You aren’t a Product Leader until you can manage a P&L.
In the early stages of a Product Manager’s career, success is measured by output: features shipped, bugs fixed, and velocity maintained. But as you ascend to Principal, Director, or CPO roles, the scoreboard changes. Your code doesn’t matter anymore. Your P&L impact does. The most successful product leaders today act less like visionaries and more like capital allocators. They understand that every line of code is an investment that must return more than its cost of capital. ...