PM is a fake job where the majority have long learned that they can simply (1) appease leadership and (2) push down on engineering to advance their career. You will notice this does not actually involve understanding or learning about products.

It's why the GP got that confused reaction about reading user reports. Talk to someone outside big company who has no power? Why?

I've had the pleasant experience of having worked for PMs at several companies (not at Google) who were great at their jobs, and advocated for the devs. They also had no problem with devs talking directly with clients, and in fact they encouraged it since it was usually the fastest way to understand and solve a problem.

Almost every job in the US is primarily about pleasing leadership at the end of the day.

If companies didn’t want that sort of incentive structure to play out then they would insulate employees from the whims of their bosses with things like contracts or golden parachutes that come out of their leaderships budget.

They pretty much don’t though, so you need to please your leadership first to get through the threat of at will employment, before considering anything else.

If you’re lucky what pleases your leadership is productive and if your super lucky what pleases them even pleases you.

Gotta suck it up and eat shit or quit if it doesn’t though

Sounds like you just got stuck with a shit PM to be honest.