
You do the thing.
That’s where the value is. So don’t be afraid of the cracks. Fix them well enough, and they just might become the reason people trust what you’ve built.
Then you write it down so it doesn’t happen again, or at least, if it does, the next person knows where to start.
